The remarkable rise and spectacular fall of John Rustad, the B.C. premier who never was

Strangely, for a leader who led the BC Conservatives out of the wilderness, he has had the majority of his caucus against him—including a chunk without the spine to say so—for some time now. Yet he has stayed anyway, like the last person to leave a party after all the bottles are empty and the hosts are putting the dishes in for a wash. Most recently, Rustad was reeling off a pyrrhic leadership review victory. A teensy portion of a diminished membership—70 percent of about 1,250 members across 93 ridings, basically a regional bridge club—voted in a stealth contest during a summer of distraction to extend his life. But honestly, this was a sham. Ever since he led his party on a rocketship rise in the standings (riding in part on the Pierre Poilievre coattail, even if there was no formal connection between the parties federally and provincially), Rustad has mainly been a stock worth selling before it plunges. Nothing he has done has suggested he leads a government in waiting against arguably the most vulnerable government waiting to be defeated—what with its public finances, hair-on-fire Trump tariff scaremongering, and an absence of any plan to improve the unaffordability or liveability of being a British Columbian. Looking back—because now he doesn’t get to look ahead—Rustad’s principal mistake was to not recognize the gift horse of the late-campaign collapse of the centrist BC United (the party that ousted him two years earlier). He could have hauled that party’s incumbents into his pool of candidates and won the election; instead, he stayed loyal to people who had largely signed on when no one else wanted them. No one has been this close yet so squandered power in recent memory. Since then his party has left the province wanting, ostensibly because Rustad has not grown into the job. He had been at best a junior minister in the earlier BC Liberal cabinet, and he didn’t grow them. He was fired by a party, landed at this one with no hope, yet sat atop as its tires were pumped and pumped to the point where it stood a real chance to form government. Post-election, Rustad has been one big piece of fabric stretched by a belly here and a butt there. The Right flank of his party thinks he’s too Left, so a few left to form an electable but representative pocket elsewhere, and a few he exiled on his own accord. The centrists think he’s not authentically their guy, so they have goaded him for months to dispel his culture war mantra and to focus on what matters to constituents. There are prizes for anyone who can cite anything he has fought for, apart from his own job. The very people Rustad led into opportunity have found it opportune to dispense with him. Maybe Rustad deserved better, but then again, the conga line is long of politicians who dance beyond reason. The more interesting drama now is what the party does to succeed him, whether it’s reaching in caucus or looking outside. Premier David Eby’s days of laughing at the circus are done, at least for now.