KAMLOOPS, B.C. – The British Columbia Conservative party is leaderless again.
Dan Brooks says the party’s board has stripped him of his leadership on a technicality.
The 41-year-old businessman from Vanderhoof says the board has ruled the party meeting that approved his candidacy for the September leadership race lacked a quorum.
Brooks first became leader of the BC Conservatives in 2014 but resigned earlier this year, citing family and business responsibilities, and concern about a lawsuit from a losing candidate.
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Over the summer, he announced all the issues had been resolved and he would again seek the leadership, which he won with a narrow, second ballot victory.
He says the party’s board could have named him interim leader while resolving the questions surrounding his candidacy for the second leadership bid, but he believes the board wanted him out.
The BC Conservatives garnered 4.8 per cent of the popular vote during the 2013 provincial election and hasn’t won a seat in the legislature since 1986, although former Liberal Abbotsford South MLA John van Dongen briefly crossed the floor to sit as a Conservative in 2012.
Brooks is pessimistic about the future of the party.
“They don’t have a leader, they don’t have any money, they don’t have any idea of who could be the leader. The only thing that is going to save (them) is a miraculous emergence of a very high profile individual politician who thinks they can somehow save the BC Conservatives,” he says.
“They’re like praying mantises, they eat their leaders,” Brooks says of his former party.
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