B.C. Conservatives lose three MLAs in disastrous day, one says he’ll form new caucus

VICTORIA — The B.C. Conservatives have lost three caucus members in a disastrous day for the Opposition, with the prospect of more to come when one of the rebels tries to form a new party next week.

Opposition social development critic Tara Armstrong is the latest to quit, saying on social media that leader John Rustad has “abandoned the truth and his moral compass in a quest for power.”

Friday started with Rustad ejecting his attorney general critic, Dallas Brodie, from the party amid a rift over her comments about residential schools.

Then came Peace River North MLA Jordan Kealy’s announcement that he was quitting in sympathy with Brodie and that he plans to set up a new party.

Armstrong, who represents Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream, says Rustad made a “cowardly” decision to stab Brodie in the back, and it reveals “just how corrupt he has become.”

The party’s splintering comes just a few days after Rustad appeared to bring the party under control at the party’s annual meeting, where his slate of executive candidates swept every available position.

He now faces a party in crisis, with outright rebellion on its right flank.

The turmoil is the culmination of a rift between Rustad and Brodie that has been brewing since she posted on social media on Feb. 22 that “zero” child burials had been confirmed at the Kamloops Indian Residential School.

Brodie also questioned the “apparent mistreatment” of a lawyer who had asked for the rewording of law society training material about residential schools.

“The truth is a threat to powerful vested interests in the multibillion-dollar reconciliation industry,” Brodie said in a statement on Friday.

“Politicians like David Eby and John Rustad are willing to sell off British Columbia’s wealth and power, transferring it from the public to an elite racial minority — enriching opportunistic lawyers, consultants and chiefs along the way.”

Kealy also said he had lost faith in Rustad.

“I’m going to go on Monday. I’m going to go to the Speaker’s office, and I’m going to let them know that I want to form a separate caucus and the process will start from there,” Kealy said.

Kealy said it only takes two members to be recognized as a party in the British Columbia legislature and he knows “for a fact there’s going to be more people.”

He said he was leaving the Conservatives over the party’s treatment of Brodie, saying he had seen her “verbally getting abused” by six colleagues.

Kealy sketched out the positions of his new party.

“I think that when it comes to fiscal responsibility, getting rid of SOGI, figuring out appropriate way to deal with DRIPA, how to manage our resource industry, those are all concepts that will be looked at,” Kealy said, referring to sexual orientation and gender identity curriculum in schools, and the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.

“But we don’t have anything solidified in place. This is all just very fresh.”

The three departures reduce the official Opposition from 44 seats to 41, after a tight election last fall that gave the NDP government a slim win with 47 seats.

Rustad dumped Brodie the day after an explosive showdown in the Conservative caucus room in which Rustad said Brodie challenged colleagues to fire her and asked for a vote on her removal before walking out.

For almost two weeks, Brodie had defied Rustad’s request to delete her post about residential schools, and she appeared in a video saying colleagues who criticized her belonged in the governing NDP, appearing to single out Conservative house leader A’aliya Warbus, who is Indigenous.

“There’s a person in our party who’s Indigenous, and she, you know, was super angry and went to town and joined the NDP to call me out,” Brodie said in the video posted to social media.

She also said it was important to have “the truth” about residential schools, “not his truth, her truth, my grandmother’s truth … this stuff has to stop.”

Brodie used a high-pitched singsong voice as she mimicked those she disagreed with.

By Friday, Rustad had had enough.

“As a result of her decision to publicly mock and belittle testimony from former residential school students, including by mimicking individuals recounting stories of abuses — including child sex abuse — MLA Brodie is not welcome to return to our Conservative Party of BC Caucus,” Rustad said in a statement.

In remarks aimed directly at the member for Vancouver-Quilchena, Rustad said he believed strongly in free speech, but “using your stature and platform as an MLA to mock testimony from victims alleging abuse, including child sex abuse, is where I draw the line.”

Rustad said later in a phone interview that he tried to talk with Brodie.

“She refused to have that conversation, and so we felt it required to take the step that she will not be invited back into caucus,” Rustad said, calling it an “extremely difficult decision.”

“I ran on and built this party on one finite principle, that is that we’re going to stand for what’s right.”

He added that Brodie recently talked about leaving politics and that she wasn’t happy with the job.

“I don’t know if that’s still what she’s thinking, or whether she’s going to stay involved in politics. It is possible there may be some others who support her position and what she did,” Rustad said, hinting at the divisions in the party.

Brodie had claimed in the video that she had the support of about 20 MLAs who were “100 per cent behind” her.

Kealy, who represents the riding of Peace River North, said he didn’t want to “start rumour” by naming those he expected to join him in the new party.

“It’s currently Dallas that got kicked out of the party. I will talk to her, and then it sounds like there’s some others to come, so I’ll talk to those people as well,” he said.

Kealy suggested the B.C. Conservatives were being taken over by members of the former BC United Party, previously the BC Liberals.

“John’s just not the strong leader that I thought he was. So when he proposed having a big tent party — he can’t handle that, and right now it’s running away on them, and there’s a liberal perspective of the party that’s just taking control, and they’re very abusive … they came from a liberal party.”

Peter Milobar, Conservative MLA for Kamloops Centre and finance critic, said in a phone interview that he “absolutely” agreed with Rustad’s decision to dump Brodie.

Milobar, a former BC United member whose wife and children are Indigenous, spoke in the legislature last month about residential school denialism.

Rustad said in his statement that Brodie’s ejection “has nothing to do with whether or not there are undiscovered remains at Kamloops Indian Residential School, where it is objectively true that no new bodies have been found.”

“This is about an elected MLA using her position of authority to mock testimony of survivors of abuse, including child sex abuse,” said Rustad, a former minister of aboriginal relations and reconciliation.

B.C. Attorney General Niki Sharma said in a statement that what Brodie put residential school survivors through was “abhorrent.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 7, 2025.

Marcy Nicholson, The Canadian Press