New BC Liberals Leader Kevin Falcon (left) and Kamloops-North Thompson MLA Peter Milobar (right) (CFJC Today/File photo).

By Aaron Schulze

BC Liberals Leadership

MLA Milobar believes Falcon can ‘invigorate and excite people’ as new BC Liberals leader

Feb 6, 2022 | 4:30 PM

KAMLOOPS — Kamloops-North Thompson’s member of the legislative assembly (MLA) and the opposition house leader was happy to see a decisive move forward from the BC Liberals’ membership.

Peter Milobar hopes the BC Liberal caucus can rally around their new leader Kevin Falcon, who won Saturday’s (Feb. 5) leadership vote with over 52 per cent of the votes available. Falcon takes over the duties from Shirley Bond, who was interim leader after Andrew Wilkinson’s resignation following the Liberals’ substantial defeat to the New Democrats in the 2020 B.C. election.

While Falcon has a long history with the BC Liberals – serving as Surrey-Cloverdale MLA from 2001 to 2013, holding portfolios in cabinet such as transportation, health, and deputy premier – there was a call for change from sections of the BC Liberal membership. Milobar mentioned it to CFJC Today over the summer, as did leadership candidate Ellis Ross.

The discussions of change within the BC Liberals spilled publicly prior to Saturday’s vote via leadership candidate Val Litwin, who denounced the premise of Falcon leading the party.

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However, Milobar believes Falcon is the right candidate to rejuvenate the BC Liberals, as he comes back with a new perspective after leaving politics for nearly a decade.

“Kevin’s demonstrated over the years that he’s a skilled parliamentarian, and understands how to connect with the broader public,” Milobar says. “Every candidate was talking about change and renewal, and absolutely we need to do that. When you look at how many seats we’ll be able to run new candidates in, it’ll be about how do we attract new, vibrant, exciting candidates with their own energy and ideas within their communities to bring to the table. I think Kevin will be able to do that quite easily and really invigorate and excite people to get on board with a relaunched BC Liberal party.”

Currently, Falcon is not serving as an MLA, despite being the BC Liberals’ leader. The BC Liberals have had candidates win leadership prior to winning a by-election to serve as an MLA in the past, such as Gordon Campbell in 1993 and Christy Clark in 2011.

Milobar says the preference would be the have their leader in legislature sooner rather than later, although he’s aware the BC Liberals will need to be patient.

“There’s a lot of work as leader of the party that he can and will be doing in the interim while we await that by-election; in terms of rebuilding the party at the grassroots and getting our message out to the broader province as well,” Milobar says. “In the meantime, we have a full slate of talented MLAs to hold the government to account, and we’ll continue to do our work while we await Kevin to join us in the legislature. Ultimately, the final timeline – once the seat becomes available – would be for the premier to call a by-election. We’d hope they’d call it quickly.”

B.C.’s legislature is set to resume on Tuesday (Feb. 6).

Kamloops-South Thompson MLA Todd Stone, who endorsed Falcon for the BC Liberals’ leadership, was unavailable for comment ahead of publication.