Too much party drama has distracted from the mission of unseating the NDP, this week's leadership debate included

Conservative politics in B.C. are exhausting and histrionic, to the detriment of each of us who want to see David Eby’s ruling NDP finally defeated.

It was just over three years ago that MLA John Rustad assumed leadership of the Conservative Party of British Columbia. We British Columbians all know how that went: Rustad’s meteoric rise nearly led the party to an election victory, before things subsequently and publicly fell apart, with Rustad ousted as leader in what commentator Michael Taube referred to as a “gong show.”

Well, the gong show continues.

This week, Juno News hosted a debate in the city of New Westminster for Conservative Party of British Columbia leadership candidates. Four out of six hopeful leaders attended: Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Iain Black, Yuri Fulmer and Warren Hamm (with whom I have no relation). Caroline Elliott and Peter Milobar did not attend. Juno placed empty podiums, including microphones, on the stage for both non-attendees.

The debate itself was milquetoast. The four candidates expressed near-unanimous agreement on all issues, and the crowd (the 360-seat room was near capacity) emitted some of its largest cheers and whoops following gibes in regard to the non-attendance of Elliott and Milobar. None of the candidates took shots at one another.

Findlay, a former Conservative MP who lost her seat in 2025, came across as the “winner,” if one could be declared.

Black, a former B.C. Liberal MLA and labour minister who last stood in the legislature in 2011, presented as a measured and safe candidate.

Fulmer, who has publicly announced a “Unite the Right” agreement with OneBC leader Dallas Brodie, has never held elected office but is an adept sloganeer. He at one point had the crowd cheering at an imagined scene of “tens of thousands of people protesting on the lawn of the legislature” with him as premier, after repealing B.C.’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) and “remind(ing) Indigenous people that Section 35 (of the Constitution) is consultation — it is not a veto over British Columbia.”

Interestingly, in a “lighting round” of questions, in which candidates had to quickly hold up “yes” or “no” placards to answer moderator questions, Fulmer was the only person who admitted to having ever performed a land acknowledgement referring to the province as “unceded territory.”

The final candidate, Hamm, also lacks political experience and it showed. He has an “everyman” persona that did him just fine in front of a friendly audience, but would likely not pass muster in a heated debate with rivals or an angry crowd.

Moderators Lindsay Shepherd and North Island-Powell River MP Aaron Gunn posed a couple cheeky questions to candidates, including how they would ensure that the party did not become the latest iteration of B.C. United or its precursor, the B.C. Liberals — an accusation that former leader Rustad regularly had thrown at him. They also tripped candidates up with a lightning round question about whether candidates would allow non-citizen permanent residents to vote in party leadership races. (Black and Fulmer didn’t answer, Hamm went from a “no” to a “yes,” and Findlay, who admitted “it isn’t just our decision,” voted “no.”)

The biggest story of the night, however, occurred outside of the rented Anvil theatre.

In the lead-up to the debate, Elliott (a former B.C. United staffer), who was originally going to attend, got into a public showdown with Juno News about the reason for her cancellation. Elliott cited several reasons: the debate was unsanctioned; she falsely believed Milobar (a former mayor as well as B.C. Liberal, and now Conservative, MLA) would be there; and that it occurred before the membership cut-off date. Juno disagreed and accused Elliott’s campaign of purchasing tickets to fill the audience with her supporters, and said she backed out only when they moved the debate to a larger venue in response.

Then Premier Eby came along and praised Elliott and Milobar on Wednesday for their non-attendance, referring to Juno as a “reprehensible platform,” and “a far-right-wing news outlet that promotes white supremacy, white supremist (sic) views” and shares “incredibly offensive and bizarre viewpoints.” Eby said Elliott made “the right decision.”

It’s likely that Eby’s potshot at Juno, and praise for Elliott, was political calculus designed to undermine Elliott, whose leadership campaign seems to have the most public momentum. Eby knows — because of how polarized the political landscape in this province is — that conservative voters may feel repulsed by his praise for one of their own. Whatever the case may be, Juno co-founder Keean Bexte responded with a threat of legal action against the premier later that day.

“David Eby has stooped to smearing Juno News with … disgusting and baseless slurs.… Let this serve as notice to any legacy media outlet considering repeating Eby’s defamatory remarks: if you uncritically republish those claims without contacting Juno News for comment, you do so at your own legal peril,” Bexte posted on X.

The pre-debate drama didn’t end there: minutes before the debate began, a young and unknown Elliott staffer released a video on social media claiming he was quitting her campaign so that he would not have to “compromise his core values.” Elliott has since carried on with her campaign without comment, appearing unfazed.

We cannot expect the general population to dedicate the mental bandwidth required just to keep track of the copious grievances and alliance changes within the movement, or to care when unknown party staffers take to social media with grand declarations about how their moral foundation has been shaken. Unless your boss was hiding corpses in her basement, or some such thing, it’s safe to assume that the public doesn’t have time for this level of minutiae. If anything, the conservative voter base has grown sick to death of the never-ending antics of a movement that must get itself together in order to course correct the disastrous route Eby’s NDP has us all on.

As if this wasn’t enough, Elliott and Milobar have both released statements denying any role in or knowledge of an August 2024 website, “firejohnrustad.ca,” for which Elections BC has fined B.C. United $4,500. Elections BC investigators announced on Tuesday that the website was created by B.C. United campaign officials and amounted to “transmitting a false statement to affect election results.” Milobar’s campaign manager, Mark Werner, was a B.C. United campaign manager at the time the website was created, and has been implicated in the Elections BC investigation.

The Conservative Party of B.C. will announce their new leader on May 30. Whoever wins, their priority needs to be keeping their own tent from going up in flames.

National Post