BC Conservative Leader John Rustad was supposed to bathe Saturday in the success that comes from reviving a party barely breathing two years ago to within a chip shot of power in mid-October.
But there was hot water of another kind at the party’s first post-election convention: a churlish attempt by a clutch of his MLAs, failed candidates and disaffected party members to forget about the coattails they’d ridden to the legislature, and scald the leader at the earliest opportunity.
It was an unfortunate backstory in what ought to have been purely a celebration of exceeding expectations and an early start on a strategy to secure government at the party's largest-ever convention of about 750. Instead, the party brass had to reject what would have likely been dissident convention delegate applications. Rustad mustered a friendly slate for the board and enough votes to support their election, and demonstrated some courtesy and compromise to the party in how he tinkered with its constitution.
His slate passed, the party’s constitution didn’t prove a pitched battle, and the policy resolutions neither moved the party further rightward nor toward the middle, even though there are pressures to do both on the leader.
Rustad does have a notable deadline ahead of him, though. A leadership review, mandatory each election cycle, now will take place this fall. The amalgam of election candidates he concocted of early Conservative adopters and late BC United arrivers is tentative and still setting. The body language at the Nanaimo convention – and the clusters of discussions in the hall – suggested some time remains before everyone feels at home in the big tent.
Some of this has been brought on by Rustad, who last August secured the tent-folding of the BC United party under Kevin Falcon after he booted Rustad two years earlier. In exchange, Rustad brought into the BC Conservatives a handful of BC United MLAs. This gave him a better chance of victory by not splitting the right-of-centre vote, but also a better chance of alienating his base of support that had taken the party from about four per cent to 40 in a year.
On top of this is the determination by Rustad to let his MLAs speak out, even if it means defying him and calling out their colleagues. It is proving to be a large distraction and a source of some confusion. It was evident when five MLAs voted last week against the legislature's endorsement of the NDP's strategy on pending U.S. tariffs; it was an anti-NDP gesture, not a pro-Trump one, but it was open to public interpretation.
A clearer case: Vancouver-Quilchena MLA Dallas Brodie was notably absent from Saturday’s gathering. She earlier in the week refused when asked by Rustad to delete a social media post that asserted no child burials had been confirmed at a former Indigenous residential school in Kamloops.
Judicially not false – at least yet – but politically not judicious.
Rustad hasn’t dropped any hammer on Brodie, and in some ways his permissiveness for his troupe to freely speak has made him inadvertently the author of any arising misfortune. By eschewing a traditional party weapon of caucus solidarity and the whipped legislative vote, he has left his flank open to defiance. It’s a risky trade-off, championing freer speech in exchange for appearing to be weak-willed on a unified message or a rogue MLA, and it hasn't worked terribly often.
Already Brodie and a handful of Rustad’s MLAs believe he is not conservative enough and seem willing to test his resolve; it is not unreasonable to expect he will be pulled in the other direction, too, by the more centrist elements. It bears noting that Rustad had to defend several candidates in the election over their social media histories. So much for gratitude.
The party leader refers to these matters as “family issues” – or as he termed it Saturday, “growing pains for a growing party” – and it would be wrong to conclude at this stage that we have witnessed peak Rustad. The BC NDP government has a budget to proffer Tuesday, and it arrives on a most auspicious day. The last time anyone looked at a news app, it appears U.S. President Donald Trump will also levy some steep tariffs to disrupt our economy.
This will be Premier David Eby’s truest test yet, and perhaps a protracted one to challenge the conventional wisdom that the NDP cannot manage the economy. It will also be a time for Rustad to show why he ought to have been premier instead. If the Conservative leader can claim a healthy share of the attention for ideas on how to navigate the wild waves of a turbulent environment (some have already stuck), the seeds of challenge to his leadership will not bear fruit. His best defence isn't silencing dissent, but proving he belongs in the premier's office.
Kirk LaPointe is vice-president, office of the chairman, at Fulmer & Company. He is a Glacier Media columnist with an extensive background in journalism.
