Kerry-Lynne Findlay Is Off to a Weirdly Bad Start

After just over two months on the job, Conservative Party of BC Leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay is floundering. She’s hired underqualified people for key positions, purged party staff and caucus staff and generally failed to recognize she has the sketchiest of mandates.

And some MLAs and staff are already signalling their concerns.

Sometimes new leaders have a clear mandate to make changes. They’ve won with a big majority, clearly enjoy the support of party members and have a track record.

That’s not Findlay. She won with 51 per cent support under the party’s weighted count. The actual votes were closer: Findlay received 10,907 votes from members to Caroline Elliott’s 10,847 — a 60-vote victory. Her political track record is equally sketchy. Findlay ran federally seven times and lost four of the races.

Despite the underwhelming support, Findlay has largely rejected the more typical path for new leaders of reaching out to other camps in the interest of unity.

Findlay celebrated the post-victory endorsement from federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, despite the fact that federal Liberals are key to the provincial party.

She appointed a figure from the political past as her chief of staff. Chris Delaney was last prominent two decades ago in various right-wing parties. During the 2001 election campaign, he led the BC Unity Party and promised to abolish the Indian Act (a federal law), eliminate reserves and give each band member $250,000 and land to extinguish all Indigenous rights. His education policy would dramatically undermine the public school system. And he promised to close abortion clinics and consider a referendum on ending public funding of abortion services.

And Findlay’s choices for new staff have included Apollo Chung, a senior figure in the separatist Republican Party of Alberta, as operations director, and Cosmin Dzsurdzsa as caucus communications director. He has held several jobs for right-wing media outlets, most recently with Juno News, previously known as True North. But he has no experience in leading communications for a political party.

Dzsurdzsa set out his starting point in an X post on the day of Findlay’s win titled “On media and the next BC Conservative leader.”

“Establishment media” are the enemy and should be shut out “beyond what’s absolutely necessary (because dealing with these clowns is still unfortunately part of the job, for now),” he wrote.

“There are so many independent platforms available today that are far more successful and influential than the so-called top legacy media outlets in this province.”

“Independent media on the right consistently had a greater impact and often reached a wider audience than the legacy press.”

The news media is much more fragmented. But the notion that the B.C. Conservatives can win election simply by working with outlets that provide a right-wing echo chamber is delusional.

The Conservatives’ new communications approach was demonstrated after former BC Liberal premier Christy Clark offered a blunt assessment of Findlay’s leadership.

“She cannot win an election,” Clark said. “She is too kooky.”

Talking points sent to MLAs to use included the ridiculous claim Clark is an “NDP proxy.” (They also suggested MLAs accuse the government of “stooping to schoolyard name-calling, which has corrupted political conversation in our province.” Which is ironic, as when The Tyee asked Dzsurdzsa for an interview, he refused and said it was a “far-left smear outlet” and “literal trash, not journalism.”)

Findlay has also faced controversies of her own making. A new online account — the Findlay Files — shared a leaked message from the campaign period when she said Conservative MLA Teresa Wat was a Chinese Communist Party member.

“Teresa Wat MLA is CCP and sold many memberships to CCP Chinese in Richmond,” Findlay wrote.

Findlay responded by saying she values Wat’s work but did not deny the earlier accusation.

How’s all this going over with party members?

Delta South MLA Ian Paton, one of the former BC United MLAs now in the Conservatives, was named as Lower Mainland lieutenant a month ago. He quit the role this week.

Three Conservative MLAs — Paton, Prince George-Valemount MLA Rosalyn Bird and West Vancouver-Capilano MLA Lynne Block — all confirmed they had refused Findlay’s request that they resign so she could run in a byelection (possibly wondering why Findlay hadn’t asked her spouse, controversial Surrey South MLA Brent Chapman, to stand down).

And Mark Robertson, ousted director of political operations and membership for the Conservative Party of BC, offered a warning for Findlay in his farewell letter.

The new staff are inheriting a strong party, he wrote. “My hope is that these new stewards do not squander this opportunity to build on work that had been accomplished so far.”

“A political party leader is entrusted as a temporary steward... with a responsibility to grow and nurture the party.... This will be the basis of the future judgment of this leader’s time in charge.”

Which sounds much like a warning shot for Findlay.