The Conservative Party of B.C. is mired in a deep crisis. Nine MLAs have quit the party in just two weeks, citing a “misalignment of values” with new party leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay who has taken the party in a right populist direction.
Right populists regain control
Findlay’s victory in the Conservative leadership race in May represented the triumph of the party’s right-populist wing over an establishment faction made up of former B.C. Liberals.
In her leadership bid, Findlay pledged to fight the “Liberal takeover” of the party. She weaponized culture war rhetoric to the fullest, especially on Indigenous issues. In a leadership debate, she accused ex-liberal front runner Peter Milobar of having a conflict of interest because his wife and children are Indigenous. If elected Premier she promises to repeal the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) and strengthen private property rights to combat First Nations’ land claims.
In her victory speech, Findlay railed against “socialist overreach that wants to dictate literally what we think.”
As leader, she has taken the party in a Trumpian direction with strange propaganda videos depicting B.C. premier David Eby as some sort of communist dictator. Teresa Wat, one of the nine MLAs to resign, cited the reason being that Findlay accused her of being a member of the Chinese Communist Party (Wat is Taiwanese).
Findlay sacked multiple staffers and replaced them with far-right reactionaries, including an Alberta separatist and a journalist who has defended white nationalists. Immediately, Findlay’s right populist cronies plunged the party into a corruption scandal, culminating with two leaked audio clips from internal Conservative meetings.
In the first clip, a speaker is heard saying that “I don’t care about, like, saving the province and all that shit. Once we get government, you can do what the fuck you want… We need to basically force all of them to make a fundraiser for us. And so we can steal everything.” The speaker is reportedly none other than Apollo Chung. Chung was previously the executive director of the Republican Party of Alberta and was hired by Findlay to be caucus operations director. While the Conservatives deny he was the speaker, Chung was fired the next day with no explanation.
In the second clip, Findlay tells her MLAs that anyone stepping aside so she can run for a legislative seat will be rewarded with a senior adviser position on an MLA salary, exposing a level of corruption and cronyism usually hidden from public view. Reann Gasper, now former Abbotsford-Mission MLA who stepped aside so Findlay could run, was subsequently awarded a position as chief of staff. According to electoral law, promising a position to bribe an elected official to step down is illegal.
While the B.C. NDP government and many on the left are understandably celebrating the meltdown of the Conservative party, it would be incorrect to think that this means the end of right populism in the province. In order to defeat this menace, we need to understand the process that has created it in the first place.
The collapse of the liberal establishment
Prior to 2023, the B.C. Conservatives had been a political nothing in the province for generations. The B.C. Liberals were the dominant rightwing capitalist party, ruling with a majority from 2001-2017. But as the crisis of the system got worse, and the lives of working class people degraded, support for the Liberal establishment collapsed.
This led to the B.C. NDP coming to power in 2017. They have been in government ever since.
However, they have proven that they also have no solutions to the crisis. Because the NDP are not a genuine socialist party, they have ended up managing the capitalist system as it is in a state of decline and decay while the lives of working class people have only gotten worse. This has led many to the NDP as the establishment and the reason why their lives are getting worse. These are the ideal conditions for right-populism to arise.
This is the context in which ex-Liberal John Rustad was able to galvanize anger as a Trump-style anti-establishment candidate and revive the B.C. Conservatives in 2023. Their meteoric rise in the polls eclipsed the BC Liberals who first desperately changed their name to BCUnited but then when that didn’t work, folded themselves into the Conservatives so as not to split the anti-NDP vote. This was very much a similar dynamic to the one we saw with establishment Republicans falling in line behind Trump. As one Conservative MLA put it, the B.C. Liberals “stayed on a ship until it sank and then jumped onto our life raft in order to cling to relevance.”
While many people thought the Trump-like Rustad would be unable to pose a serious electoral challenge, they came within three seats of forming government in the 2024 election. The ex-liberals inside the Conservative party then orchestrated a coup and pushed Rustad out in 2025. While they gleefully thought that they had done away with the right-populist threat, the liberal establishment candidates fared poorly in the leadership race and Findlay, the most clear Trump-style candidate won.
How to fight right populism
The B.C. Conservatives under Findlay’s leadership represent a threat to the working class of British Columbia. The slogan Findlay is running on is “More freedom, less government.” This is a euphemism for privatizations, public sector layoffs and cuts to public spending. To reduce waiting lines in the underfunded healthcare system, Findlay wants to expand private healthcare. Doctors have described this as “just rearranging the line” based on who can pay. Findlay also wants to “empower” private sector wildfire-fighting, introduce private auto insurance, build more pipelines, and cut environmental regulations. A B.C. under the Conservatives would be a nightmare for workers, youth, and Indigenous peoples.
While the B.C. Conservatives meltdown looks like it has weakened them, this is a superficial view. The MLAs that resigned sought to manufacture a crisis that would lead to Findlay resigning or being forced out. But Findlay, like Trump, is not a weak-willed liberal politician and is not going anywhere. Her supporters are in fact celebrating the departure of these fair weather MLAs. For example, Chris Delany, her former chief of staff has called them “The enemies of B.C. and the enemies of democracy.”
With the liberal establishment elements purged and her supporters in key positions, Findlay’s control of the Conservatives is in fact stronger. It will be easier for her to refashion the party with an anti-establishment image.
While some of these MLAs who have split from the Conservatives are likely to form a new centre-right party to oppose both the NDP government and the B.C. Conservatives, it is unlikely that they will do very well as support for liberal establishment politicians has dwindled everywhere. And even if they manage to split the vote and the NDP get re-elected, this would not solve the underlying conditions that gave rise to right populism in the first place.
Currently, the NDP lead in the polls at 44 per cent. But Eby’s approval rating stands at 31 per cent. Support for the NDP is due to it being seen as a lesser evil to the Conservatives than enthusiastic approval for the party. And no wonder: faced with the crisis, Eby’s NDP has come down on the side of the bosses time after time. Just this summer, Eby bailed out condo developers to the tune of $1.45 billion, while slashing B.C.’s affordable housing fund by $1.4 billion. This while workers spend 60 per cent of their income on rent.
Their most recent budget cut 15 000 public jobs, but found $750 million for mining exploration – all while the province’s youth face the country’s worst unemployment rate. We also can’t forget how the NDP repressed the Wet’suwet’en in 2020, despite all their promises to uphold Indigenous rights.
If the NDP continues to betray its working class base, it will lead to more anger against the government.
All of this creates conditions for Findlay’s Conservatives to galvanize anger against the NDP similar to what Trump has done south of the border. A future right-wing victory is a real possibility if a genuine working class alternative does not emerge.
The B.C. NDP have been denouncing Findlay’s “Trump-style politics” and her “racist remarks.” But as we have seen in the United States, Germany, the UK and France, no amount of moral outrage can stop right populism. This is because, the force behind Findlay’s rise is their abject failure to solve any of the problems facing workers in B.C..
The only way to cut across the growth of right populism is to direct class anger against the capitalists and their system which is to blame for the crisis. This can be done by fighting for a socialist program which will solve all of the burning issues facing working class people.
For example, parasitical condo developers who have driven up the cost of housing should not be bailed out, they should be nationalized and a socialist plan for housing enacted, offering high quality, cheap housing to all in need. Mining companies who demand unfettered access to the land should be brought under public ownership. A socialist plan for resource development could then be ushered in, guaranteeing Indigenous land rights are respected while at the same time making sure the benefits of development projects goes to society as a whole and not a handful of investors. Workers’ control over wealth and economic development would allow us to fully fund public services and end the crisis in our hospitals and schools.
This is the only way to inspire working class people to fight for a better future. This alone can take the wind out of the sails of the right populist charlatans who hypocritically claim to fight for working class people while loyally defending their corporate masters.
