They have been coming for John Rustad, even before the BC Conservative leader brought a moribund party of two MLAs at two percent in the polls to within three seats of government.
They think he’s not right enough, not centrist enough, not firm enough, not trusting enough, not charismatic enough, not reflective enough.
They rode his coattails to political relevance in the province and think they can find the rest of the way.
They haven’t gotten to him, quite yet, but they’re far from done trying.
The party’s convention earlier this month in Nanaimo on the eastern coast of Vancouver Island was its largest ever with 750 in attendance from the province’s 93 ridings. Yet it would be a stretch to have called it a celebration.
Only a year ago, no one considered the party a serious player. Now the serious playing is internal turmoil, evidenced by the week just witnessed.
Last Friday, after a defiance of two weeks that many leaders would have suffocated in two hours, Rustad dispatched MLA Dallas Brodie from the party. Difficult enough that she had Tweeted impolitically (if accurately) that grave sites had not been found at the Kamloops former Indigenous residential school—the one we put the Canadian flag at half-staff for a record 161 days. Worse was that Rustad asked her to delete the X post and she refused. Way worse was when he told his caucus it would need to be green-lit to run again, and she and a couple of other MLAs stomped out. And even way, way worse was when she showed up on a podcast and mocked—in a whining voice to mimic victims, no less—the claims of trauma from children of survivors. She left a parting social media shot that Rustad was in cahoots with BC NDP Premier David Eby to permit the reconciliation “industry” to make off with millions.
Brodie, it might be mentioned, was Rustad’s shadow cabinet attorney general, the province’s presumptive lawmaker had he taken a couple of other seats last October. Her performance was, for Rustad, a line that couldn’t be crossed. And when he booted her, two other MLAs walked away. They now seek an official status in the B.C. legislature—after all, the two-person Greens are recognized, so why not them?—and will lure perhaps another couple of elected Conservatives who think the leader is not conservative enough.
Rustad is being stretched across seams like a size-small t-shirt on an Ozempic candidate. Each faction is convinced its stationing on the spectrum would have been and will be the political path to victory. Publicly, he has a serene demeanour about what he calls “family issues” and “growing pains for a growing party.” Privately, his fraught aides did their best to repel convention delegate applications, stack the odds for Rustad’s chosen board, and mute the expressions of dissension from the convention floor.
Mission accomplished, in a George Bush-Iraq kind of sense, but the coast is far from cleared of foes. The board election could face court challenges. The long-overdue resumption of the legislature has already surfaced discord. And social media is a daily feast of the differences within Rustad’s jerry-rigged tent.
In shaping the party, Rustad committed two unforced errors that now haunt him. As the BC Conservatives soared in 2024, and the centre-right BC United faded and folded, he didn’t fully capitalize on the opportunity to displace his problem children with incumbent BC United MLAs to sell a more experienced team to the province. He stayed loyal, to a fault, and in defending his team it probably cost him enough votes in enough seats to prevent him from taking the title.
His second misstep has been the unusual licence to his MLAs to speak freely, a practice elsewhere of trial and mostly error over the years. He views this as healthy, even if the boundary obviously confuses his caucus and plants doubt in the wider world. The leader didn’t have experience as a leader, the party had no experience as a party, and from this improv routine about all we can surmise is that his tolerance is taxed when one sneers at a sexual abuse victim.
He faces a mandatory mail-in leadership review this fall at the party’s next convention. By then, if he hasn’t faced down the dissidents or coaxed them into confidence in him, he could be Dead Leader Walking. Some gratitude, eh?
Kirk LaPointe is The Hub's B.C. Correspondent. He is a transplanted Ontarian to British Columbia. Before he left, he ran CTV News, Southam News and the Hamilton Spectator. He also helped launch the National Post as its first executive editor, was a day-one host on CBC Newsworld, and ran the Ottawa…...
