Former BC Finance Minister Mike de Jong to run as an independent

Having been rejected by the Conservatives, former Abbotsford MLA and BC Finance Minister Mike de Jong says he will run as an independent in the upcoming federal election.

In an interview with the Fraser Valley Current, De Jong said he was not running to spite the Conservatives for turning their back on him. He said he still believes the party is the best one to lead Canada and to “stand up to the crazy man occupying the White House right now.”

But although he said he would not take a Liberal cabinet position, if he was asked, he didn’t completely rule out working with the party, if he were elected.

De Jong said he had been encouraged to run by constituents who said they wouldn’t support Sukhman Singh Gill, a 24-year-old local farmer, the Conservative party greenlighted in the Abbotsford-South Langley riding.

To learn about the Abbotsford-South Langley riding, visit The Current’s Abbotsford and Mission election hub here.

When The Current asked if de Jong would take a post in a Liberal government if he won a seat in Parliament and was offer offered a cabinet role, he rejected the notion.

“If I wanted to be a member of a Liberal government, I would be running as a Liberal, and I’m not.”

But he refused to completely rule out voting alongside the Liberals in a future Parliament.

“I’m not going to speculate on either the composition of Parliament or individual pieces of legislation,” de Jong said. “I would make decisions about that as and when the legislation arose.”

As a provincial politician, this reporter once heard de Jong quip about how much better it was to be in government than opposition. An independent can wield even less power than an opposition member, with a single vote rarely tipping the balance of power in a Parliament with more than 300 seats.

But de Jong says he wouldn’t necessarily be powerless as an independent, pointing to BC’s narrow legislative split following the 2017 election and the 2005 federal budget, in which independent Chuck Cadman cast a vote that helped the minority Liberal government pass its budget and avoid an election.

De Jong said his political experience would help him find ways to influence government decisions whatever the case.

De Jong will face an uphill battle to win as an independent, even in an area that he represented provincially for 30 years.

Although few experienced politicians have run as independents at the federal level in the Fraser Valley, independent campaigns at the provincial level have failed, even when the candidates are well-known and popular. In 2011, longtime MLA John van Dongen lost as an independent after leaving the BC Liberal caucus; in 2020, Chilliwack councillor Jason Lum finished third in polling.

Asked if he is worried about splitting the right-of-centre vote and allowing a Liberal candidate to win the riding, de Jong focused on conversations from Conservative supporters who said they wouldn’t vote for Gill.

“The indications I get from numerous members of the conservative family is that they simply. Are not prepared to vote for a candidate that was foisted upon them,” he said.

Based on past voting trends both provincially and federally, a Conservative candidate could typically expect to receive between 45% and 55% of all ballots cast. But with the NDP and Greens polling at levels not seen in decades and a nationwide surge in support for the Liberals, if de Jong claims more than 20% of the vote but can’t win the seat, the Conservatives may be in trouble. (Van Dongen got 28% of the vote in his 2013 independent run; Lum received 24% of ballots in his provincial riding in 2020.) De Jong will be hoping to follow in the footsteps of Cadman, who was a Canadian Alliance MP but lost the nomination race after the merger that created today’s Conservative Party. He ran and won 44% of the vote; his Conservative competitor finished a distant fourth with just 13%.

De Jong admitted that claiming a seat for himself won’t be easy.

“This is hardly a sure thing,” he said. “There are no guarantees whatsoever in electoral contests, and there is a reason that very few independents are elected. It is the exception, rather than the rule.”

De Jong said the decision by the Conservatives to reject him was indicative of a larger trend across the political spectrum of parties independently appointing local candidates. Historically, local associations would vote on their preferred candidate to carry the party banner in an upcoming election. But parties across the spectrum have ruled out seemingly well-qualified candidates in recent years. In addition to de Jong, the Conservatives also rejected Anita Huberman, the former CEO of the Surrey Board of Trade. The Liberals, meanwhile, turned away de Jong’s former leader, Christy Clark.

The reasons behind some decisions are more clear than others. De Jong said he wasn’t given a reason for his rejection, but while he and Clark are both experienced campaigners with significant bases of support, they also have detractors and a mixed legacy from their time in power in BC. Campaign strategists can worry about the impact of individual candidates on larger, national perceptions of their party.

De Jong, though, said that central control comes at a cost for the country itself.

“I think parties have moved away from, have abandoned grassroots involvement and and it’s a shame because people are going to start giving up on democracy,” De Jong said. “We need people to get involved. We need people not to give up on democracy, particularly now in this country, confronted by Trump and his insanity.”

Find more of The Current’s 2025 election coverage on our Federal Election Hub, which has candidate lists, information on how to vote, and more about the campaign in Langley, Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Mission and the rest of the Fraser Valley.