Conservative firebrand prepares to rumble in B.C.

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There is life after death in left coast politics. In the aftermath of a nail-biter of a provincial election in B.C. — with the incumbent NDP party eking out a razor-thin one-seat majority — there’s been a lot of head-scratching. Officially, John Rustad lost the race, but after rebooting the provincial Conservative Party, he’s acting like the winner.

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With such a polarized election outcome, I want to understand, how is Rustad readying his new crop of MLAs to deter the worst of NDP Premier David Eby’s ideological tendencies? Politics in B.C. can be prone to wild experiments. Recall that East Vancouver was the site of North America’s first safe injection site in 2003. Two decades later, the province launched a first-in-nation trial to decriminalize hard drugs, like cocaine and heroin.

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More recently, citizens across this country — indeed, across the world — were startled by the decision of B.C.’s NDP government to give the Haida Nation veto power over all land-use decisions in the Haida Gwaii archipelago. U.K.’s Guardian newspaper reported on the “path-breaking” implications of Eby’s “blueprint for decolonization” and his plans to share power with Indigenous nations.

“We’re going to do a couple of things as an opposition party,” Rustad shares in a recent conversation from his home, west of Prince George in northern B.C. “The first thing is … we’re actually going to be proposing solutions,” he says, whatever is needed to revive B.C.’s flagging economy. And, he warns, if the Conservatives don’t like what Eby’s government is proposing, “we are going to be very obstructive.”

There’s little doubt Rustad understands how the game of politics is played. Premier Eby has decided to wait until Feb. 18 to resume legislative sittings in Victoria, but that’s not slowing down Rustad’s drive to bring the B.C. Conservatives roaring back to life. “Stay tuned for January,” he quips, “we’re going to have some fun.” His party called for an independent review of the very close election, he reports, “we’re going to give the evidence in January as to why we need to do that.”

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The B.C. Conservatives went from zero to 44 MLAs in the October election, just three seats shy of the NDP majority. “Thirty-eight of them were new (MLAs),” Rustad explains. “So,” he says with a smirk, “the majority of our party… haven’t had that desire for change and straightforwardness beat out of them yet, by the system.”

A former B.C. Liberal MLA, representing the rural constituency of Nechako Lakes since 2009, and a minister in premier Christy Clark’s cabinet, Rustad was unceremoniously booted out of caucus two years ago by then B.C. Liberal leader Kevin Falcon. His sin? Refusing to expunge tweets reflecting skepticism about the cause of climate change.

I’m bold and proud about who I am and what I stand for

Rather than relocating to Alberta — as many disgruntled B.C. conservatives do — Rustad chose to stay and fight the good fight. It’s a tough choice; my husband’s grandparents homesteaded in this neck of the woods and when B.C. politics got too progressive, and opportunity in Alberta too compelling, my husband’s parents pulled up stakes and moved their family to Calgary.

“The stats from last summer show that one in three people are thinking about leaving this province,” Rustad sighs. “And I get it, I understand why. I mean the cost of living here is brutally high and there are all kinds of problems and issues. You can’t do business in this province,” he rails. “So I get why people want to leave, especially younger people.”

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In the run-up to a federal election in 2025, political insiders are paying close attention to what happens in these provincial matches. “The traditional thought — the conservative right and the socialist left … that’s actually not what we built in this province,” Rustad explains. “Who are the conservatives; who voted Conservative in this province?,” he asks. “It was young people. It was ethic minority groups. It was rural B.C.”

Membership in the provincial NDP equates to membership in the federal NDP, yet Jagmeet Singh, leader of the federal NDP and MP for Burnaby South, didn’t feature large in the B.C. election. The federal and provincial NDP parties share all the data and all the information, Rustad explains, “so they did the polling and they know that Jagmeet is not popular. I mean, Jagmeet may very well lose his riding in the next election.”

During the campaign, Rustad’s provincial conservatives were frequently accused of riding on the federal party’s coattails. “People kept saying, ‘Oh, you’re copying Poilievre,’ we got a lot of that,” Rustad chuckles, “I had to laugh, in many cases it was actually the other way around. For example, when we came out and talked about parental choice and parental rights.”

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“The federal Conservatives, I think, were a little too worried about us,” Rustad says with a grimace. “What I mean by that, is we ran on probably the most right-wing, the most conservative platform, that any conservative party in the country has run on. When you look at the things that we pushed … we went farther than anybody else was willing to go.”

I find this surprising, and say as much. But Rustad is unwavering: “I haven’t actually done the analysis myself, but many people, you know, from conservative movements across the country have commented on that.” If true, it means the distance between the governing NDP and their official opposition in B.C. — the furthest ends of the political spectrum — is staggeringly wide.

Even within his own caucus, Rustad admits he’s running into challenges in terms of expectations. The day after we chat, 13 Conservative MLAs pen a stern letter to Rustad, complaining one of their own MLAs has betrayed Conservative principles around free speech and cancel culture. Rustad’s response? He prefers that MLAs be free to speak their minds.

During the election campaign, Rustad’s Conservatives tabled ideas for health-care reform and a litany of other prescriptions to improve quality of life. But, for most voters, it was the economy that mattered. The province of B.C. is an $85-billion a year enterprise, with vast natural resources. Yet, Rustad laments, “I think over 70 per cent of our economy is now consumer driven.”

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“We’ve lost so much of our (economic) base,” Rustad explains. He blames the NDP’s policies that assault B.C.’s ability to compete and attract investment. “So many of these things just need to be torn down,” he sighs. Rustad believes this incumbent NDP government could readily add billions to the province’s coffers by moving forward on the 17 mines permitted or to be permitted in the province, or the three natural gas pipelines proposed to be built to the coast. I can only imagine Rustad’s reaction to Premier Eby’s recent announcement; the B.C. government is fast-tracking nine new wind power projects (equivalent to the power generation capacity of Site C dam) and the projects will be exempted from environmental assessments. The two Green Party MLAs who just signed a confidence pact with Eby’s government will no doubt be supportive of this latest NDP experiment.

At the end of our conversation, I ask Rustad about the extremely large ‘C’ pinned to the lapel of his suit jacket. “This is the conservative emblem,” he grins. “Everybody’s like, ‘Oh my god, that’s such a large pin.’ But I love it because, you know, I’m bold and proud about who I am and what I stand for.”

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