Front Burner - B.C. Conservative implosion sparks snap election

Episode Date: September 24, 2026

On Tuesday, B.C. Premier David Eby called a snap election, two years into his term. He said the province needs to show a strong response to American aggression. This was just two days after the leader of the Opposition, Kerry-Lynne Findlay, resigned, following a tumultuous four months that included a string of firings and defections, leaks from caucus meetings, and allegations of spying. Eby's critics are calling his timing "cynical" and "profoundly undemocratic." It could also end up backfiring, since the election call has been a rally cry for unity on the right.Rob Shaw, who covers B.C. politics for CHEK news and Glacier Media, explains how divisions and dysfunction inside the B.C. Conservatives triggered a high-stakes political gamble in the province.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts 

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This is a CBC podcast. Hey everybody, I'm Jamie Poisson. Good afternoon, everybody. Nice to see all of you, a beautiful day. So on Tuesday, BC Premier, David E.B., called a snap election. Two years into his term. He said the province needs to show a strong response to American aggression. You deserve a say in the kind of province we're going to build.

A province that stands up for itself. or a province that folds to Donald Trump. This was just two days after the leader of the opposition, Kerry Lynn Finley, resigned, following a tumultuous four months that included a string of firings and defections, leaks from caucus meetings, and allegations of spying. Even the RCMP got involved. Eby's critics are calling his timing cynical and profoundly undemocratic.

And it could also end up backfiring, since the election call has been a rallying cry for unity on the right. Rob Shaw covers BC politics for Czech news and Glacier Media. He's here to walk me through how divisions and dysfunction inside the BC conservatives triggered a high-stakes political gamble in the province. Rob, hey, it's great to have you back on Frontburner and also to do the story with us. I'm really looking forward to this. Thanks for having me on. Okay, so I think to really give people a full understanding of what's happening here,

we actually got to start a few years back and just we are about to go on. a truly wild ride here. The BC conservatives were this zombie party who didn't have any representatives in the legislative assembly for about 50 years. Then suddenly they come surging back in the last election in 2024 and just take me through how this happens. Yeah, they're sort of an empty vessel up until a certain point in time in BC politics. And they did kind of very briefly in sort of like 2012-ish, 2013, look like they might. be able to feel some type of apparatus or something, but it didn't really go anywhere. And it wasn't

until a series of events occurred that kind of lit a fire under it. And it actually begins in 2022 when the BC Liberal Party, which is this dynasty in British Columbia that had been in power for 16 years, they had lost the 2017 election and they're licking their wounds and they're going through a leadership race in 2022. And a gentleman named Aaron Gunn wants to run to become leader of the party. He might recognize the name because he's now a federal member of parliament with the federal conservatives on the North Island. And at the time, he was this like YouTuber.

My name is Aaron Gunn and this is politics explained. Who was making YouTube videos about reconciliation and overdoses and street crime and things like that. It's time to bring common sense back to British Columbia for too long. And the liberals took a look at him and they said, We don't like the cut of his jib, so to speak. We think he's kind of too controversial, too right wing, and they disqualified him from the race. And he didn't go quietly. They thought that they were entitled to our support.

They thought that they were entitled to our votes. But I'll tell you right now, they could not have been more wrong. He disappeared, behind the scenes, gathered a whole bunch of people, and, took over essentially this husk that was known as the BC Conservative Party with a group of supporters and started to whip it back up into shape. Did things like change the logo. So it looked like the federal conservative logo. Started rebranding it and creating a board and putting constitution and rules in and things like that. And that kind of rise would then prove to be very fortuitous because a bunch of other things would occur in BC politics that dovetailed with that.

Where does John Rustad, the former longtime provincial liberal and cabinet minister under Christy Clark, who was kicked out of liberal caucus in 2022 for questioning climate change science? When does he come into the picture? And what role does he play? Well, when he's booted from caucus, he decides that he's not ready to retire and fade off into the sunset. and he takes a look around and he joins the BC Conservatives. And he's an MLA for Natchako Lake. So suddenly the BC Conservatives have an MLA in the House.

And he just starts roaming the province, talking to people about his views and discovers himself at the head of this kind of young, aggressive, modern, conservative movement that Aaron Gunn has created with lots of connections to the federal conservative party as well. And he starts talking about things in the legislature, you know, transgender sports issues. For example, last year, we also moved forward an act called the Fairness for Women and Girls and Sports Act, where we believe that biological men should not be competing against women and girls. It's a safety issue. And suddenly he hits on something in the conservative movement, and he picks up this momentum.

And at the same time, the BC liberals under the leader Kevin Falcon, who won that leadership, race, he rebrands to a new party called BC United. And his fortune starts to tank. No one knows what it is. They don't like them. So you've got the legacy party going down and this new party under Rustad coming up. And momentum proves to be on Rustad's side. And pretty soon he is the one who's leading in the polls as the alternative to the BC NDP government. I remember that election in 2024, they end up getting 44 seats, which is just three less than what David E.B. and the NDP got, right? Like, it was a very close election. It was. It was described at the time as building an airplane when it was flying, because at the very last second before the 2024 election, everyone started defecting from the BC United Party to Rustad, and the BC United Party folded. And so Rustad went within the span of like a year and a half, being this lone guy in the conservatives to this organization that elected 44 MMS. LA's in the election and came within just a couple seats of defeating the NDP.

And it was amazing to watch and see. And an indication, I think, of a change in conservatism in the province that mirrors the federal debate on conservatism under Pierre Polyev and the direction you should go and where the momentum is and who's your supporters, who are you speaking to, who is the base. And Rustad kind of rode that early. Now, some would say he also rode confusion, deliberate confusion. for a BC party, not affiliated with the federal party, but with the exact same logo almost in color scheme and phrasing of common sense. And that slight of hand certainly benefited him

in the 2024 election as well. But then by the next year in December 2025, there is this full-on caucus revolts. When a letter sent to party president Asia Esty was signed by 20 BC conservative MLAs saying they had lost confidence in Rustads' leadership. How do we get there? Well, he was a victim of his own success in a way because when he didn't win the election, there were some in the party who felt like he needed to go further and harder right into the culture wars. And there were some who felt like maybe the reason that the conservatives didn't win is they were just a little too far, right, a little too weird. People didn't feel safe voting for them. They weren't sure they wanted to hand them the keys to the government and he needed to

moderate a little bit. And that debate, that schism played out right after the election. And to be, the conservatives in their building the airplane when it was flying phenomenon also brought in a bunch of candidates who were odd to say the least. During the election campaign, there was a few that had to be fired for belief that COVID vaccines gave you magnetic powers and, you know, 5G wireless the signals would, you know, affect your brain and all sorts of stuff like that. Yeah. And some of those folks, there's, you know, at least one former MLA who believed in chemtrails, made their way into the legislature.

And so he was dealing with that part of the party as well. And eventually it just became a kind of leadership issue. And he was declared, he didn't want to go, but he was declared professionally incapacitated, which is a new term. I've never heard of politics. but the piece of conservative board and caucus said, we're done with you and declared him professionally incapacitated. And he didn't really want to leave. And there were some awkward moments.

Can we ask you, Don, we just saw a tweet. We spoke about. Some of your MLAs have said that their leader, they considered being interim leader, Trevor Holford. Some would say that you are their leader. What is your view? Who is the leader of your party? So I'm currently still the leader of the party. Nothing has changed since we discussed this.

But he did eventually leave by the end of, you know, 2025. I talked to many of my supporters. I talked to the core people that have been around me, talked to my wife. They all encouraged me to carry on. But in order to do that would be the creation of a civil war within the Conservative Party of British Columbia. And that is not in the interest. And that sparked a leadership race to replace him.

And then let's go through that leadership race to replace him. So after he leaves or is really pushed out, we get this really tight race. right? Carrie Lynn Finley wins by just 60 votes on the fourth ballot. Really extraordinary how tight that was. And just who is Carrie Lynn Finley? How does she ultimately win that leadership race? It's a fascinating race because she is a 71-year-old former cabinet minister in the Stephen Harper government. Back when's conservatism was about just balancing the budget and not talking about kind of big social issues, like. like abortion and same-sex marriage and things like that. That was her path to success. But she ends up becoming the culture warrior in the race. And she fashions herself around.

Faith, family, and freedom. That's what it's all about. And truly. And picks up the support of this young conservative influencer group of people who are online and very far right and are worried about social. issues as their top thing. And they rally behind her. So this old politician from the establishment runs a campaign about making sure the establishment doesn't take over the conservatives and pushes the party far into the right. And it divides the party straight down the middle

because the other person who almost wins is more of a moderate, Carolyn Elliott. And she almost wins. But she brought in a bunch of traditional conservative organizers from out east. and she became the establishment candidate. And the race was so close, and the wounds from that split in the party never fully healed. And they proved to basically kind of dog Finley for the short time that she was leader. Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. causing massive water displacement and triggering the tsunami. They all heap to blame all me.

Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's going to dig us out. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant. What would happen if I stop doing? You starve. You freeze it. That's what?

With great power comes great deniability. I'm not the earth nanny. Digger, see the trailer online. Only in June 2nd. At Athabaski University, we understand that work, family, and education is a balancing act. With 24-7 online access, monthly start dates, and an adjustable course load,

our flexible delivery options let you tailor your program to fit your life's busy demands. Open your options with a more flexible online degree and choose an education that works for you, not the other way around. Find out how at Athabascau.cau.cau.ca.ca.ca.com. I remember after her win, Pierre Pauly, a federal conservative leader, He made this comment. The future premier of British Columbia. Carolyn Finley.

Way to go. Fresh off a big win against liberal lobbyists from out east. We've got our former leader. And of course, this ruffles of a lot of feathers highlighted these splits in the party. Finley was elected at the end of May. And, you know, already this is a party that is split. And she made some big staffing decisions. that rubbed some of her MLAs the wrong way.

It's normal to make staffing changes when there's a new leader, of course, but what were the issues here? Well, I think it was staffing changes and tone and her leadership all came together very quickly. When you win by such a slim margin, most people, I think, would come in and try to bring the other half, 49% of the party on board, offer some sort of concessions or talk to all those people who didn't vote for you. She did the opposite.

She came in like she'd won a suit. super majority. She purged the party of its caucus and party staff and forced out people like the successful architects of the 2024 election that we just, you know, talked about that got up to 44 MLAs. She didn't like attending caucus meetings. She didn't like talking to anyone but the small group of kind of fringe MLAs who'd supported her candidacy. And she quickly alienated folks. And then she hired a senior staff of, and I'm going to use this term, charitably here, weirdos, the weirdest people I've ever seen in provincial politics, her chief of staff, who was this, a guy who came from the old reform parties of British Columbia,

he ended up getting wrapped up in an RCMP probe into whether he was offering MLA's salary and a job if they stepped aside so Finley could run in a by-election. He ended up getting booted out or forced out eventually. her operations director came from the Alberta separatist movement, the Alberta Republican Party. And he came in and immediately got caught on an audio recording, talking about how he wanted to sort of pilfer the party for his own personal financial gain. And he got fired. Her executive director in the party allegedly hired a private investigator to investigate people who were critical of the leader, including some MLAs who were sitting in caucus. So you have the party investigating its own MLAs and former MLAs.

And a journalist who, full disclosure, was me. Was you? Apparently, I was under investigation. Just came out recently. I guess I was, the private investigator was on me. No one's really sure what happened there because everything, it's just a complete mess. But it came out and chaos, right? Like all these staffers eventually kind of flame out.

The MLAs aren't happy. She's not attending caucus meetings. It gets rid of the election readiness and the election strategist. And at the party's just a heaping, burning mess at this. point. And that pretty much takes us into her kind of final, final few weeks as party leader. Yeah. She loses 13 MLAs in total. They just start quitting, like one after the other. They just start quitting one after the other. And they all say different reasons. Some of them feel like she wasn't a good leader. Some of them feel like her staff were concerning and the

allegations were concerning. Some of them called on her to resign. There was growing frustrations. and I had growing frustration. I couldn't look British Columbians in the eye and say, yes, I support this leader. And for that reason, I removed myself from caucus. I felt like it was the honest thing to do. The Conservative Party of BC has, in my view, shifted what their priorities are. John Rustad, so the guy who is responsible for the success of the party, he ends up getting a text message late at night from the leaders saying he's fired from caucus.

15 minutes later he gets another one saying, actually, know what, you're back in, you're rehired. Yeah. Goes to sleep, wakes up in the morning. There's another text message saying, no, you're still fired. And that's kind of what's happening behind the scenes. And it's ruffling everyone the wrong way. And the wheels are falling off the bus and the buses getting into the ditch in real time.

Of all the insane details in the story, the firing and then take back and then refiring of John Rustad is my favorite. Okay. So then she was as of just Thursday, last Thursday, pretty defiant. I'm not going anywhere. And then on Sunday, she steps down. What do you think ultimately changed Carolyn Finley's mind here? Well, as her fortunes got worse, Premier David Eby and the NDP started jockeying for a snap election. And he did it partly because Finley was doing such an awful job and the conservatives were in such disarranted.

were in such disarray. And as MLAs left the party, it was splintering the movement back into different parties that could split the vote and allow the NDP to win ridings. It's not even competitive in. So he's sitting there thinking, great, it's time to go to an early election, let's take advantage of this. And as that pressure and reality dawns on the sort of center-right movement in B.C., they finally get their act together and force Finley out of the leadership and try to cobble something together that resembles an election campaign within the span of 24 hours, basically, before the premier ends up calling the snap vote just on September 22nd. And so it's really fear, fear of getting wiped off the map.

And the great irony of Findlay's tenure is that in flaming out in the spectacular, way she did and leaving the party the ruinous mess that it is, it actually brought together in a crisis those parts that we were talking about earlier that hated each other. And so within 24 hours, you have all these moderates and people on the further right working together, putting aside their grievances and saying, okay, this has gone too far. We got to put some election campaign together to fight David E.B. We have to work together. And now they are. With the former BC conservative leader out and a new one in place. Seven MLAs who fled the party to join Center BC now say they're back and they're calling out

Eby's timing. It's a cheap opportunistic political move. And I guess maybe that will be Finley's legacy is that she was so bad she was good for the party. But it's a remarkable kind of story. And maybe this unity does. doesn't last, but it's there right now as we speak and functioning in the real world. Well, do you think that David Eby, when he was doing his calculations on whether or not he should call the SNAP election, anticipated these forces on the right that previously hated each other would actually come together in the way that they have at the moment?

I don't think he did. But the thing that's the thing. to remember about David Eby is that six months ago, we all thought his career was over too, because his polling numbers were at the lowest they'd ever been. He's wrestling with the thorny issue of indigenous reconciliation and the laws his government has passed that have clashed in the courts with private property rights. And as Finley was elected, leader of the party, he was in the dumps. So to have this dramatic reversal where Finley burns everything to the ground, Eby looks good by comparison and he decides to jump and think that if he just stuck around, he may not have lasted the two years to the next scheduled provincial election. So he's putting all his cards in the

table. He's rolled on the dice, whatever metaphor you know, you want to use about gambling. And whether the right gets his act together is beyond his control, but he thinks it's a good bet that people might look at the last few months and say, oh man, I don't know about that group over there, But I'll just stick with Eby for now. And that's the great gamble in his mind. Well, it strikes me that he's also thinking about the context, the broader context that we're into with the relationship with the United States. He's making a similar argument that Doug Ford made a while back when he called an election and basically ran on needing a mandate to stand up to Trump. Eby said in his pitch this week that the province.

needs to show strength and unity. At a time when Trump is creating more uncertainty, the last thing we need to do is abandon the front line. So what the conservative parties want to do, they want to fan the flames at the worst possible time. And that conservatives, the conservatives would acquiesce to Trump. You take the conservative approach that's been proposed,

put the American liquor back on the shelves. Say no to the agreement with the federal government to build up our province. Do what Trump wants. Do you think that that message or that pitch is resonating and will resonate with the people of BC? You know, Eby's polling has shown that he's never more popular than when he's fighting Trump. So it does resonate. The problem is that it only resonates for a brief window before people get fatigued and tired of, you know, Donald Trump.

And they go back to the many problems in British Columbia right now, emergency room closures, you know, overdoses, drug use, private property, reconciliation, all of these types of things. And so it's a short kind of window for him to do this in. And the Venn diagram that overlaps between people scared of Trump and the collapse of the conservatives is where he's trying to hit his mark because I don't think, you know, he could sustain two years left in his mandate on Donald Trump. And so that's his risk. That's, you know, the Trump framing is kind of the artifice of what is really a very crafty political calculation that in a world of chaos, at least people know who he is and maybe will stick with him.

Whether that's going to happen or not is what we'll be writing about in the history books when this thing is over. Yeah. And just Rob, before we go, I would love to get your thoughts on this, watching this play out in the last couple of years. You alluded to this earlier. But what do you think the big lessons here are for the conservatives, not just for the conservatives in BC, but right across the country and also at the federal level? Yeah, I think we do see it playing out in Alberta and in Ottawa, the same sort of debate about the future of the conservative movement. And you've got young. conservative very aggressively going in one direction and older conservatives lamenting, you know, for a time that may have passed. And the modern version of the conservative party is changing. And it changed quite a bit in BC and it's changing under the feet of Polyev and it's changing under the feet of, you know, Daniel Smith in Alberta, too. And so I think there are lessons for those leaders in what BC has gone through in that your leadership races are going to be divided. The membership itself is very,

divided and it becomes very important to find a leader who can stitch something together. They have to be leader in the sense of leading a team, not just a person with great memes online or a few talking points. At the end of the day, you have to lead a team in a caucus and keep them together in opposition, which is the hardest job in politics. And that requires a particular skill set of leadership. And that's really what was missing in BC, what the federal conservators are struggling with, and what Alberta's Premier maybe is losing grips on a bit too. So, you know, they're not easy times to be part of a conservative movement, and it's even harder to keep it together. And it requires a special type of person, I think. And that was not Carrie Lynn Finley. The new BC conservative leader,

a gentleman named Lauren Dirkson, we're not sure if it's him or not. He's a very low-key kind of rural guy who used to ride in professional rodeos, so he's good. He guess he's good at handling bucking broncos of politics. Yeah, he's good. But it's a challenging time to be, you know, in politics these days and more challenging to lead a conservative party. Okay. Rob, always great to talk to you. Thank you so much for this.

This was a lot of fun. Thanks. Thanks for having me on. It's fun to explain our wacky world of politics in detail. All right. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.