No matter how this year鈥檚 provincial election turns out, it will be memorable for at least one thing: the number of candidates the parties have dumped. In the first two weeks of the official campaign, five would-be MLAs have walked the plank.
Two have resurfaced as independents, and the others have vanished beneath the waves. If the toll seems heavier this time around, it could have something to do with the Internet鈥檚 ability to bring our errors back to haunt us. And it hammers home the need for parties to turn over every rock when vetting potential candidates.
The Conservatives hold the dubious honour of having the largest number of recent departures, with four. The fifth was New Democrat candidate Dayleen Van Ryswyk, distinguished for having resigned on the first day of the campaign.
The most recent casualty was Conservative Ron Herbert in Vancouver-West End, who was dropped on the weekend after the party did extra background checks on candidates following the firing of Mischa Popoff in Boundary-Similkameen and Ian Tootill in Vancouver-False Creek. All three were dragged down by things they had written.
In a Twitter post last fall, Tootill wrote: 鈥淲ho鈥檚 really to blame? Hitler or the people who acted on his words?鈥� Party leader John Cummins called those comments unacceptable and shameful.
Popoff was dropped for comments in a newspaper article that were called 鈥渋nsensitive and disrespectful鈥� to women and single mothers. He also called the Missing Women Inquiry 鈥渁 waste of time.鈥� He says he will run as an independent.
Those two incidents sent the party combing through the backgrounds of other candidates, and they discovered Herbert鈥檚 tweets that made sexist remarks about Premier Christy Clark and Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin. So out he went.
Van Ryswyk, the New Democrat candidate for Kelowna-Mission, was outed by the sa国际传媒 Liberals, rather than her own party. The Liberals discovered disparaging remarks about First Nations and French-Canadians, which she made on a community blog. After the NDP swiftly showed her the door, she re-entered the race as an independent.
Unlike the others, the fifth candidate, North Vancouver-Lonsdale鈥檚 Conservative Jeff Sprague, stepped down over an impaired-driving investigation.
There was a time when indiscreet comments made to a small group would never appear on the public stage, and jottings in the local newspaper would stay heaped in the archives. Today, every public utterance 鈥� and many a private one 鈥� is recorded on video or written into a blog. Every written word finds its way onto the web. Every photo posted online seems to live forever.
Yes, it鈥檚 unfair that everything in a candidate鈥檚 past can be dredged up when they decide to enter public life, but that has been going on for as long as people have practised politics. The Internet just makes the searching easier and available to almost anyone. It no longer requires a private detective or a spurned lover to reveal a politician鈥檚 misdeeds.
We should be grateful that the skeletons are emerging before the candidates are elected to office, rather than after. It鈥檚 easier to turf a candidate than a sitting MLA.
Parties always probe the backgrounds of their candidates, but social media have turned that into a potentially unending search through the dark corners of the digital world. For parties like the Conservatives, which have few resources, it eats up staff time they can鈥檛 easily spare. For the NDP, which picked Van Ryswyk at the last moment, it鈥檚 another embarrassing reminder that background checks do matter.
Painful as the process can be, however, the parties have to be rigorous in searching candidates鈥� online lives. If they don鈥檛, their opponents and the voters surely will.
