Who Will Lead the BC Conservatives? The Choice Is Stark

The Conservative Party of BC is poised to choose between two former BC Liberals as its next leader.

With two months left in the party’s leadership race, Kamloops Centre MLA Peter Milobar and former BC Liberal Party vice-president Caroline Elliott have pulled ahead as the front-runners. Former BC Liberal cabinet minister Iain Black and former federal Conservative cabinet minister Kerry-Lynne Findlay remain viable, but trail.

On policy, there is little daylight between the contenders. Each has recycled the most slogan-ready planks from former leader John Rustad: repeal the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, scrap sexual orientation and gender identity or SOGI education, unlock B.C.’s resource potential.

Instead, Conservative members are weighing candidates on three scales: conservative credibility, electability and leadership.

But the race will ultimately turn on whether members prioritize intensity or coalition building.

For most members, intensity means avoiding the party becoming “BC Liberals 2.0” by choosing a leader who loudly and consistently espouses conservative values without compromise. Coalition building, by contrast, prioritizes winning with a united big-tent party, even if it requires compromise.

For Milobar and Elliott, the path to victory runs through all three tests. But in a ranked-ballot race — where second-choice support can ultimately decide the winner — Elliott needs a first-ballot surge while Milobar relies on strong second-choice support.

Milobar’s strategy of coalition building

As the only sitting MLA in the Conservative Party of BC’s leadership race, Peter Milobar’s experience is unmatched in the field. While he may be an intuitive favourite on the beer question, doubts about his conservative credibility and lack of grassroots enthusiasm leave him reliant on building a coalition of down-ballot support.

With Milobar boasting an undefeated 8-0 electoral record, his greatest strength is electability. By contrast, Caroline Elliott has never made it to ballot, while Iain Black and Kerry-Lynne Findlay are fresh off federal losses.

As Kamloops’s longest-serving mayor, Milobar held an executive role far closer to that of a premier than that of a party insider: setting the policy agenda, managing a bureaucracy and owning the results.

In the B.C. legislature, he served as house leader and critic for multiple files. Even within an unruly caucus, he has secured the most endorsements, making the strongest case for being ready to lead his team on Day 1.

First elected as a BC Liberal in 2017, Milobar became a senior figure in the party — later rebranded BC United — until Kevin Falcon suspended its 2024 election campaign. He was one of only three BC United MLAs permitted to run with the Conservatives after Falcon folded.

Among B.C. Conservative fundamentalists, that pedigree is suspect. Milobar’s BC Liberal roots and willingness to criticize fellow candidates and caucus cast him as a centrist moderate in a race shaped by purity tests.

This tension shapes a campaign strategy of cross-ballot appeal, rooted in BC Liberal networks.

Milobar is a candidate built for second choices, not first.

But, while his path to winning relies on a coalition of second-choice support reaching critical mass, finishing second on every ballot loses the race.

Milobar still needs a base to win — one that he and his endorsers must build through local organizing, fundraising and activating BC Liberal networks, including those of dormant connectors, such as Colin Hansen, Todd Stone, Mike de Jong, Shirley Bond and Michael Lee.

Ultimately, though, down-ballot support will decide Milobar’s fate. Alignment with Iain Black’s campaign could unlock new voter pools, given Black’s apparent outreach to ethnic communities.

It’s been interesting to see that the same Milobar who was willing to criticize fellow caucus members for positions he doesn’t hold played a different tune after throwing his hat in the ring to be Conservative Party of BC leader. He’s shown a reluctance to attack his rivals for the job. That positions him to inherit down-ballot support from opponents who may not align perfectly with him but are fiercely antagonistic to Caroline Elliott.

Elliott’s strategy of intensity

Once an insider now recast as an outsider, Caroline Elliott has emerged as the race’s standard-bearer for intensity, surging to polarizing prominence with a knack for going viral. Backed by high-profile conservative organizers, her online and grassroots energy makes her the race’s most mobilized — and most attacked — candidate. With little room for second-choice support, she needs a dominant first-ballot showing to win, much like her brother-in-law Kevin Falcon in 2022.

After the 2024 provincial election, Elliott repositioned herself away from her BC Liberal past. She aligned with an online audience that sees that tradition as too centrist and too accommodating to the “woke mindset” on cultural issues, particularly reconciliation. In doing so, she broke out as a prolific and resonant commentator for a Conservative base fuelled by grievance politics and “owning the Libs.”

Her Conservative leadership campaign launched with national attention on the backs of an all-star frontline of out-of-province conservative organizers: Kory Teneycke, campaign manager for Doug Ford; Jeff Ballingall, founder of Canada Proud; Nick Kouvalis, pollster and strategist for Rob Ford; and Anthony Koch, former director of communications to Pierre Poilievre.

Endorsed by Langley-Abbotsford MLA Harman Bhangu, she consolidated much of the party’s younger activist base.

As Elliott leans into the culture war, she offers an intense conservatism that extends beyond “tax cuts and deregulation” to resonate with conservatives aggrieved by shifting social norms, identity politics (except those rooted in colonial history) and the redefinition of public life.

The approach is polarizing and untested, much like Elliott herself.

As vice-president of the BC Liberals, she oversaw party operations and helped drive the ruinous rebranding to BC United that effectively bankrupted that party.

Opponents, including the BC NDP, seized on this record to question Elliott’s consistency on issues like SOGI and safe supply. Moreover, BC United’s collapse under her watch speaks to flawed political instincts, poor strategic judgment and an inability to hold a coherent line of messaging.

Her reactionary politics may generate clicks, but offer little beyond slogans. Compounded by her lack of governing experience, it raises doubts about her ability to win a broader electorate in a province where elections are decided in the centre.

Elliott is a candidate who can stoke the base, not expand it, with a strategy built on intensity.

Her path to victory is simple: a first-ballot surge, tallying at least 40 per cent. Without that dominance, her support risks collapsing in later voting rounds. It requires a strong conversion of online support into memberships and activating organizers outside of BC Liberal networks.

It may also need an endorsement from member of Parliament for North Island-Powell River Aaron Gunn.

The choice that will define the party

The Conservative Party of BC leadership race is a choice between coalition and intensity; a candidate built to accumulate support and one built to overwhelm the field.

Caroline Elliott and Peter Milobar are the front-runners, for now.

But Iain Black and Kerry-Lynne Findlay remain viable, reinforcing rather than disrupting the race’s two opposing paths to victory.

Black’s path is straightforward. He must run Milobar’s race, but better: build cross-ballot appeal and position himself as the acceptable second choice across factions.

However, Black must outperform Milobar on the first ballot to become the principal coalition choice before the ranked preferences are redistributed. For either Black or Milobar to win, one campaign must be a feeder for the other’s coalition.

Findlay’s path to victory is narrower and more combative. She has taken direct and indirect shots at Elliott’s conservative credibility and experience. With her campaign manager defecting to Elliott, any chance of alignment between these two hardline conservative campaigns has likely collapsed.

Findlay has no choice but to double down and prosecute the case against Elliott in hopes of puncturing Elliott’s first-ballot ceiling and consolidating the party’s hardline base.

What remains is a race defined by strategy, not ideas or even personalities. If intensity surges, Elliott wins early. If second-choice votes coalesce into a coalition that reaches critical mass, Milobar (or Black) wins.

That outcome will do more than decide the leader. It will define what kind of party the Conservatives build into the next election: one built on intensity or one built on a coalition.