Buy the lettuce. Start the clock. Kerry-Lynne Findlay is surely done as leader of British Columbia’s Conservative Party. Anyone willing to bet Findlay will remain at the party’s helm longer than the typical leafy green can prevail in your fridge clearly isn’t paying attention to current events. On Wednesday afternoon two MLAs quit Findlay’s Conservative caucus, bringing the total to a whopping five in twelve days . There isn’t a fire inside B.C.’s Conservative party; there’s an inferno, and Kerry-Lynne Findlay is the one who lit the match to start it.
Having won the B.C. Conservative leadership by a hair’s width over activist and commentator Caroline Elliott at the end of May, Findlay has set about purifying the Conservative party back to its roots and away from the broader centre-right, free market coalition which has caused tension in the party since it merged with B.C. United (formerly the B.C. Liberals) ahead of the 2024 election.
Gone are the people who actually built the party to its current broader tent status. Notable examples, apart from the MLAs fleeing the scene of the crime-in-progress, include Angelo Isidorou , the party’s former executive director who left at the end of July. Isidorou represented the wider coalition that the B.C. Conservatives could be and directed the party towards that end. Former party president Aisha Estey also resigned in the last few weeks .
As mind boggling as all the departures are, in response Findlay has said herself that more might follow. She’s probably right and, based on the current flow rate, I would advise readers to check the news upon completion of this column for wind of who else has decided to pull the ripcord.
During her time as leader Findlay made some eyebrow raising hires, as they signaled a more stridently right-wing turn. As her chief of staff, she appointed Chris Delaney, perhaps best known for his ties to former Social Credit Premier Bill Vander Zalm , notable for refusing to cover abortion costs under provincial health care.
Then she named Apollo Chung, a former member of the separatist Alberta Republican Party , as her director of operations. Embarrassingly for Findlay, Chung was fired on Wednesday, following the release of recordings in which he made comments that he didn’t “care about saving the province,” that “white people are like crazy” and that he has “the leader in his hands.” He further added dubious comments about his plans for funds raised by the Conservatives, saying he would go in and “steal everything” to use for his aims for the party.
Findlay’s critics says she and her team have created a massive culture problem within the party, rewarding blind loyalty over competence and treating those outside the leader’s circle poorly. The most recent MLA to depart, Brennan Day spoke to the general tenor of those who have left when he said on X on Wednesday “The current direction of Conservative Party of BC under Kerry-Lynne Findlay is no longer something I can support. More fundamentally, I have lost confidence in the judgement, conduct and ethical standards of her leadership and those she has chosen to surround herself with.”
MLA Teresa Wat, who also quit caucus on Wednesday, said in her letter explaining her reasons for bolting that Findlay had “called my allegiance to Canada into Question.”
Former president Estey too voiced her views on X Wednesday: “Can’t wait for conservatives to start electing respectful, kind, and ethical human beings again.” Then there was Dan Knight, Ms. Findlay’s digital director during her leadership campaign, who today posted on X a meme of a dumpster fire.
The vibe being given off is not that the B.C. Conservatives are for everyone, but rather that they represent the fringe they used to in the days when they garnered two percent of the vote; that is to say every day prior to the 2024 election under John Rustad’s leadership.
Consider for a moment that by nearly every relevant metric the Premier David Eby’s government has been an absolute failure for B.C. This year, the province experienced it first decline in population ever as unaffordable housing has driven residents out. Fiscally, the NDP has been heaping record deficit upon record deficit with no plan to get out of the tailspin that generations of British Columbians will be paying for.
Eby’s loose drug policies have been an abject failure and seriously harmed safety downtown. Following the government’s reluctance to defend them , private property rights in B.C. are under question and the Eby NDP seems set to storm ahead with signing away huge tracks of the province to First Nations with little or no public input . Meanwhile, the BC. economy is stalled and has become a laggard in Canada . Businesses like Canfor, a large forestry company, have relocated to the United States .
Following nine years of NDP government in British Columbia, if Kerry-Lynne Findlay and her crew had even a modicum of focus or sophistication, they would cakewalk to forming the next government, but they don’t.
Despite the mile-long charge sheet against David Eby, current polls put the NDP well out ahead of Kerry-Lynne Findlay’s Conservatives. One recent poll by respected pollster Dimitri Pantazopoulos had the NDP leading 46 per cent to 40 per cent among decided voters . That’s easily an NDP majority and, depending on vote distribution, could be landslide territory.
British Columbians want a return to sensible, economically driven decision making that will get the province out of the social and economic nosedive of the past decade. That should be an easy political message to sell. However, the only thing the current B.C. Conservative actions will guarantee for British Columbians is another term under David Eby.
Adam Pankratz is a lecturer at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business.
