BC Conservatives interim leader says the party is ready for a snap election

The interim leader of the BC Conservative Party says MLAs who left under Kerry-Lynne Findlay’s leadership are now starting to come back.

“I think five at this point have accepted and others are contemplating what they wanna do, of course.”

On Sunday, Findlay made the announcement on X saying she was resigning, adding that it was “not an easy decision” but called it the “right one” for the province.

MLA John Rustad announced on Monday morning that he has been invited to rejoin the party’s caucus, just days after he was expelled by Findlay in the dying days of her own leadership.

Doerkson said the calls he has been receiving from caucus members since Sunday are to unite and change government.

“I can’t even count the amount of messages that I’ve had that are supportive of that,” he said.

“It’s been, you know, obviously a rough patch. There’s no question about that,” he added.

“The general feeling in this province is that, you know, we want a government change. And I can assure you right now that if David Eby is certainly contemplating an election call in the morning, I think he’s gonna be sadly mistaken the judgment call that he’s made on this party because there is a huge overwhelming support coming at me right now to get things back together.”

There are rumours that Eby could call a snap provincial election this week.

Doerkson said that if that does happen, the BC Conservatives will be busy on the campaign trail immediately.

MLA Peter Milobar, a former BC Conservative caucus member, announced on Friday that he is the new leader of the CentreBC party.

Doerkson said that he would be open to discussing bringing CentreBC under the BC Conservative Party fold, but nothing has been decided yet.

“I think we are the viable option in British Columbia and I am open to working with anybody that wants to have a real conversation about how to change government over the next however many days the writ period ends up being,” he added.

“We will field a full slate of candidates absolutely and we are committed to doing that. I know that our election readiness team has been in meetings all day and we will definitely put up a full slate of candidates.”