BC Conservative Rifts Deepen on Residential School Denialism

Update: Today Conservative Party of BC Leader John Rustad removed MLA Dallas Brodie from caucus. Explaining the decision, he said, “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."

The rift in the Conservative Party of BC over residential school denialism has deepened with Vancouver-Quilchena MLA Dallas Brodie publicly questioning house leader Á’a:líya Warbus’s place in the party and criticizing leader John Rustad.

“The most vociferous hatred I’ve received has been from within my own party,” Brodie said during a two-hour discussion conducted on Zoom and posted to YouTube Sunday. “There’s a person in our party who’s Indigenous and she was super angry and went to town and joined the NDP to call me out.” Warbus is a member of the Stó:lō Nation.

Brodie said nearly 20 of her B.C. Conservative MLA colleagues have told her they support her but that the issue has been contentious within the 44-person caucus. “In our party we’ve actually brought in some people, I’m just going to say this, I think belong in the NDP. That’s really weird, but that’s a whole other story.”

A rookie MLA, Brodie gave Rustad credit for “at least not clipping my wings” but said, “He’s become very, very attached to this Á’a:líya Warbus, who he made house leader in our party.”

She also described Rustad, who was minister of Aboriginal relations and reconciliation for several years when the BC Liberals were in government, as being “extremely wedded to this 4,000 number” of burials at former residential school sites.

“He’s really gone down that road a long way,” she said amid discussion of how to “educate” him.

Brodie was unavailable to reporters at the legislature Thursday.

Rustad said he does not support Brodie’s attack on Warbus. “That’s an issue we’re talking about internally and we’ll address it internally.”

He also declined to discuss whether Brodie would be able to stay in the caucus or comment on reports that some MLAs stormed out of the party’s caucus meeting Thursday morning. “Clearly that’s not something I support in terms of what we need to be as a party,” he said.

Warbus said the Conservatives need to address the division within the caucus and get on the same page as a team. “If we cannot do that, I don’t know why I came here and sacrificed my time to be a political representative.”

Residential school denialism is a distraction at a time when the province is facing tariffs from the United States and dealing with a toxic drug crisis that has hit Indigenous people disproportionately hard, she said.

“We’re losing our children, our youth,” Warbus said. “We all know it’s because of the legacy of residential schools and the intergenerational trauma that we’ve suffered and we’ve been underserviced by this government for years.”

The conflict began in late February with Brodie writing on the social media platform X. “The number of confirmed child burials at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School site is zero,” she wrote. “No one should be afraid of the truth. Not lawyers, their governing bodies, or anyone else.”

The comment was in response to a libel lawsuit filed by lawyer James Heller against the Law Society of British Columbia related to how training materials should describe what was found at the site in 2021.

The law society materials call it “an unmarked burial site containing the bodies of 215 children,” but Heller has pressed to include qualifiers like “potential,” “possible” or “suspected.”

Rustad asked Brodie to remove the posts since the topic is sensitive and the posts could easily be misinterpreted as a broader denial of what happened at residential schools, but she refused.

Warbus, who serves as Conservative house leader and is the MLA for Chilliwack-Cultus Lake, wrote on X: “Questioning the narratives of people who lived and survived these atrocities, is nothing but harmful and taking us backward in reconciliation.”

Peter Milobar, the B.C. Conservative MLA for Kamloops Centre, spoke in the legislature about the issue. “When denialism does from time to time raise up in the broader conversation, both in B.C. and across the country, it has a direct impact on Tk’emlúps,” he said. “They’re faced with people literally showing up with shovels to try to prove a point, to get into secure areas. We wouldn’t expect that in any other situation, yet it seems to be fair game.”

In his own comments at the time, Rustad talked about how some 4,000 children died at residential schools and said that what happened was wrong, but he argued the party is like a family where MLAs will have various perspectives and sometimes disagree.

There it stood until Brodie appeared last weekend to discuss the incident as part of a two-hour discussion conducted on Zoom, “Truth and the Law: The Law Society of British Columbia and ‘Potential’ Graves at Kamloops.” Other guests included Heller as well as political scientists and authors Tom Flanagan, Michelle Stirling and Frances Widdowson.

“I knew this was going to be a tough thing, but I made the decision the case demands the attention of the attorney general of British Columbia,” Brodie said, explaining that as a critic for the attorney general she felt compelled to make her point on X.

“I was given clearance by the head of communications to go ahead,” she said. “The figs hit the fan once it went out.”

Being called names has hurt, but many in the Conservative caucus support her, Brodie said. “They’re standing right with me. It’s not just me standing alone, I’ll tell you that.... There are probably about close to 20 people who have spoken to me and said we’re right 100 per cent behind you.”

At one point she said there needs to be one truth based on evidence, her voice becoming high and mocking as she said, “not his truth, her truth, oh, my grandmother’s truth. The whole thing about my truth, your truth.”

Speaking Thursday, Rustad said many of the at least 4,000 children who died in residential schools weren’t returned home for burial. “It was absolutely horrific and we should never forget it.”

Warbus said Brodie’s comments are not politically smart and are causing division.

Premier David Eby said his concern about Brodie’s comments is they undermine residential school survivors and their ability to come forward and tell their stories.

“Sharing that experience with British Columbians is a profoundly brave thing to do,” he said. “It is an incredibly honourable thing to do, and it is something I respect profoundly and I am so grateful for because it helps us grapple with our own history as a province and the work we need to do to repair that damage that residential schools caused.”

Brodie’s dismissal of survivors’ stories makes others less likely to share, Eby said, adding that hurts everyone.

“This is a moment for John Rustad to be very clear about where he stands on this,” said Eby. “A big tent that has room for racism is not a political tent, that’s a circus tent. He’s got to kick the clown out of the tent, and if he doesn’t do that, then I think we know exactly what kind of a leader he is.”