Expect Things to Get Even Worse for the BC Conservatives

John Rustad’s gone, but the Conservative Party of BC’s problems are far from over. In fact, the coming leadership contest could make things much worse.

The core problem is they’re not a real party. (I wrote about this in a Tyee piece in September.)

After Rustad was kicked out of the BC Liberals, he did a remarkable job of raising the Conservatives’ profile, much helped by Kevin Falcon’s failures as Liberal leader.

But the B.C. Conservatives weren’t a functional political party, with shared values, principles and party rules and structures. The party’s success in last fall’s election was the result of a backroom deal. Business interests persuaded Falcon to shut down the BC United campaign and fire all the candidates less than a month before the campaign began.

The Conservatives’ candidates were a grab bag — seven BC United candidates were allowed to run for the Conservatives, alongside extremist social conservatives and candidates with a record of outrageous social media posts.

Since the election, the factions have battled Rustad and each other. Five MLAs have either been ousted from the caucus or been fired, some from the mainstream centre right and some extreme social conservatives with a fringe agenda.

The divisions remain. Even as the party’s executive claimed Rustad was out Wednesday, several MLAs maintained he was still the leader. Even supposed interim leader Trevor Halford, MLA for Surrey-White Rock, said he wasn’t sure what was going on.

And there was some grumbling that Halford was first elected as a BC Liberal — an enemy for some in the Conservative camp.

The next step is a leadership convention, something the modern B.C. Conservatives have never done.

Every member will get a vote, and votes will be counted by riding. If ridings have at least 100 members they will get 100 points, which will be allocated based on the results in the riding. Constituencies without 100 members will get fewer points based on the membership.

At this point, that would be most ridings. The Conservatives claimed about 9,000 members at the start of the leadership review, or about 65 per riding. And only 1,268 people participated in the review vote, about 14 per riding. Normally those numbers will climb sharply during a leadership race as candidates sign new members to support them. But there’s not much normal about the B.C. Conservatives.

Party president Aisha Estey said she expects a leadership convention would be held within six months, leaving the Conservatives leaderless during much of the spring session of the legislature.

Even in established parties, leadership races can worsen divisions. Candidates criticize each other and the party’s record, and the rush to sign up new members can crowd out loyalists and add to divisions. That’s especially true in B.C., with a tradition of mass sign-ups and scandals. (A cat was signed up as a BC Liberal member to support Christy Clark for leader.)

The Conservative leadership race could be explosively divisive. The members don’t just disagree on policy. In many cases they think the other side is evil or crazy. And there is a high chance that the battles will be fought over right-wing populist issues like trans rights and sexual orientation and gender identity education in schools, rather than things like housing costs, health-care waits and the collapse of the province’s forest industry.

All that assumes, of course, that serious leadership candidates actually emerge.

Rustad is taking a lot of flak for mismanaging the opportunity handed the Conservatives. And he did bungle, especially on obvious issues like searching MLAs’ phones to try to identify the source of caucus leaks and failing to ensure the party’s staff were competent and focused.

But holding the party together would have been a challenge even for a more competent leader.

All of this is great news for Premier David Eby. The lack of an effective opposition party has kept attention away from the government’s problems and failures. That’s going to continue. (The two Green MLAs have made an effort to fill the gap.)

The lessons of past elections are clear. Unless centre-right voters coalesce behind one party, the NDP wins.

And it’s hard to see, after this gong show and given the deep divisions, how the Conservatives can convince voters they’re fit to govern in the next election, scheduled for 2028.