Article content continued

“We want talented, passionate, free-enterprise individuals who may have considered running for office before, but didn’t know how to get involved,” it proclaimed. “And we’re committed to increasing representation of women millennials and other under represented groups in B.C. politics.”

The latter was tacit admission that the designated groups are more under-represented on the Opposition side of the house than in the NDP government.

Wilkinson added an air of urgency to the recruitment drive, insisting the Liberals need to start preparing for an election that could come at any time.

“This is a very unstable coalition,” he claimed, sipping from the same speculative bathwater as the rumour-mongers in the party backroom.

Moreover, the process of renewal was already underway, according to Wilkinson. Three Liberal MLAs had confided to him that they would be retiring at the next election, though he did not name them.

That was February. Four months would pass before any of the 41 MLAs in Wilkinson’s caucus would confirm they would not be running again.

First to announce her intentions was Linda Larson, two-term Liberal MLA for Boundary-Similkameen.

“Two terms is enough,” she told reporter Dan Walton of the Oliver Chronicle in early June.

But she added that her personal view of term limits — “one of the not-best-kept-secrets” in the community — had nothing to do with any challenges in working with Wilkinson.

“I find it easier emotionally to work with Andrew than I did Christy (Clark),” she told the reporter. “But there’s a difference obviously than being in power compared to being in opposition.”