Amelia Boultbee: John Rustad ‘Yelled at Me Until I Cried’

Former B.C. Conservative MLA Amelia Boultbee says her decision to leave the party caucus last week stemmed from the way leader John Rustad downplayed concerns about fraudulent membership applications before a leadership vote in September.

But Boultbee says her concerns about Rustad’s competency to lead had been growing for months.

“I'm seeing some really concerning personality traits on this man that I wouldn't feel very comfortable with someone with the vast powers of the premier's office having,” Boultbee told The Tyee.

Boultbee is now the fifth MLA to either leave or be ejected from the party, joining Elenore Sturko and Jordan Kealy to sit as an Independent. Two other MLAs, Tara Armstrong and Dallas Brodie, have formed the far-right party OneBC following Brodie’s removal from the party over comments she made mocking residential school abuse survivors.

Last week Rustad continued to refuse to resign as leader, even after his party’s own management committee, charged with overseeing its day-to-day operations, wrote a letter telling him they no longer had confidence in him.

The unrest shows the B.C. Conservatives continue to have trouble reconciling the two wings of the party: the MLAs further to the right who practise a MAGA-like style of politics, featuring opposition to trans and Indigenous rights, and the more centrist MLAs, many of whom come from the former BC United party, who would prefer to focus on the size of the deficit rather than culture war talking points.

While Boultbee occupies a more centrist position on the political spectrum, she believes the ideological differences could have been successfully navigated by a different leader.

“There's always going to be ideological differences in a party. You're going to have a spectrum of views. That's not that unusual,” Boultbee told The Tyee. “And when you're in opposition, I don't see it as being that big of a deal because you can't pass legislation anyway.”

But not having confidence in the party’s leader was not something Boultbee could ignore.

“When you're questioning, like, the integrity of your leader and their leadership skills, and feeling like this person may not have, like, some of the characteristics we want to see in a premier, that to me is an unsolvable problem.”

Boultbee is a lawyer and former city councillor from Penticton. She said she wanted to run provincially to make more headway on the issues of crime and housing that were affecting her community. In early 2024, an acquaintance set up a meeting with Rustad.

“It was the opposite of what I'm seeing now,” she said. “One of the reasons I liked John as a potential leader of the province was because he came across as very humble, very down to earth, very authentic — somebody who was really doing this because he wanted to give service to his community.”

Throughout 2024, the B.C. Conservatives — who had been almost non-existent — gathered support and donors. The party was able to attract candidates from both the far right and the centre right. When BC United (formerly the BC Liberals) dropped out two months before the election and told voters to vote Conservative, the party soared from zero to 44 seats, becoming the official Opposition.

Sturko, a former BC United MLA, previously told The Tyee that Rustad recruited her with the promise of a big-tent party.

Sturko is lesbian, and Boultbee said her brother is gay. For both women, supporting LGBTQ2S+ rights was important — although Boultbee said she came to accept part of the party’s opposition to B.C.’s sexual orientation and gender identity policies, known as SOGI, in schools.

“I wasn't aware that there was other reasons not to support SOGI that had nothing to do with anything same-sex, but more so about age-appropriate material for kids, which I do agree with,” Boultbee said.

Boultbee said she was blindsided when Conservative MLA Heather Maahs invited the Association for Reformed Political Action, or ARPA, to the legislature in May. The Christian political group wants to ban the morning-after birth control pill and limit abortion access, challenges medical assistance in dying, targets trans people and would ban gay marriage.

Boultbee said she allowed herself to be photographed at the reception, not realizing what they stood for. After getting bombarded with questions and criticism from her constituents, she said she felt she had to make a social media statement clarifying her position.

“Heather Maahs doesn’t speak for me,” Boultbee posted. “I myself, a Christian, believe all British Columbians should have the same civil rights whether you’re gay or straight. ARPA espouses positions myself and the majority of my constituents reject.”

“I wouldn’t willingly be caught dead with them in public and I believe it’s an error they were allowed in the Hall of Honour at the legislature,” she added. “I will continue to represent all my constituents regardless of what some members of my caucus associate themselves with.”

Boultbee said Rustad then “punished” her for making the comment.

“I got a good talking to from John,” she said. “He yelled at me until I cried. He made me take down the post and apologize.”

Boultbee said she was not allowed to participate in question period for the remainder of the session, “which I felt was deliberate.”

The Tyee contacted the Conservative Party of BC for a response to Boultbee’s version of events but did not receive a response.

Boultbee has tussled with Brodie and Armstrong over their ultra-conservative stances on LGBTQ2S+ rights. Armstrong’s riding of Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream neighbours Boultbee’s riding of Penticton-Summerland. When OneBC attempted to hold a town hall in Penticton in September, Boultbee spoke out about the party’s rhetoric, which she said had “deeply harmed” many in B.C., especially Indigenous people.

“I have always denounced any form of homophobia, racism or transphobia,” she added.

In early October, Boultbee posted a video to X, showing Brodie attempting to sit at her table in a Victoria restaurant and touching her arm.* “Dallas, I’ve asked you to leave. I no longer want to engage in this interaction,” she says in the video.

Despite the public spats, Boultbee said her relationship with the OneBC MLAs has warmed since she announced she was leaving the party. She said she, Brodie and Amstrong now have something in common: unhappiness with Rustad’s leadership.

While problems had been developing for months, Boultbee said they came to a head when the party warned MLAs a damaging internal report was about to come out, revealing allegations of around 2,000 fraudulent memberships in the midst of a vote on Rustad’s leadership.

Boultbee said Rustad initially told her the memberships were valid but had just been entered into the party’s database in the wrong way. As the questions about the situation mounted, Boultbee said, party staffers were giving her information that appeared to contradict what Rustad had told her. The Tyee asked the Conservatives for a response but it did not arrive before deadline.

In late September, The Tyee and several other media outlets reported on a leaked internal investigation report that showed the party had found that 2,238 party memberships were “manufactured” in July and August. The party has just 8,000 total members.

Sturko also wanted more accountability from Rustad over the allegations and called for MLAs to conduct a secret-ballot vote of Rustad’s leadership. Shortly after speaking out about her concerns, Sturko said, Rustad called her into his office and told her she no longer had a place in the party.

Boultbee said she spent a lot of time trying to reconcile the different version of events she heard from Rustad and then from party staffers.

“I was hand-picked and vetted personally, recruited by John. I really was loyal to John,” Boultbee said. “He was one of the reasons I joined, so it was very difficult for me to accept that maybe we can't trust [him].”

While Boultbee left of her own accord, Rustad didn’t make it easy.

Last week, he told reporters that he was worried about Boultbee’s health, characterizing her as being “in tears” and “confused.” Boultbee and other commentators have condemned the comments as being grossly misogynistic.

Rustad also said Boultbee “made posts supporting Hamas and their goals,” which Boultbee denied. In an interview with CBC, Boultbee said she made a social media post “on the same day as the United Nations declared the war in Gaza a genocide, and I decried the violence in the region in general.”

Boultbee acknowledged that “some Conservatives have taken the position that if you don't like that Israel's committing a war crime, that this makes you antisemitic and a Hamas supporter.”

Boultbee has denied leaking internal information from the party to the press, which Rustad has also accused her of.

But she said Rustad’s attempt to smear her as a hysterical, mentally ill terrorist supporter is laughable.

“You got to look at that guy and say, like, Hey, didn't you recruit this girl? Didn't you vet her application? Didn't you promote her and put her on committees?” she said. “And you didn't eject her from your caucus? So I think John just looks ridiculous because it's so obvious, he's just saying things because I've left, to try to discredit me.”

Boultbee said she is now focused on issues like improving health care, reducing the size of government and cutting red tape. She said she isn’t worried about her ability to effectively represent her constituents as an Independent MLA, but she did acknowledge it’s going to be tough to get re-elected without help from a political party.

“I don't really know the full implication of the public reaction to my resigning from the party,” she said. “But so far, when I take the public's temperature, it's overwhelmingly very positive. Because they didn't like John and there's been concerns about the party.”

*Story updated on Oct. 27 at 8 a.m. An earlier version said that a video posted to X showed Brodie and Boultbee in the legislature cafeteria. In fact, it was in a Victoria restaurant.