Listen to this article
Estimated 3 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
Amelia Boultbee, MLA for Penticton-Summerland, has joined the B.C. NDP, according to the party caucus.
She was initially elected as a B.C. Conservative in 2024, but left the party a year later to become an Independent after expressing dissatisfaction with former party leader John Rustad.
Boultbee said at a news conference Friday that she got into politics to serve her community.
“When I think about who is best positioned to do this work, my confidence is with this premier and this caucus,” she said.
Premier David Eby said at the news conference that Boultbee stood up for “principle” and human rights when she left the Conservatives.
“I am incredibly appreciative and recognize the courage that it takes to make a step like this,” he said.
Eby added that Boultbee brings experience as a lawyer to the NDP caucus and said she would “anchor” the NDP in the Okanagan.
Before her election to the B.C. Legislature, Boultbee was a Penticton city councillor.
Boultbee took a shot at Friday her former party and its new leader, Kerry-Lynne Findlay, saying the promised “big tent party” is getting smaller by the day.
“With a new leader more consumed with divisive, Donald Trump-style populism than with things that actually matter to people, it’s clearer now than ever that they’re offering no real solutions,” she said.
Eby said Boultbee reached out to his party and no promises were made to her around any specific initiatives.
“It was done so on a purely voluntary basis with no offers made to Amelia about what would be delivered to her.”
The new caucus member has given the NDP a two-seat majority.
Eby’s slim majority has been a point of tension, particularly when multiple MLAs internally spoke out against the premier’s plan to suspend sections of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) earlier this year.
Leaving the Conservatives
At the time she left the Conservatives in October 2025, Boultbee said it was because of Rustad’s “failed leadership.”
“He has invited me to ‘get the F out’ if I don’t like it, and I’ve taken him up on that offer,” she said then.
Rustad accused Boultbee of leaking internal caucus information to the media, but Boultbee said his claim was a “bold-face lie.”
When she announced she was leaving the Conservatives, she said she would return to the party if it had a new leader.
But after Rustad was ousted in December, and Findlay was elected in May, Boultbee remained as an Independent.
Boultbee has said she considers herself a centrist when it comes to her political leanings.