The BC Conservative Platform: A Road Map to the 1950s

We’ve spent the summer watching the Conservative Party of BC tear itself apart. The MLAs who have left the party are now Independents or considering joining new parties. Some, like Peter Milobar, say they’ve left because their values do not align with those of party leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay.

But a year and a half ago, in March 2025, the B.C. Conservatives held a convention in Nanaimo and published a 20-page, 19-point policy declaration describing how they would govern the province. Presumably today’s dissidents signed on to it, whatever the differences in their values. Every party is a coalition, after all, whose members are willing to bargain over policy, make compromises and then agree on the deal.

So it’s instructive to look at the Conservatives’ Nanaimo declaration in some detail as a political manifesto. We can understand it better by comparing it with those of the nascent far-right and “centre” parties now putting themselves together, as well as the BC NDP and Greens.

The declaration has some internal contradictions. In Article 2, on democratic reform and accountable government, we hear that “compelled speech” in any form is a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. “Individual freedoms of thought, belief, opinion and expression supersede all compelled speech.”

This seems to be inspired by the federal Conservative party, which on its website has a petition based on two people in B.C. who were allegedly fined large sums of money for stating that “there are only two genders.” The implication is that the two had refused to be compelled, and paid the price.

Fair enough, perhaps, though the American Psychological Association would take issue with the use of “gender” as a synonym for “biological sex.” Compelled speech also appears to include modern civilities like land acknowledgments and respecting people’s chosen pronouns.

Article 14, however, endorses its own kind of compelled speech. It deals with religious freedom and combating antisemitism.