Please Advise! Has Rustad Lost Control Already?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

B.C. Conservative leader John Rustad almost led his party from the wilderness to government. Yet he seems to be in trouble with his caucus. Leading up to the party convention last Saturday in Nanaimo, one former Conservative candidate even attacked him as a “coward” and called for his head.

Where’s the gratitude, Dr. Steve?

Signed,

B. Wright

Dear B.,

Right? A political saviour comes along, raises a political corpse from the dead, turns a couple of loaves and fishes into 44 seats, and it’s, OK, great, but have you walked across Victoria Harbour lately? Rustad brings B.C. Conservatives water and they turn it into whine. Some of these people won’t be happy until they’re lepers again.

The latest round of Rustad’s troubles began when Vancouver-Quilchena MLA Dallas Brodie posted on X: “The number of confirmed child burials at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School site is zero.”

Rustad asked Brodie to remove the post. Brodie did not. That’s when former B.C. Conservative Vancouver-Langara candidate Bryan Breguet, who came within 419 votes of winning a seat in the legislature, posted: “John Rustad is a coward and needs to be replaced.”

Alas, some weeks it seems each new dawn brings only more strife and trouble.

Sure enough, the NDP laid out a trap for the Conservatives last week by introducing a motion calling for all-party agreement in opposing Donald Trump’s tariffs. As hazards go, this one was not subtle. Politically, it was a flashing billboard reading “Warning Poison Flammable High Voltage Choking Hazard.” The NDP strategy was similar to Wile E. Coyote putting up a sign reading “Free bird seed.”

That never seems to work out for Mr. Coyote. But these are the B.C. Conservatives. Roadrunners they are not. No, “quick” is not the adjective that comes to mind.

Five members of the Conservative caucus refused to support the motion condemning Trump. Get out the roasting pan and peel some potatoes, folks, we eat tonight. Coyote versus Conservatives would be a very short series. A single anvil would do the trick.

“I’ll put it this way,” Rustad said Tuesday. “What family in this province doesn’t have issues or divisions in it?”

Sure, look at the Borgias. Or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. There’s always a worm in the family apple.

Conservative party whip Bruce Banman framed the five dissents as a triumph of liberty. “What you saw for the first time in a long time was MLAs voted with their conscience,” he said.

Can’t argue with that. The problem with voting your conscience, though, is that people get to see what’s in it. When your conscience is a little candlelit shrine with a picture of Donald Trump riding a dinosaur, you should probably keep the door closed. A conscience like that gives off a certain odour. Padlock that conscience, throw away the key, and go buy an extra-large can of Febreze.

Are the B.C. Conservatives walking the trail blazed by the Republican caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives? There you find a core of rabid reps whose social and economic agenda would seem to be based on the Mad Max films. Governing is not the priority for these firebrands. It’s ideological purity all the way, head-first into the wood chipper.

As it turned out, Rustad had little trouble smacking down the internal opposition at the Nanaimo annual general meeting this past weekend. His policy positions and candidates for party positions all won approval handily.

But the dissidents are not gone. Breguet told Postmedia he believes 2024 was Rustad’s best shot at victory. Clearly, he does not believe the recent AGM will be his last shot at Rustad.

The great irony here is that Rustad’s journey to Opposition leader began when he was ousted from the BC United caucus over a refusal to back off from his climate change denial. When Kevin Falcon booted Rustad in August 2022, he’d just turned 59 — a feisty young buck full of Ayn Rand and vinegar. Now here he is, 61 and wiser, trying to herd his own gang of scorpions. How quickly we turn into our parents.