{"id":324785,"date":"2025-12-04T12:26:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T12:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/324785\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T12:26:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T12:26:06","slug":"bc-conservatives-say-theyve-ousted-their-leader-but-he-refuses-to-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/324785\/","title":{"rendered":"BC Conservatives say they\u2019ve ousted their leader, but he refuses to go"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

BC Conservative Leader John Rustad leaves the House following question period at the B.C. Legislature in Victoria, on Wednesday.CHAD HIPOLITO\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

The B.C.<\/a> legislature was in turmoil Wednesday after BC Conservatives attempted to oust their leader, John Rustad, by declaring him unfit for the job. <\/p>\n

A lawyer\u2019s letter released by the Conservative Party said 20 members of the Official Opposition caucus \u2013 a bare majority \u2013 had lost confidence in Mr. Rustad. The party\u2019s board declared a new interim leader, MLA Trevor Halford, to serve while it begins the preparations for a leadership contest.<\/p>\n

But the remaining 19 Conservative MLAs did not sign the letter and Mr. Rustad declared the dissidents were acting outside party rules. He said he wasn\u2019t going anywhere. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m currently still the leader,\u201d he told reporters in the corridors of the legislature.<\/p>\n

The Speaker of the House has now been dragged into the conflict, as both sides make their case to determine who should be recognized as leader of the Official Opposition.<\/p>\n

Throughout the afternoon, Speaker Raj Chouhan and the clerks of the House shuttled back and forth, entertaining arguments from Mr. Halford, Mr. Rustad and Government House Leader Mike Farnworth. <\/p>\n

BC Conservative Leader says he won\u2019t quit, despite party pressure<\/a><\/p>\n

Mr. Farnworth told reporters he believed that the Conservatives should \u201csort their mess out\u201d and not drag the Speaker into the debate.<\/p>\n

In the end, Mr. Chouhan said he would need at least a day to render a ruling. <\/p>\n

As the fall sitting of the legislature wrapped on Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Rustad maintained he is in charge of a caucus that is now extraordinarily divided.<\/p>\n

Mr. Rustad sat in the seat assigned to the leader of the Official Opposition, but in the hallways, his House Leader, A\u2019aliya Warbus, said he had lost his standing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have all the gratitude in the world for John Rustad and what he has done for the Conservative Party and the movement,\u201d she said in an interview. \u201cThis decision was to uphold the will of the caucus majority.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ability of the caucus or the party executive to remove Mr. Rustad is limited. He won a leadership review among party members in the summer with about 70 per cent of the vote. <\/p>\n

Editorial: The return of the B.C. conservative self-sabotage show<\/a><\/p>\n

The decision to oust him Wednesday was announced by the party\u2019s board of directors, who passed a motion \u201ccertifying that Rustad is \u2026 professionally incapacitated and unable to continue as party leader,\u201d a party press release says. The party\u2019s website now lists Mr. Halford as the interim leader, with links inviting donations.<\/p>\n

In a social-media post, Mr. Rustad lashed out at his party\u2019s board, which he had hand-picked as loyalists at the previous party convention.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not going anywhere,\u201d he wrote. \u201cA political party\u2019s board can throw around whatever creative terminology they like, \u2018professional incapacitation\u2019? Give me a break.\u201d<\/p>\n

A little more than a year ago, Mr. Rustad came close to forming government in B.C. His Conservative Party won 44 seats, the Greens took two, and the governing NDP held on by the slimmest majority with 47 seats.<\/p>\n

Caucus strife within the Conservative ranks have since reduced Mr. Rustad\u2019s team to 39 seats. Two have moved to a fledgling party and three sit as Independents. <\/p>\n

Mr. Rustad told reporters he would not call a caucus meeting \u2013 although the caucus was set to gather on Wednesday evening for a long-planned Christmas party.<\/p>\n

Opinion: What does David Eby have to be thankful for? An amateur Opposition in utter turmoil<\/a><\/p>\n

Outside the Conservative caucus offices in the legislature, many MLAs struggled to answer a simple question: Who is your leader?<\/p>\n

Mr. Halford, the MLA for Surrey-White Rock, would only say that \u201cmy whole thing is about stabilization.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawyer Bruce Hallsor wrote the letter to the party president, saying 20 individual members of caucus each had declared that they had lost confidence in Mr. Rustad\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n

This was the latest \u2013 but most devastating \u2013 attack in a long-running challenge to the politician, who helped build the party from zero seats to Official Opposition status in less than two years.<\/p>\n

As a long-time MLA in the former B.C. Liberal government, he served mostly on the backbench with only a brief stint in cabinet and was kicked out of that caucus for questioning the existence of anthropogenic climate change.\u2029<\/p>\n

But in March, 2023, Mr. Rustad turned his maverick status into a feature, taking over a moribund party that hasn\u2019t formed a government in British Columbia in almost a century.<\/p>\n

BC Conservative Leader muzzles MLAs to avoid exposing caucus divides<\/a><\/p>\n

The B.C. Conservatives benefited from the surge in popularity of the federal Conservatives<\/a> under Pierre Poilievre<\/a>, although the two parties are not affiliated. <\/p>\n

In the span of a year, Mr. Rustad recruited seven MLAs from the B.C. Liberal benches. He then forced his former party (which had rebranded as BC United) to fold its tent just weeks before last fall\u2019s provincial election, after business leaders threatened to divert campaign contributions to the Conservatives.\u2029<\/p>\n

Mr. Rustad, who promised his candidates the right to free speech, rejected calls during the election campaign to dump any who had publicly shared racist and transphobic views, as well as conspiracy theories about vaccines. His would be the party of free speech, he maintained, and MLAs would not be whipped to maintain caucus discipline.<\/p>\n

But that lack of caucus discipline has been a source of internal tension, as moderates and social conservatives in the caucus locked horns.<\/p>\n

Mr. Rustad\u2019s style rankled some in his caucus. <\/p>\n

In September, he was forced to apologize after discussing a party member\u2019s alleged romantic relationship at a meeting with legislators. <\/p>\n

In October, Mr. Rustad confirmed the cellphones of Conservative members were searched during a meeting to find a leak from inside his caucus. Rustad said the phones were searched by other members to \u201cmake sure that there was nothing that had gone out that was inappropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: BC Conservative Leader John Rustad leaves the House following question period at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,44,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-324785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-news","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}