Rustad Unfazed by Defection of Three Dissidents

Three MLAs who have parted with the Conservative Party of BC said Monday that they will sit in the legislature as Independents for now.

Division that has been evident since the October election, when the Conservatives went from nearly nothing to winning 44 seats and becoming the official Opposition, came to a head over the weekend as two MLAs quit after the caucus kicked out Vancouver-Quilchena MLA Dallas Brodie.

While Brodie’s comments regarding residential schools were the catalyst for the split, the three said they had much wider concerns about John Rustad’s leadership and the direction of the party.

“John Rustad’s cowardly decision to stab her in the back revealed just how corrupt he has become,” said Tara Armstrong, the MLA for Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream. “He caved to the woke liberals who have now infiltrated his party.”

“It clearly is a toxic environment,” said Jordan Kealy, the MLA for Peace River North, hinting that more Conservatives may soon quit.

“[Rustad] has proved over the last four months he does not have the courage or the integrity to defeat the BC NDP,” he said. “Rustad’s party has strayed from the conservative principles that founded it and has turned it into nothing more than another liberal party.”

The fracture comes just three weeks into the legislative session and less than a week after Rustad emerged from the party’s convention declaring unity.

“Our party is actually very strong from my perspective,” Rustad said Monday. “It is still growing. And yes, we’ve had a few growing pains, but that’s not to be unexpected.”

It was Brodie’s choice to leave caucus and the caucus leadership decided she’s not welcome to return, Rustad said.

“I would much rather be all 44 of us still in caucus pushing in the right direction,” he said. “Three people felt they could no longer be part of that. It’s unfortunate, but we’re moving on and we’re staying focused on the things we need to fight.”

Asked about the accusation of the Conservatives turning into “woke liberals,” Rustad chuckled.

The conflict began in late February when Brodie wrote on the social media platform X, “The number of confirmed child burials at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School site is zero.... 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 a qualifier like “potential” to clarify what searchers found using ground-penetrating radar.

In May 2021 the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc nation released a statement saying preliminary findings from a survey of the site by ground-penetrating radar, combined with previous knowledge and oral history, indicated 215 children had been buried at the site.

The nation subsequently revised its statements to describe the findings as potential burial sites.

Rustad said he had asked Brodie to remove the posts. Though they were factually correct, he said, the topic is sensitive and they could be interpreted as a broader dismissal of the fact that more than 4,000 children died at residential schools.

In early March, Brodie, who refused to delete the posts, discussed 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.

At one point during the Zoom discussion Brodie 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.”

In a statement Friday announcing Brodie’s expulsion, Rustad said that while Brodie’s original posts on X were accurate, he draws the line at mocking the testimony of victims of alleged abuse.

Brodie is not welcome to return to the caucus, Rustad said, because “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.”

Premier David Eby said it’s necessary to stand up for residential school survivors. “John Rustad did the right thing,” he said. “It took him too long, but he did do the right thing.”

Rustad should ensure members of his caucus reflect the values Canadians share, including by opposing tariffs threatened by U.S. President Donald Trump, said Eby.

“He has some more work to do around members of his caucus who are expressing openly anti-Canadian perspectives, pro-Trump perspectives.”