Stockwell Day calls for unity to defeat NDP in next provincial election

The former federal Conservative cabinet minister was speaking through a statement his aide sent to the Georgia Straight on Monday evening (September 10).

Last week, the Straight requested an interview with Day after ex-B.C. Liberal leader Gordon Wilson said that Day’s name is one of those being touted in influential business circles as being able to unite the fractured right.

Day didn’t make himself available for an interview before deadline. However, in the statement his aide sent, the former head of the federal Canadian Alliance and leader of the Official Opposition in Parliament pointed out that he’s doing “all I can to hopefully stave off a disaster”.

He was referring to a likely victory by the B.C. NDP in next May’s provincial election.

Clark’s B.C. Liberals have been freefalling in the polls, while former Conservative MP John Cummins’s B.C. Conservative Party has eaten up the ruling party’s support from the centre-right constituency.

Here’s the full statement by Day:

I’m doing all I can to convince people we cannot afford to split the vote. I realize people are angry but to use our anger to cause a situation that allows the socialists to run and ruin the province is, as they say, the same as ‘cutting off our noses to spite our faces.’

Four years of NDP takes at least a generation to pay for, and there’s no guarantee they would get booted out in four years anyway.

Right now people need to hold their noses not cut them off. It’s time to vote with our thoughts on our children and our grandchildren and not on ourselves. I am doing all I can to hopefully stave off a disaster. I realize people do not feel drawn to Christy Clark, however international investors are telling me they are already hedging their bets and pulling back their investments as they shake their heads in dismay that British Columbians would prefer to divide the nonsocialist vote rather than unite it.

It simply is time to pull together.

If we can do that and win this thing then there will be a real opportunity to put the two parties together on paper after the election in a democratic way and have a full and open convention. If the NDP wins we are into full on recession, economic disaster, with capital flight and human resources moving to places like Alberta. I saw it happen in the 90s when I was Minister of Finance in Alberta, it absolutely will happen again, it has already begun.

Related article: Christy Clark, Stockwell Day, and the Northern Gateway pipeline