VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – While the Liberals have lost longtime MLA Colin Hansen, they are gaining a failed BC Conservative candidate in Chilliwack.
    
Criminologist John Martin has defected to the governing party.
    
Martin ran for the BC Conservatives in the April Chilliwack-Hope by-election and came third, as the NDP won in the normally safe Liberal seat.
    
He lambasted the Liberals before the election but now says they’ve welcomed him and he plans to seek the party nomination in the riding of Chilliwack where longtime MLA John Les has decided not to run in the May 2013 general election.

“This is an imperfect party, they all are,” says Martin.  “However, this administration has done a lot of good things, they are going in the right direction and they’re in the process of renewal.”

“The BC Liberals have re-grouped, they’ve opened the door to conservatives like me,” Martin says, admitting he did not tell the BC Conservatives he was switching parties before Friday’s announcement.

Martin lambasted the Liberals before the by-election, saying people were leaving the party “in droves.”

“And they’re so desperate that [former federal Conservative MP] Chuck Strahl basically has, if anything, a much higher profile in the campaign than the actual candidate and that really doesn’t speak well for their level of confidence,” claimed Martin.

Bad news for BC Conservatives, questions for Liberals: analyst

Mt. Royal University journalism professor Sean Holman says Martin’s defection will hurt the BC Conservatives’ image.

“One really has to wonder why the BC Conservatives and all the past right-wing parties that have preceded them can’t really get their act together,” Holman says, noting similar drama with the BC Reform Party.

“[But] maybe the BC Liberals are getting a bit desperate for candidates, taking someone who was so harsh in his criticism of the BC Liberal Party on board,” adds Holman.  “It’s a public relations black eye more than anything else [for the Conservatives.]“

Meanwhile, BC Conservative leader John Cummins, who may face a leadership review at the party’s AGM on the weekend, issued a terse, one-line statement on Martin’s departure at the bottom of a news release.

“With regards to John Martin, who took our party to a third-place finish in [the] by-election, we wish him well in the future,” it reads.