BC Conservative Leader John Rustad speaks at a Greater Vancouver Board of Trade event in Vancouver, on June 20.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Just last year, BC Conservative Leader John Rustad told a small conference in Victoria that he was humbled and inspired to share the same stage as a number of COVID conspiracy theorists and anti-government activists, saying their movement first impressed him when he attended a convoy of truckers parading down a main Vancouver thoroughfare.
“It reminded me, quite frankly, of the 2010 Olympics – people were waving flags, they were proud of the country that they belong to, they were singing O Canada at the top of their lungs,” said Mr. Rustad, his usual monotone breaking with emotion. “Good God, this to me is Canada, that to me is the real power of what we want to see in this province and in this country.”
Mr. Rustad’s remarks remain available in a YouTube video of the May, 2023, Reclaiming Canada conference, where he was one of four keynote speakers.
His BC Conservative Party was recently invigorated by subsuming its only rival on the right side of the provincial political spectrum through a deal with the Leader of the BC United Party, formerly the BC Liberals. That party suspended its campaign in favour of transferring some candidates to Mr. Rustad’s party in an attempt to beat the incumbent New Democrats.
Now, with polls showing the BC Conservatives at even odds to win the Oct. 19 election, Mr. Rustad must court the same urban voters that helped the BC Liberals form government for the first decade and a half of this century. Those efforts are being complicated by his stands against efforts to curb emissions and gender-affirming policies for trans students as well as his allegiance to the trucker convoy and assorted freedom movements.
Dumping fuel on the fire are members of BC United who were never consulted prior to leader Kevin Falcon’s decision to support the BC Conservatives and who have spent much of the past year gathering damaging opposition research into Mr. Rustad, some of his candidates and the executive director of his party. Some of that information has turned up in other media, attributed to BC United.
BC United believed Mr. Rustad’s speech at the conference last year was a political liability. Mr. Rustad’s fellow keynote speakers there included an Albertan doctor who made unproven assertions that coronavirus vaccines cause sudden death, an Albertan lawyer who hired a private investigator to surveil a Manitoba judge and a former premier of Newfoundland who this summer lost a bid to appeal Ottawa’s vaccine mandate imposed upon air travellers during the pandemic.
Mr. Rustad told the dozens of conference participants his visit to the trucker convoy gave him hope people could “reclaim” Canada’s foundering democracy. He said he saw these protests as a political awakening for many non-voters in society who, rightfully he said, distrust mainstream politicians and their parties.
A convoy of truckers and their supporters opposed to COVID-19 health measures and vaccinations sits at a standstill after being blocked by counter protesters, in Vancouver, B.C., Feb. 5, 2022. BC Conservative Leader John Rustad told dozens of conference participants last year that his visit to the trucker convoy gave him hope people could 'reclaim' Canada’s foundering democracy.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
But, he also said, his former party – the BC Liberals – had ordered him to stay away from such events and refrain from talking about the nascent far-right movement because doing so would “cost us votes in the Lower Mainland.”
Pollster Greg Lyle, president of Innovative Research Group who is not helping any party in this campaign, said Mr. Rustad’s participation in the Victoria conference and his recent interview with censured psychologist and podcaster Jordan Peterson plays to a right-wing base. But, he said, BC Conservatives should focus more on wooing past BC United voters, some of whom a recent poll showed may be turning to the BC Green Party as a temporary political home.
“It’s really hard to get a non-voter to vote; it is much easier to get a voter that’s going to vote no matter what,” said Mr. Lyle, who has occasionally done polling for the former BC Liberal Party. “If you don’t chase them, the other folks will and you can’t afford to lose them.”
Less than two weeks after Mr. Rustad and Mr. Falcon announced their deal in late August, BC United sources leaked a file to media across the province outlining the “extremism” of provincial Conservative candidates. Much of that research centred on the party’s executive director Angelo Isidorou’s online support of an alt-right influencer from Canada and his public affinity for former U.S. president Donald Trump.
The BC Conservative Party did not respond this week to requests for comment on how Mr. Rustad views his participation in the Reclaiming Canada conference nor whether he still supports the views of the other keynote speakers.
Earlier this week, Mr. Rustad told The Canadian Press that Mr. Isidorou was already part of the BC Conservatives when he was acclaimed their leader in March of 2023 and he dismissed criticism of Mr. Isidorou, calling him a “capable individual.”
The BC United document also cited Mr. Isidorou’s “admiration of Lauren Southern,” a far-right Canadian activist, who got her start in politics as a teen pundit for the BC Conservatives in the lead up to the 2013 provincial election and then, in 2015, ran as a federal Libertarian candidate in the B.C. riding of Langley-Aldergrove.
Around that time, Ms. Southern began working for the far-right Canadian outlet Rebel News, then moved on to making her own online documentaries on a variety of subjects including the conspiracy theory of white replacement, which holds that racialized immigrants are supplanting the white majorities in certain countries and that has animated white-supremacist terrorists to violence.
While director of the University of B.C.’s Free Speech Club in 2019, Mr. Isidorou courted widespread outrage by inviting Ms. Southern to share her views on campus and ultimately the student group said it had to cancel the event over increased security costs.
In the following years, Mr. Isidorou has offered online support to Ms. Southern, who spoke at this year’s Reclaiming Canada conference in May and began her speech explaining how she was radicalized by her rejection of the teachings in a social-justice class at her high school in Surrey, B.C.
Earlier this week, Mr. Isidorou responded to questions about this relationship by posting on X that his interactions with Ms. Southern on that platform do not equate to endorsement. He also stated that “labeling someone as a white nationalist without credible evidence is not only irresponsible but plays right into the divisive narrative that David Eby’s government and his media supporters are notorious for pushing.”
With a report from The Canadian Press