Rustad Defends His Push to Search MLAs’ Phones

Conservative Party of BC Leader John Rustad confirmed Thursday it was his idea to search the phones of party MLAs to try to find the source of a suspected leak during a caucus meeting this week.

“Not every single MLA expressed interest, but the vast majority said yes, let’s do this, let’s look at this now,” said Rustad. “We had MLAs look at the other MLAs’ phones, make sure there was nothing that had gone out that was inappropriate.”

He declined to specify who did the searching but said it was done by a couple of MLAs because that was most efficient.

Rustad said concerns arose after a social media post appeared to include information from a Monday night caucus meeting while it was still underway. It turned out the post was speculation rather than the result of a leak, he said.

Rustad did not confirm which post sparked the search, but during the meeting former BC Liberal MLA and current CKNW radio host Jas Johal posted on the social media platform X that a push for a secret ballot vote on Rustad’s leadership had been blocked.

“Caucus Chair Jody Toor and Whip Bruce Banman — both Rustad loyalists — pushed back on the request,” Johal wrote.

Many in caucus were concerned about the potential leak, Rustad said.

“I said there’s one way that we could look at it and that is if we reviewed, took a look at people’s phones,” said Rustad. “Everybody said sure, yeah, let’s do this, put the phones on the table and we’re interested in going forward and doing that, so that’s what we did.”

He said every MLA’s phone was looked at and that the searchers did not find anything of concern.

When Canadian Press reporter Wolfgang Depner asked Rustad if he was paranoid, Rustad said no. While the scrum was still underway Rustad’s chief of staff, Brad Zubyk, called it a “bullshit question” and said the reporter would be barred from asking questions in the future.

“That’s not happening,” said Depner.

After learning of Rustad’s confirmation that phones had been searched, Johal mocked him on X.

“Hey John, next time you’re snooping through colleagues’ phones looking for messages to me, try checking under I.P. Freely, Al Coholic, Hugh Jass, Jacques Strapp, or Seymour Butz. Just trying to help.”

Rustad became leader of the Conservative Party of BC in 2023 and led the party from having no seats in the legislature to barely falling short of winning last October’s provincial election.

Despite the electoral success, he has struggled to keep the Conservatives united. The caucus mixes former BC United MLAs and candidates with longer term BC Conservatives who tend to be more socially conservative.

Earlier this year Rustad emerged from a party convention with what appeared to be strong support, only to soon have three MLAs quit his caucus. Two have since formed a new party, OneBC, while the third sits as an Independent.

In September the party announced that Rustad had received 71 per cent support in a leadership review, a process marred by accusations that people, including some of his close associates, had created fraudulent memberships to boost his numbers.

On Monday Conservative MLAs were told to avoid responding to an NDP motion designed to draw out their divisions.

The motion condemned the “intolerant views” of the Association for Reformed Political Action, a group some Conservatives invited to the legislature last spring, “including its harmful discrimination against transgender people, its belief that homosexuality is ‘immoral’ and its explicit policy goal of restricting abortion access in British Columbia.”

Rustad has often spoken about the importance of MLAs standing up for what they believe in and has said they will not be told how to vote, a common practice for political parties known as whipping.

“Where there are important free votes on things that we need to deal with, I’m certainly going to be looking at that,” Rustad said. “Where we have dog whistle apologies and approaches coming from this NDP government, then yeah, we’re going to be whipping those things.”

The phone search is a sign of how fragile Rustad’s leadership is, said Elenore Sturko, the MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale who has sat as an Independent since late September, when Rustad fired her from the Conservative caucus.

“Frankly it’s shocking to see it would have really degraded to that,” Sturko said. “When a leader has that little confidence in his caucus members, and more and more we’re hearing that his caucus members have even less faith in him, it’s shocking that he continues to go on.”

Even MLAs who didn’t want their phones looked at would have felt compelled to submit to a search so that they wouldn’t be accused of being the source of the leak, she said.

“I can’t imagine the level of pressure and scrutiny,” said Sturko. “I just think it’s completely wrong, and if you really have that little trust that the members of your caucus have your back, I would think that’s a pretty big signal they don’t believe in your leadership.”

The Conservatives have been distracted with their inner strife when the real need is to focus on the government’s failures on health care, the economy and other issues, she said.