Milobar’s Defection Confirms the Worst for BC Conservatives

It didn’t take long for Conservative Party of BC Leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay to start taking the province back 30 years to a divided right.

Peter Milobar, the party’s finance critic, left the Conservatives Friday to sit as an Independent. His statement said he respected members’ decision to elect Findlay as leader on May 30 and her right to “shape the party as she sees fit.”

“It has, however, become clear to me over the last few months that my values don’t align with this new direction,” said Milobar, MLA for Kamloops Centre.

Milobar — a former BC Liberal and BC United MLA and three-term Kamloops mayor — represents the traditional B.C. political centre-right. He tried to align with the Conservatives after BC United Leader Kevin Falcon shut down the party to clear the way for the ragtag upstart group led by John Rustad.

Milobar even stuck around after a bruising leadership campaign, when he was eliminated on the first ballot with 10.5 per cent of the vote. He was also attacked by Findlay in a leadership debate, when she suggested he could not speak or vote on reconciliation issues because his wife is Indigenous.

But after less than three months, Findlay’s leadership was too much for him to stomach.

The reference to Findlay’s “values” is important. Members of a party can and do disagree on policies but still work together.

But Findlay, a semi-successful federal politician who lost four of the seven times she ran, has steered the Conservatives toward MAGA-right policies in her short time in power. That started in her victory speech, in which she declared the Conservatives the party of “faith, family and freedom.” (It’s clear from the party’s positions that freedom extends only to some — certainly not to trans people, for example.)

Milobar is a centre-right politician broadly in the style of the Socreds and BC Liberals who held power for 52 of the last 74 years.

In interviews with Kamloops media, Milobar added more details about his decision to leave, citing a wide range of issues including the Conservatives’ sophomoric approach to online discourse.

“You just have to go into my social media to see that I wasn't really reposting or sharing anything to do with the memes or graphics that were getting pushed out or anything like that,” he said.

Milobar also pointed to concerns about Findlay’s sweeping changes to party and caucus staff, which have pushed out the people who took the party from two seats to 44 MLAs in two years in favour of quirky choices.

Her chief of staff is Chris Delaney, who was last in the news two decades ago. As BC Unity Party leader in 2002, Delaney promised to abolish the Indian Act and eliminate reserves, and to close abortion clinics and consider a referendum on ending public abortion funding.

Her new operations director, Apollo Chung, was executive director of the separatist Republican Party of Alberta, and Cosmin Dzsurdzsa, a former writer for Juno News, was hired as caucus communications director, Jen St. Denis reported in The Tyee.

And Findlay’s new director of research is Russ Kuykendall, once barred as a candidate by Alberta’s Wildrose Party for anti-gay online posts.

The notable thing is the insistence on ideological purity over experience.

But it’s also striking that Findlay, who won the leadership with 51 per cent support, is making no effort to unite the Conservatives around a shared vision that could include moderates.

So what’s next?

The first question is whether other MLAs will join Milobar and leave the party to sit as Independents. Ian Paton, MLA for Delta South, is also a former Liberal and BC United MLA who this month quit as Findlay’s Lower Mainland lieutenant. He’s also one of at least three Conservative MLAs who refused Findlay’s request to quit so she could run in a safe seat. Paton’s a good candidate.

The second is whether Milobar or any other defecting Conservatives will choose to align with CentreBC, the new party that hopes to emerge as a moderate alternative to the NDP. It’s headed by former MLA Mike Bernier, who worked with Milobar during his BC Liberal and BC United years. If Milobar and one other MLA choose to sit as CentreBC members, they get official party status, which brings about $660,000 in funding and the chance to play a role in question period.

The third question is whether Findlay will continue to take an autocratic, extreme approach to leading the B.C. Conservatives.

I would bet yes. And that NDP Premier David Eby will be delighted.