The Decibel - What’s behind the implosion of the B.C. Conservatives

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

It’s been a turbulent time for the official opposition of the British Columbia provincial legislature, the B.C. Conservative party. After seeing a surge in popularity leading up to the 2024 provincial election, they’ve now lost a third of their sitting members. Seven MLAs have left since mid-August alone. Today, Globe national affairs columnist Gary Mason is on the show. He’ll explain the party’s surprising implosion, how they lost their surge in popularity and what lessons there are for politics in the province and beyond. Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It's been a turbulent time for the official opposition in British Columbia. In the past month, the BC Conservative Party has lost a third of its members of the Legislative Assembly, or MLAs. In mid-A August, an MLA resigned, seeing there was a lack of what he called, quote, ideological alignment with the party's leader. Five more conservative MLAs left the party to sit as independence, and another MLA decided to resign earlier this week. They're all pointing to one thing, the direction that conservative leader, Carrie Lynn Finley, is taking the party. So today, we've got Gary Mason on the show.

He's a national affairs columnist for the Globe in B.C. He'll explain how the party started to implode, what happened to their surge in population, and what it means for politics in British Columbia and beyond. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from The Glob and Mail. Hi, Gary, thanks so much for coming on the show. My pleasure, Cheryl. So before we delve into the drama that's been going on in the past month with the BC Conservatives,

I think we need a bit of a primer on BC politics for those like myself who might not be following that world closely. So the BC Conservatives are a relatively new political party. Can you remind us of the political dynamics in BC before that? Well, in BC politics, there essentially has been, for decades, two factions. And the center left has been represented by the NDP. And the center right has been represented by various parties. For years, it was social credit.

They were the center right, quote unquote, free enterprise party. And then under Bill VanderZam, that party, began to disintegrate because of all sorts of controversies. And then the NDP had a chance to take over in the 1990s. At that point, social credit was, you know, fizzling out and the BC Liberal Party became ascendant. Now, the BC Liberals, that name has always been a bit of a misnomer because the BC Liberals was a coalition of moderate liberals and moderate conservatives. You know, even far-right conservatives, I guess they had to hold their nose and vote BC Liberal in order to keep the NDP out of power.

So anyway, the BC Liberals under Gordon Campbell and then eventually Christy Clark ran British Columbia for about 17 years. Until the public had decided it had enough and the NDP under the charismatic reign of John Hogan took over power. and the NDP has remained in power since. So there we are. That is sort of the background which set up the return of the BC conservatives. So was there just no conservative party or was that the BC Liberals? There was really no conservative party. And then what happened was when Christy Clark, once the NDP returned to power under Horgan,

she had to step down as the BC liberal leader. she decided to step down. Kevin Falkin took over the BC Liberal Party. And one of his promises that he made during his campaign was that he would explore renaming the party. You know, a lot of conservatives felt uncomfortable operating under the banner of a party that was called the Liberal Party. So he ended up successfully changing the name of the party to BC United. But that turned out to be a complete failure. And I think Falcons leadership became a failure.

And that allowed a sort of unlikely person in John Rustad, who Kevin Falcon had kicked out of his caucus over climate denialism. So John Rustad went and sat as an independent for a while. And then he decided to give it a shot and let's see if he could restart the BC Conservative Party. And he did. John Hogan, very quickly, John Horgut eventually had to start. step down as leader of the NDP over health issues. And David Eby became the new leader of the NDP and Premier of British Columbia. And almost from the beginning of his reign, it has been a very controversial and sort of controversy-laced reign. And he's angered a lot of people in the province,

which allowed the conservatives to become ascendant under John Rustad's leadership. Okay. So just a step back here. So there was basically no conservative party until a couple of years ago, until 2023 when they got official party status. But at that time, it was a small party, right? Like they had 5% in the polls. But then in 2024, the BC conservatives won a total of 44 seats in the provincial election. And that's just three seats shy from a majority. And they become the official opposition, which is a huge deal. You see, you kind of touched on this a little bit, but let's get into it. Like what brought people to the conservatives then? Because this is kind of a risk, right? People are voting for a party that they didn't really know. Oh, absolutely. And John Rustad, to put it mildly, was not a charismatic leader. And he had any attracted all sorts of oddball characters to run as candidates, some of whom had to step down for various reasons for making ridiculous comments. But people were so upset with Eby over a couple of things.

One was the amount of spending that was happening in the province and the deficits that he started running up almost from the beginning. John Horgan left David Evey a $5 billion surplus. And it didn't take, you know, it took less than a year for David Eby to blow through that and to run up a deficit and then just continual deficit and his budgets forecast deficits into the future. So people were upset about that. That was one.

Next was the experiment with decriminalization. David E.B. was a big proponent of this. It did not go well. And so... And so... The plan was like the decriminalization of drugs or possession of small amounts of drugs. Exactly. Exactly.

So, you know, a lot of people were all of a sudden, you know, there were people in downtown streets shooting up and smoking and all sorts of stuff. And people were very upset about that. And then beyond that, Cheryl, there were the usual things about affordability. the high cost of housing, emergency rooms that were being shut down because of low staffing levels. So I think people felt that things were out of control under Evie's reign. And that's why they, in many respects, the 44 seats that the BC Conservatives won was almost a protest vote for a lot of people. That kind of explains the sort of unprecedented rise of John Rustad in the BC Conservatives.

Okay, yeah. So that's a good background there as to why people were voting for the conservatives and, you know, the anger towards E.B. So let's delve into what the conservative party stands for. What kind of ideology does it have? Well, very good question. I mean, this was the problem that the BC conservatives were going to have right almost from the beginning. It was a party of various factions. So the BC conservatives, they attracted the old. BC liberal types, people who were sort of moderate kind of centrist, very centrist people. Then it had a group sort of maybe in the middle who were sort of moderate conservatives. More than liberals, they were sort of moderate, centrist conservative. And then there was a faction on the right who were sort of more like Alberta UCP types, you know, a little bit of, you know, Republican style ideologies sort of creeping into their thinking. Yeah, that can be tricky because there's.

so many different factions there and different ideologies to, you know, unite people under. And so John Rustad led the BC Conservatives until last summer when there was immense pushback from his MLAs. They criticized him for not being able to unify the different parts of the party that you were talking about. So a few MLAs left back then. And Rustad ended up giving up his leadership. And that paved the way for the leader who's in charge now, which is Carrie Lynn Finley.

Right. What should we know about her? Well, Carrie Lynn Finley, she was a member of the Conservative Alliance Party and then ran as a candidate for the federal conservatives under Stephen Harper. She was successful there running in the riding of Richmond. Eventually, she became for a couple of years from 2013 to 2015. She was the National Revenue Minister under Stephen Harper. she lost a couple of elections in between, then she was re-elected again later. She became opposition whip under Pierre Paulyev.

So, I mean, she does have some bona fidez with the Federal Conservative Party, but then she lost the election when she ran in 2025, and that opened her up to running for the provincial BC conservatives when Rustad stepped down and a leadership contest was announced. And I understand that she is considered to be more right-leaning. Can you give me some examples of that? A lot of it has sort of come out since she has become leader. But I'll give you one example that offended a lot of people during the leadership campaign.

One of her opponents was Peter Milibar, who was a very centrist conservative, He is married to an indigenous woman. And during one of the leadership debates, Carrie Lynn Finley said that he had a conflict of interest talking about matters around reconciliation because his wife was indigenous. And Milibar and many, many others in the conservative party found that remark very, very offensive. And there was this ad that the conservatives put out that portrayed. David E.B. as sort of this Nazi-style fascist dictator overseeing this map of British Columbia that offended a lot of people in the party and in the province. Ian Payton, one of the MLAs, conserved MLAs that ended up leaving, cited this ad as a moment

that made him think that he was not in the right party, at least under this leadership. A lot of people also cited her rallying slogan at when she was elected leader, faith, family, and freedom to many people that had the ring of a sort of a Republican style motto. But it was more like people felt that Finley was aligning herself with mega types that, you know, you see being cited in the United Conservative Party of Alberta. It seemed like that there was a wing of the party, the right wing of the real far right wing of the conservative party that was kind of running the show a bit under Finley. At least that's the feeling that many MLAs who have ended up leaving have felt. Yeah, okay. Let's dive into that drama and what's been happening with MLA's leaving. So let's start in August.

Walk me through what happened. Well, in August, the first person to leave was Peter M. Milibar, who came in third in the leadership race. You know, Carolyn Finley ended up winning a very narrow victory over Caroline Elliott, who really represented sort of the moderate right of center side of the party. And then Caroline Finley represented the populist faction that was defined by social and cultural conservatism. And then Peter Milibar was kind of right in the middle.

He was definitely a centrist. And anyway, he was the first to go. I think August 14th, he left, citing Finley's leadership. He did not feel comfortable with the direction she was taking the party. And then that was the beginning of the deluge that we have seen since. Ian Payton, MLA, a conservative MLA from Delta, longtime agriculture critic, really, really well-liked, well-respected MLA. He left and cited some things that he found extremely disturbing, including he alleged that he was offered a job in the party that would pay him the equivalent of his MLA's salary if he would step aside, resign his seat so Carolyn Finley could run as the conservative candidate in Delta.

And just to say, Finley denies this allegation that she made this offer. but the MLA, Ian Payton, says the offer was made because Finley doesn't have a seat, right? That's correct. That's right. So she does not have a seat. And he was incredibly offended by this. And he said no. And it's been, what, let's see. So from the 44 seats, Cheryl, that the conservatives had after what, the 24 election, they're down to 30 seats now. So 13 have left or were objected from caucus to, think we're ejected from caucus under Rustad. So that's 13. And then one has resigned her seat to make room for Carrie Lynn Finley to run in her riding. All right. So that's 14 MLAs in total. That seems that seems like a big deal. I mean, is it? That's a big deal. That is the makings of a new party. You know, for somebody who wants to start a new conservative party under a more centrist banner or whatever. I mean, that's an instant caucus. So it represents a huge fracturing of the

conservative movement in British Columbia. So it is a huge deal. We'll be right back. So Gary, you mentioned that there's some controversy around Carrilyn Finley trying to get a seat in the legislature. I understand there was some leaked audio allegedly of Finley offering an apparent quid pro quo. Can you tell me about that? Yes. There was audio that surfaced from an anonymous Twitter account that apparently is a caucus meeting of some sort in which Finley is suggesting that anybody who steps aside to allow her to run in their riding, there would be some sort of role, advisory role, maybe related to their area of expertise or whatever, inside the caucus.

But my thought is whoever did, if someone was willing to step aside, I could give them a role as a senior advisor in their same portfolio so that they're very much involved and around. So there would be some sort of role or a job waiting for them to go to if they did decide to step aside, which of course spawned or sparked actually. that this was some sort of quid pro quo for people if they decided to step aside that there would be a job waiting for them. And this is something that, you know, Finley has denied. She's saying she was, there was no financial inducement offered or anything. There's a, you know, a job perhaps for somebody if they were interested. That's how she's sort of defended it. And just to say it's illegal to offer someone money to leave their post, right? Yes, exactly. Under the criminal code, you,

are not allowed to offer any kind of financial inducement to get somebody to leave a position. And then finally, Rian Gathber, an MLA, a conservative MLA for Abbotsford Mission, announces that she's going to resign her seat to make room for Finley to run there. And then two days later, the conservators announced that she's going to be the new deputy chief of staff. So she finds herself in a new job two days after she announces that she's leaving her seat. to make room for Finley. So, I mean, people look at this and say, well, this is exactly what, you know, people are talking about here. You know, people being offered inducements to, to leave their seat. So we'll see where that goes. Yeah. So Finley released a statement saying,

quote, these were normal political discussions that respect the boundaries of the law and ethics, unquote. And she also said that, quote, any fair minded person listening to the recording will immediately realize that this is not a good faith allegation of wrongdoing, unquote. But the concerns from MLAs in her party go beyond the situation, right? So there's also concerns about what she's done with the executive branch of the BC Conservatives. Can you tell me about that part? Well, yeah, she's, you know, there's members of the Conservative Party executive that have left. You know, some of them left on their own accord because they too did not feel comfortable with the direction Finley was taking.

Others, it's believed, were asked to leave. Almost the entire Conservative Party caucus staff was dismissed. Other people were brought in that had no sort of direct affiliation with the party. In one instance, Finley reached out to a staffer with the separatist Republican Party of Alberta. His name was Apollo Chung. And she brought him in as director of operations for caucus. People didn't know who this guy was, felt uncomfortable with him. She ended up having to fire him for reasons that remain a little bit fuzzy to say the least.

An audio, again, an audio surface of someone identified as Apollo Chung talking about spending money that donors are giving the party. You know, it was all very murky. nobody is denying it. You know, Apollo Chung hasn't really said much, come out publicly to say anything, census dismissal. It's just given a whole bunch of people feeling of an immense discomfort

about Ms. Finley's ability to lead this party out of the wilderness that it seems to be in right now. Okay, so that gives us a sense. Like you've really laid out what's going on, it's kind of the discomfort of some of the conservatives with Finley's, leadership and where she's leading the party. And we talked about how conservatives became popular

because people have been frustrated with the NDP government, right? So what has all this recent drama with the conservatives meant for the NDP party? Like, has this been an opportunity for them? Well, huge opportunity. I mean, for the longest time, I mean, when you think about it, 47 MLAs, the NDP had to 44 conservatives, a couple of greens. I mean, there was a not a lot of breathing room there for the NDP. Now they have a healthy majority. And that majority is going to be safe until the next election. So the political landscape in British Columbia right now, Cheryl, is very, very, it's hard to predict where things are going to go. There is going to be a by-election on September 26. So this by-election that Carrie Lynn Finley is going to run in in

Abbotsford Mission, September 26th. There's a lot of concerns. conservatives in that writing that are going to campaign against her. They do not want her to win. Now, if she runs in that by-election and she doesn't win, I don't see how her leadership survives. So the question becomes, do all the people, all those MLAs that have left the caucus, do they sit tight until the by-election on September 26th and see what happens if Finley loses, maybe that opens the door to another leadership race in which a more moderate can take

control of the party and then rebuild it in advance of the next election. If that doesn't happen, if Finley wins and then she goes to the legislature as the leader of the provincial conservative party, then surely all those MLAs that have left are going to coalesce under a new banner there's already these secret meetings taking place all over the all over the province among conservatives who want a reasonable centrist conservative option that focuses on just a few big issues like debt affordability health care so it's like it's really hard to predict share where this is all going to go but it's very fluid as they say so Gary I'm curious about the atmosphere with the public right now, given everything that's gone on? How are they feeling?

Oh, people are absolutely white-hot anger, I think would be the best way to, you know, people are really, really angry with the government of David Eby. I mean, the debt, as I mentioned earlier, the debt is out of control. He just seems to be mishandling file after file. You know, I don't know what's going to happen to the conservatives, but if they got their act together, there's a real opportunity for them in the next election if David E.B. is still leading the NDP because the anger level in British Columbia is very, very high. The only reason that they're doing anything in the polls right now is because of the disarray in the conservative camp. So there's a real opportunity there because people are very, very angry at this NDP government at the

moment. Gary, it seems like the conservatives had this huge opportunity when they became the official opposition and now things seem to be, I don't know, falling apart. So, I mean, what are the bigger lessons here for other political parties in Canada? Like, is there a takeaway? It's hard to, hard to say whether it's just, you know, the lessons here apply to every province. But I think that, you know, at least in British Columbia, the conservatives need to coalesce under a big tent conservative banner, sort of like what Doug Ford has assembled in Ontario. I think that conservatives in British Columbia have cited, conservatives that I've talked to have cited Ford as an example of the kind of conservative leader who sent some crumbs to the right wing of his party,

give some crumbs to the centrist, you know, speaks like a populist that can appeal to, you know, the various factions inside that big conservative tent. That's what conservatives here in British Columbia are looking for. What happens, you know, the example here of what Ms. Finley has done is if you only appeal in your rhetoric and actions to a very small portion or a very one flank of your coalition, then you're going to ostracize everyone else. And that's what's happened here. Coalitions, especially new coalitions, like the Conservative Party in British Columbia representative, they're very fragile. And Finley has been so reckless to me in terms of her, you know, actions and her disregard for the

centrist in the party. So it's just there's a whole bunch of stuff going on here. But there are, there's definitely lessons to be learned for conservatives across the country. maybe not in Alberta, which is a little different beast altogether in terms of conservative politics. But people are going to look at this and say, okay, yeah, we can see the mistakes that she made. Yeah, I think what I'm hearing here, Gary, is like this is a lesson in cohesion. And that's something that other parties can look to.

Yeah, very much so. Gary, it's been really great talking to you today. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Oh, my pleasure. Thank you very much, Cheryl. That was Gary Mason, the Globe's National Affairs column. in BC. That's all for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Levy McLaughlin, and Mahal Stein. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior

producer and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.