BC Far-Right Nut Cracks as Election Writ Drops
This Week in Annexation I.1
BCNDP Premier David Eby calling the snap election -- image via X screenshot
By Gabriel Haythornthwaite, The DNA Report
With 27 days to go, The DNA Report is continuing This Week in Annexation with another sad news story for the Trumpy faction, this time in BC. Events have been moving very fast in the province today as a leadership collapse in the opposition Conservatives has given way to a snap election.
Political pundits have been devouring popcorn while watching the bizarre meltdown of the official opposition BC Conservatives during the dizzy 113-day tenure of Kerry-Lynne Findlay. Findlay (no name abbreviation pretense will be honoured here) was narrowly elected BC Con leader in late May despite holding no seat in the Legislature.
Findlay, however, is no stranger to establishment politics. She was first elected as a federal Conservative MP in the Lower Mainland during the 2011-15 Stephen Harper majority regime, during which she was raised to the cabinet as Minister of National Revenue. Dumped overboard by the electorate in the 2015 sunny ways election of Justin Trudeau, Findlay clawed her way back onto the MP dole in 2019 before again being swamped by the 2025 Carney wave.
Aping Trump-USA
The drama that set for the stage for Findlay’s rise and fall as BC Conservative leader began with the unceremonious ouster of the previous leader, MLA John Rustad, last December. A former BC Liberal cabinet minister, Rustad demonstrated considerable moxie in taking the marginal BC Cons to within a hair’s breadth of power in the 2024 election. This after he was kicked out of the ailing opposition Liberals in 2022 for urging the public to “celebrate CO2” and stop worrying about climate catastrophe.
A bitter three-month leadership contest followed Rustad’s departure with five candidates eventually facing off in a preferential ballot which led to Findlay winning 51% of the vote after four counting rounds. All five candidates had pledged unity around the following dour regressive program: canceling First Nations rights elaborated in the 2019 BC Declaration Act; an even more servile subjugation of the province to corporate resource plunderers; scapegoating drug addicts; finishing the job of destroying public services in the name of fiscal responsibility and; ‘protecting’ entirely safe private property privilege.
Findlay distinguished herself in the BC Conservative leadership campaign by promoting the maniacal mantra of “faith, family and freedom”—the fascist credo of Turning Point USA founded by assassinated Trump-auxiliary and pedantic racist, Charlie Kirk. This is an extreme rightwing framing that Governor Smith is too smart to use in the promotion of her pre-annexation referendum.
Eager to catch up with the rest of the Quisling annexation project in western Canada, Findlay promoted a ‘Western Alliance’ of BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan based on five policy ‘pillars’ which headline enshrining private property power in the Canadian Constitution, telling First Nations to accept unfettered colonial control through the repeal of the federal 2021 UN Declaration Act, punching oily pipelines to the west coast, auto-certification of ‘drill, baby, drill’ resource plunder schemes and, of course, tax cuts.
The Amazing Shrinking Caucus
Troubles for the BC Conservative caucus started under Rustad’s watch with three MLAs splitting to the far-Right in 2025. Though two of them opted eventually to sit as independent reactionaries, the OneBC party was formed by MLA Dallas Brodie who specializes in promoting the retro-colonial eradication of First Nations’ rights.
Like the BC Conservatives, the Declaration Act and its implications for shared decision-making around land and resource use are the primary target of OneBC. Adding racist insult to genocidal injury, Brodie has additionally seen fit to seek rehabilitation of the hair-raising residential school record. Citing a lack of exhumed remains, OneBC rejects documented findings from the 2016 Truth and Reconciliation Commission that at least 4,000 Indigenous children died in these government-sanctioned church-run experiments.
Findlay’s ascension to the BC Conservative leadership in May signalled an apparent triumph of far-Right nuts over the party’s hard-Right establishment hacks. By July, the executive director and director of research were out along with half of the party staff overall and suspicious people spoke of a purge in favour of loyalists.
MLAs were not far behind. The BC Conservative caucus began to shed defectors who cited Findlay’s leadership style, particularly in allegations of illegal resignation bribery to get the new leader a Legislature seat. By September 2nd, eight MLAs had bailed in the space of 20 days.
Things really got crazy when word got out on September 17th about a private investigator, hired by a former party senior staffer, being on the case looking into current BC Con MLAs and former executives. The next day, with a caucus that was not yet small enough, Findlay kicked out former leader Rustad and two other MLAs. Two days later, Findlay herself resigned.
Taking Advantage
Casting BC Conservatives as MAGA allies scheming to stand the province down against the Trump-USA threat, BCNDP Premier David Eby made his pitch today for a roll of the electoral dice to gain a larger majority at the polls on October 24th.
This election gambit is one example of many in how the liberal wing of the establishment deploys the Trump threat as cover for cynical decision-making. Eby at his election notice press conference did firmly engage the ethical question about the credibility of calling a contest while their main opposition only has a spare head in charge, saying “the Conservatives have been in crisis for two years”.
Basically the Cons’ own fault; which is hard to argue with on its own. Eby was far less eager to engage and simply brushed off the matter of a chosen provincial election date that runs 90% over a barely begun local election campaign. Considering Eby’s autocratic contempt for local governments—whether that be in the 2023 cancellation of municipal zoning powers or the illegitimate 2025 firing of the Victoria school board on behalf of the police—his breezy disregard of local elections is hardly surprising.
But is Eby’s cynical timing a good calculation after all? Unity talks between the BC Cons and their largest group of recent splitters are apparently well underway and it may be that this political ambush is just the unifier the corporate class needs to push the hard-Right to get its shit together and topple the ‘communist’ NDP.
Purge of the Far Right
There are also signs that the BC Cons are settling affairs with the Findlay faction. Today, BC Conservative MLA Brent Chapman—Findlay’s husband—announced he was joining the far-Right OneBC party. Surely, Findlay can’t be far behind and there may be others setting to decamp from the caucus.
Findlay’s failed launch as BC Conservative leader and the apparent reversion of the party back to a run-of-the-mill hard-Right orientation both suggest that the elite firewall against a Trump-USA politics is more intact in BC compared to Alberta. Findlay’s ham-fisted affinity with Trumpian framing and her ultra-regressive western bloc concept did not fly even in opposition in BC while Alberta’s ruling party is championing the province’s first ‘separation’ ballot as Trump talks aloud about annexation.
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Gabriel Haythornthwaite is a former labour-allied school board trustee in BC and currently advises First Nations around political and intergovernmental relations. He is also a leftwing writer and political organizer.
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