When the B.C. government brought in legislation to force criminally charged local politicians to take leaves of absence, the implication was clear: You can’t represent the public as an elected official with a massive criminal scandal hanging over your head.

The law, passed in 2022, made sense. So much so that the government should copy, paste and post a new version onto the floor of the legislature this fall with the words “local politician” crossed out and replaced with “MLA.”

There are now two sitting male MLAs in the legislature facing serious criminal accusations involving women.

The latest, as of Thursday, is Peace River North MLA Jordan Kealy, who is facing a charge of sexual assault. The other is Richmond Centre MLA Hon Chan, charged in March with assault and assault by choking in a domestic violence situation.

Neither has taken a leave of absence. Both intend to remain in the legislature, casting votes and representing constituents while facing serious criminal accusations involving women.

If they were municipal politicians, provincial law would already have forced them onto paid leave.

It’s absurd to think an MLA is somehow immune to the same cloud of controversy and loss of public trust that sparked the need for municipal reform.

“I’ve had many conversations with colleagues … of how difficult it is to conduct normal business in any kind of way when the person sitting by you is continuing to vote, yet this cloud of a serious and significant charge has been laid,” then-municipal affairs minister Nathan Cullen said in 2022 when discussing his bill.

The legislation was hailed across partisan lines as the right move.

“When elected officials are charged or convicted of a crime, public trust is shaken, and steps need to be taken immediately to hold them and to restore the trust that the office of an elected official has and should always follow,” said then-BC Liberal critic Dan Ashton.

“A crime such as assault or sexual assault has been highlighted,” added Green MLA Adam Olsen.

“It is incredibly important that we ensure that these charges and these actions, potential actions, don’t jeopardize the relationship that people have with their elected governments and their elected officials.”

The law also went a step further.

Any local politician found guilty of an indictable offence would be automatically thrown out of office and disqualified from running in the resulting byelection.

The reason for the law was simple: left to their own devices, politicians facing criminal charges don’t always put the public interest above their own political survival. That’s not exclusively a municipal thing, as Kealy and Chan have shown. The lack of judgement clearly exists at the provincial level too.

All of this can be done without infringing on the point some Conservative diehards have clung to in defence of Kealy, which is that he’s innocent until proven guilty. Of course he is. That’s a cornerstone of our judicial system.

But elected officials are also held to a high standard of public trust when doing their jobs. Innocent until proven guilty determines whether someone goes to jail. It should not be the only thing determining whether an MLA continues to meet vulnerable constituents, or exercise public power on behalf of voters, while under a cloud of serious criminal charges.

B.C. politicians already decided four years ago that serious criminal charges create a crisis of public confidence for elected officials. They were right then. And they’d be right now to apply that same principle to all MLAs in the legislature as well.

Rob Shaw has spent more than 18 years covering B.C. politics, now reporting for CHEK News and writing for BIV. He hosts the weekly show Political Capital and has a NEW daily podcast, Political Capital Daily.

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