Adam Pankratz: The B.C. Conservatives are dissolving before our eyes

Buy the lettuce. Start the clock. Kerry-Lynne Findlay is surely done as leader of British Columbia’s Conservative Party. Anyone willing to bet Findlay will remain at the party’s helm longer than the typical leafy green can prevail in your fridge clearly isn’t paying attention to current events. On Wednesday afternoon two MLAs quit Findlay’s Conservative caucus, bringing the total to a whopping five in twelve days . There isn’t a fire inside B.C.’s Conservative party; there’s an inferno, and Kerry-Lynne Findlay is the one who lit the match to start it.

Having won the B.C. Conservative leadership by a hair’s width over activist and commentator Caroline Elliott at the end of May, Findlay has set about purifying the Conservative party back to its roots and away from the broader centre-right, free market coalition which has caused tension in the party since it merged with B.C. United (formerly the B.C. Liberals) ahead of the 2024 election.

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Gone are the people who actually built the party to its current broader tent status. Notable examples, apart from the MLAs fleeing the scene of the crime-in-progress, include Angelo Isidorou , the party’s former executive director who left at the end of July. Isidorou represented the wider coalition that the B.C. Conservatives could be and directed the party towards that end. Former party president Aisha Estey also resigned in the last few weeks .

As mind boggling as all the departures are, in response Findlay has said herself that more might follow. She’s probably right and, based on the current flow rate, I would advise readers to check the news upon completion of this column for wind of who else has decided to pull the ripcord.

During her time as leader Findlay made some eyebrow raising hires, as they signaled a more stridently right-wing turn. As her chief of staff, she appointed Chris Delaney, perhaps best known for his ties to former Social Credit Premier Bill Vander Zalm , notable for refusing to cover abortion costs under provincial health care.

Then she named Apollo Chung, a former member of the separatist Alberta Republican Party , as her director of operations. Embarrassingly for Findlay, Chung was fired on Wednesday, following the release of recordings in which he made comments that he didn’t “care about saving the province,” that “white people are like crazy” and that he has “the leader in his hands.” He further added dubious comments about his plans for funds raised by the Conservatives, saying he would go in and “steal everything” to use for his aims for the party.

Findlay’s critics says she and her team have created a massive culture problem within the party, rewarding blind loyalty over competence and treating those outside the leader’s circle poorly. The most recent MLA to depart, Brennan Day spoke to the general tenor of those who have left when he said on X on Wednesday “The current direction of Conservative Party of BC under Kerry-Lynne Findlay is no longer something I can support.