Will Kerry-Lynne Findlay’s First Stand Also Be Her Last?

Kerry-Lynne Findlay’s August was bad. Her September could be even worse.

On Friday, Premier David Eby called a byelection for Abbotsford-Mission, where the Conservative Party of BC leader hopes to win a seat in the legislature.

It’s not usually difficult for a newly chosen leader of a major political party to win a seat in the legislature or Parliament. After a party member in a relatively friendly electoral district is persuaded to step aside, victory is usually assured. After all, the leader is running in a safe riding, on a wave of popularity, and has their party’s war chest at their disposal.

Often the biggest hurdle is getting the government of the day to actually trigger the byelection in a timely manner.

The fact that Eby called a byelection just a week after the resignation of MLA Reann Gasper might be the biggest sign of the trouble Kerry-Lynne Findlay is in. Because as she seeks a seat this September, Findlay will face a tangle of difficulties.

To start, Findlay is currently fighting off a wave of defections among MLAs.

On Monday, Á'a:líya Warbus became the seventh MLA to leave the Conservative caucus this month, citing a breakdown of communication and a lack of leadership from Findlay.

Multiple staffers have also left, and the party apparatus appears to be at war with itself. Opponents on the centre-right are positing the formation of a new party that focuses its energy on fiscal, rather than social, issues.

In this context, Abbotsford-Mission has the potential to be Findlay’s Waterloo.

On the surface, Abbotsford seems as safe as one might get for a conservative politician. The Fraser Valley is famously right of centre, with a large Christian community and a highly active political scene. Two years ago, Gasper, a political neophyte, won the riding relatively comfortably, with 55 per cent of the vote.

But history suggests danger lurks.

Today, Abbotsford-Mission is no longer a safe right-of-centre seat. The area is a mix of traditionally conservative rural properties, the working-class core of Mission, and suburban Abbotsford neighbourhoods full of families who moved into the valley in search of lower home prices.

In the 2015 federal election, the Liberals’ Jati Sidhu won a seat in Parliament in a riding that bridged Mission and Abbotsford.

In 2020, Mission Mayor Pam Alexis ran provincially for the NDP and knocked off longtime BC Liberal Simon Gibson. While Sidhu was later defeated and Alexis’s victory was thanks in part to unique pandemic conditions and John Horgan’s popularity, both results also reflected the broader demographic reshaping of the valley.

The region has swung back to the right since 2020, with Gasper beating Alexis in 2022. But the 2022 contest was, crucially, just a two-person race; the Greens didn’t run a candidate, and the Conservative Party of BC was the lone right-of-centre party.

This September, that’s not going to be the case.

CentreBC, a new fledgling party led by former BC Liberal MLA Mike Bernier, has already announced Lakhwinder Jhaj will run in the coming election.

Jhaj, who has previously unsuccessfully sought office for the BC NDP, federal Liberals and BC Liberals, is not the most formidable of opponents. But it’s likely she can peel off at least a few percentage points of conservative support.

More threatening is the plan by at least a couple of defecting Conservatives to found another centre-right party. If that happens, the region’s unique history could prompt any number of well-known local politicos to think about trying to knock off Findlay and re-engineer the B.C. right.

It’s been done before on Matsqui Prairie, the large, flat tract of farmland between Mission and Abbotsford.

In 1993, the Social Credit party chose Grace McCarthy to lead it. The following February she sought a seat in the legislature in the riding of Matsqui, which the Socreds had held for four decades. She lost by 42 votes to a Matsqui-bred lawyer named Michael de Jong. Socred MLAs quickly switched teams to the BC Liberals, and the byelection is now a part of provincial political lore. De Jong’s win, the wisdom has it, doomed the Social Credit party and allowed Gordon Campbell to build the right-wing coalition that he would later ride to power.

The conditions are different today, but the moment matters, in part, because local politicos remember it and might seek to emulate it.

De Jong himself could run. A longtime BC Liberal finance minister who has remained popular locally even as his provincewide reputation sagged at the tail end of his career in cabinet, De Jong left provincial politics in 2024, then sought a seat with the federal Conservatives. After being rejected as a candidate, he ran as an independent, claiming 17 per cent of the vote. A CTV journalist has reported he has been fielding calls and “considering all of the options.” The Tyee was unable to contact him prior to publication.

Findlay’s leadership has also been called out by other prominent local conservatives.

Last week Randy Hawes, the president of Gasper’s riding association, a former Mission mayor and a longtime BC Liberal MLA, resigned from the party.

He wrote on Facebook that Gasper had been doing a good job and that Findlay should have asked MLA Brent Chapman, Findlay’s husband, to step down instead.

“I firmly believe that the majority of voters in B.C. prefer a centre right or centre left party as government,” Hawes wrote. “I believe Ms. Findlay represents a huge step to the far right.”

The centre-right could view the byelection as an opportunity to put a stake in Findlay’s leadership.

Alexis, who lost to Gasper, is running again. Given previous results, she can probably count on at least 40 per cent of the vote. That means a victory by an upstart right-of-centre candidate would require a total collapse of Conservative support in a way that, even now, seems unlikely.

The most likely result would be Alexis reclaiming the seat. If a strong, moderate challenger ran as an independent or was backed by a fledgling centre-right party, they would stand a good shot at denying Findlay a seat in the legislature — and maybe ending her reign as leader altogether.

Because history shows that if you’re a conservative who can’t win in Abbotsford, you can’t win across B.C.