The BC Conservatives faced major upheaval on Friday as it expelled one MLA from caucus amid a deepening rift over comments she made about residential schools, and two others said they would leave the party.
“Yesterday, MLA Dallas Brodie challenged the Conservative Party of BC caucus to fire her — including by asking Conservative MLAs to have a vote on removing her — and made the decision to walk out of the Conservative Party of BC caucus room,” party leader John Rustad said in a statement.
“As a result of her decision to publicly mock and belittle testimony from former residential school students, including by mimicking individuals recounting stories of abuses — including child sex abuse, MLA Brodie is not welcome to return to our Conservative Party of BC Caucus.”
Brodie responded to her ejection on social media Friday afternoon, saying she spoke the truth and would “never back down,” claiming the “truth is a threat” to “vested interests in the multi-billion-dollar reconciliation industry.”
“It is an indisputable fact that the number of bodies discovered at Kamloops is zero,” Brodie wrote.
She went on to accuse Premier David Eby and Rustad of being “willing to sell off British Columbia’s wealth and power, transferring it from the public to an elite racial minority—enriching opportunistic lawyers, consultants, and chiefs along the way.”
Following Brodie’s expulsion, Peace River North MLA Jordan Kealy took to social media to say he had lost faith in Rustad and the “toxic” BC Conservatives, suggesting he planned to start a new party “with real conservative standards.”
“I stood up for a fellow MLA who was harassed for speaking the truth, only to become a target myself. The party has created an environment where some so-called “Conservatives” would rather throw cheap insults than deal with facts,” Kealy wrote.
“I’ll be a champion for my community, with or without a party. And honestly, I think I can do that job a whole lot better without the toxic mess the BC Conservatives have become. My loyalty is to the people of Peace River North—not a party that’s lost its way.”
Not long afterward, Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream MLA Tara Armstrong joined the exodus, saying Rustad stabbed Brodie in the back amid alleged “hostile interests within the reconciliation industry.”
“Under John Rustad’s leadership, one compromise after another has transformed that party into something I no longer recognize,” she wrote on social media.
“He’s abandoned the truth and his moral compass in a quest for power. And the reality is, he will end up with neither. ”
Party fractures
The fracture emerged in February, when Brodie, the Conservatives’ attorney general critic, posted on social media concerns about the “apparent mistreatment” of a lawyer who called on the Law Society of BC to change the language in training material to refer to “potential” burial sites at the former residential school in Kamloops, rather than more definitive wording.
In her posts, Brodie said there are “zero” confirmed child burial sites at the school.
Rustad asked her to take the post down, saying it could be misinterpreted as questioning the wider legacy of documented harms at residential schools, including the death of at least 4,000 children, but Brodie refused.
That drew a response from BC Conservative House Leader Áʼa꞉líya Warbus, who is Indigenous, who wrote on social media that “Questioning the narratives of people who lived and survived these atrocities, is nothing but harmful and taking us backward in reconciliation.”
The issue then exploded this week, when Brodie posted a video to social media calling out her caucus colleagues, including a “super angry” Indigenous colleague she says “joined the NDP,” to call her out.
In the video, Brodie said Rustad was “extremely wedded to this 4,000 number” regarding child deaths in residential schools. That figure was determined by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission based on federal records and testimony.
She also used a mocking voice when referring to Indigenous people’s personal stories of Institutional abuse, saying truth must be based on evidence not “his truth, her truth, oh, my grandmother’s truth.”
Warbus, who was visibly upset when asked about the video outside the legislative chamber on Thursday, said if her party can’t get on the same page on residential schools then she doesn’t know why she’s sacrificing her time to be a political representative.
In his statement on Friday, Rustad said there was no debate that horrible things happened to vulnerable children at residential schools, including pedophiles preying on children.
“I believe strongly in free speech — however, using your stature and platform as an MLA to mock testimony from victims alleging abuse, including child sex abuse, is where I draw the line,” Rustad said.
“I want to be clear — this has nothing to do with whether or not there are undiscovered remains at Kamloops Indian Residential School, where it is objectively true that no new bodies have been found.
“This is about an elected MLA using her position of authority to mock testimony of survivors of abuse, including child sex abuse.”
The Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc First Nation said in 2021 that ground penetrating radar provided “confirmation of the remains of 215 children” at the school site, but last year said the radar found “confirmation of 215 anomalies.”
The nation has not yet moved to excavate the site amid ongoing conversations with survivors. But Indigenous British Columbians say there is no question children were buried at the institution and many others in the province.
Rustad added that the party would continue to advocate that the Law Society of BC use “accurate language in training materials, and does not unduly agitate against its members.”