Elections BC needs a new rule regarding – Parachute candidates and Carpetbaggers
A parachute candidate, or carpetbagger, is a pejorative term for an election candidate who does not live in the area they are running to represent and has little connection to it. The allegation is thus that a desperate political party lacking reliable talent local to the district or region is “parachuting” the candidate in for the job or that the party (or the candidate themselves) wishes to give a candidate an easier election than would happen in their home area. The term also carries the implication that the candidacy has been imposed without regard to the existing local hierarchy.
Let me expand that to include environmental organizations funded by billionaires in the United Sates. Organizations such as 350.org, Bulkley Valley Research Centre, Bulkley Valley Stewardship Coalition, David Suzuki Foundation, Dogwood, Driftwood Foundation, Environmental Law Centre, Friends of Morice-Bulkley, Friends of Wild Salmon, Peace Brigades International, Raven Trust, Sierra Club BC, Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition, Skeenawild Conservation Trust, West Coast Environmental Law, all manipulated local voting over the past 4 years using funding from American environmental manipulators.
Both Taylor Bachrach and Gladys Atrill have deep connections to the Sierra Club and Skeenawild Conservation Trust. Then consider that all the tent city issues, crime drugs, fires all originate back to the last two mayors, Taylor Bachrach and Gladys Atrill.
These groups need to be reigned in by the law to insure every dime they get is accounted for, who gave it to them, and where they spent it. All these groups launder American funding for “their” agendas.
We need this new rule to stop outsiders from manipulating the voters and their wallets. For far to long we have seen municipal, provincial and federal candidates, come into our riding’s, our towns and use it to play political football at the expense of local people.
We need a new law that stipulates that every candidate that runs is required to have lived in that voting area for at least a year prior to the election. It should also be a criminal offence for elected members to not declare they are in a position of conflict when they vote on issues that give advantage to neighbouring communities where they might reside. A good example of carpetbaggers is Smithers, where a number of elected members do not own or live in the community where they dictate taxation policies. A perfect example of this manipulation is the homeless encampment where certain members of Smithers town council voted to keep them in downtown Smithers as opposed to the communities where these elected official live.
When politicians knock on your door, please get them to commit to ending “Parachute candidates – Carpetbaggers” in future elections.
Keep in mind even the Federal NDP “Jagmeet Singh” is a carpetbagger from Bramalea—Gore—Malton in Ontario, he is not from BC, he did not live in BC, but parachuted in here as a safe riding that the NDP controls. This is not how democracy should work, or how riding’s should be politically manipulated. In doing so they were able to deny local candidates from representing their riding.
