Dave Sharkey still remembers how he felt about the future of the Conservative Party of B.C. when he was part of the delegation that marched in the 2022 Aldergrove Christmas Light Up Parade.
"There were only four of us," Sharkey said. "Two of us were holding the banner, and the other two were handing out candy canes. But the reception was actually surprisingly positive, and it was a kind of experience that led me to believe that in terms of our political ambitions, we were on the right track."
Sharkey, a party member since 2017 and a former provincial candidate for the Libertarian Party, now sees Conservatives on the wrong track.
His conclusion comes despite the B.C. Conservatives coming within a whisker of forming government in October 2024 when 912,000 residents voted for the party that had just under 36,000 votes in the 2020 election.
Sharkey said he blames the same man others credit for reviving a party that once polled at two per cent: Official Opposition Leader John Rustad.
The party's direction and identity is at the heart of a dispute that set off the departure of three members of the legislature and arguments among riding associations. Should it be populist or moderate? Big tent or small?
It also comes as party members review Rustad's leadership in accordance with the party's constitution.
Rustad became the leader a month after joining the party in March 2023. He had been with the BC Liberals since 2005, but was kicked out in 2022 by then-leader Kevin Falcon.
Relations between the rivals then reversed in August 2024, when Falcon suspended the election campaign of his party, rebranded as BC United, following the defections of members to the Conservatives.
Now, Sharkey said, the Conservatives have become a rebranded version of Rustad's old party.
There was no appetite from the members to be that big-tent party, he said.
"There is an appetite from the members to remain a grassroots party, and if Mr. Rustad wants to be a big tent, start a big-tent party."
He believes Rustad's changes cost the Conservatives the election win, said Sharkey, who considers himself the riding association president in Abbotsford-Mission.
Domenic Cinalli describes himself as an early supporter and one-time close confidant of Rustad, but said he doesn't like the direction Rustad has taken the party.
"He has abandoned what we all stood for," Cinalli said. "He's abandoned the strong stances that we had and it wasn't just John who brought us there. It was all the volunteers and the people who were out there fighting tooth and nail."
Cinalli said he's disappointed about the party changed directions on reconciliation with First Nations and Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity programming.
"They have gone more mediocre, more to the middle," said Cinalli, who is no longer a party member.
But for others, the Conservative tent isn't big enough. Ryan Beedie, a prominent Vancouver businessman, said in a social media post last month that the Conservatives will need to "rebrand to something more inclusive" if they wish to appeal to "centrist voters" just as Social Credit or the BC Liberals did in the past.
A months-long leadership review is underway amid allegations from Rustad that three former Conservative MLAs — Tara Armstrong, Dallas Broadie and Jordan Keely — "blackmailed" Conservative staff.
Rustad first made the allegation in a letter to his caucus without naming the MLAs directly. All three have denied the claims, and have instead accused Rustad of using the allegations to distract from questions about his leadership.
While Rustad has since expressed regret for using the term blackmail, his critics have seized on it.
Beedie said Rustad's allegations raise questions about his leadership and the party should use the review to move toward the middle.
"Hopefully, this (review) is a positive step toward the B.C. Conservatives getting their house in order and shifting their political strategy to a more centrist approach. They will need to do so, or the B.C. NDP will be staying in power for the foreseeable future."
UBC political science lecturer Stewart Prest said the Conservatives consist of a "populist" wing and a moderate wing, and the current riding-by-riding leadership vote could make for a "messy summer" with Rustad facing pressure from both sides.
"We are already hearing rumblings of challenges from both camps, so I don't know if it is an either-or situation," Prest said, when asked which faction was more likely to challenge Rustad for leadership.
A central source of criticism concerns the handling of the party's last annual general meeting held in March.
The "Team Rustad" slate swept elections for the party's board of directors. Delegates also approved amendments to the party's constitution as proposed by Rustad.
But not everybody has accepted the results, including Armstrong, Brodie and Kealy.
Brodie was kicked out of caucus days after the general meeting for comments concerning residential school survivors and Armstrong and Kealy followed her in solidarity.
In May, they alleged Rustad and his team "rigged" the meeting that endorsed the board, claiming it was stacked with South Asian supporters paid "to vote the way Mr. Rustad wanted."
Brodie and Armstrong have since gone on to form their own party, One BC. Its chief of staff is Tim Thielmann, a former Conservative candidate in Victoria-Beacon Hill. After losing the election, Thielmann was fired from his party job as director of research.
Thielmann later ran for party president at the AGM, but delegates re-elected current president Aisha Estey.
The allegations surrounding the AGM received another airing last month when 50-plus signatories describing themselves as "executive members or former executive members" of riding associations called on Estey to launch an external audit of the AGM.
The letter repeats the allegation that Team Rustad stacked the meeting with paid supporters, but also alleges that delegates were selected and rejected on the "basis of their political leanings or allegiance to Rustad."
It alleges Rustad and the executive team increased the influence of party executive over the selection process by "improperly delaying, denying, or withdrawing certification of riding associations," and placing Rustad loyalists into ridings where they were not residents.
Sharkey said he signed the letter because he believed procedures were not correctly followed and he regarded the whole meeting "to be illegitimate."
Sharkey shared this view in March, when he stood outside the meeting in Nanaimo to protest it, where Aeriol Alderking, another signatory, had joined him.
Alderking, who ran federally for the People's Party of Canada in the last federal election, said the AGM was the site of a "coup" where a "handful of people" under Rustad's leadership stole the party from "grassroots" Conservatives.
"Under John Rustad, it has become a centralized B.C. Liberal Party top down," she said in an interview. "The only thing they have done is put a blue coat on a red party."
A statement from the party said the letter is "signed largely by those who are not even members of the party, let alone (directors)."
The "allegations are just as absurd as the notion of a letter written by non-members, signed mostly by non-members, made to artificially inflate a non-issue for the sake of attention and mudslinging," it said.
Rustad has denied any wrongdoing at the meeting.
"I have been advised by our legal counsel and experts, who were present to scrutinize the voting process that our AGM was 100 per cent in line with this party's 2024-2025 constitution," he said in the letter containing the blackmail allegations against the three former Conservative MLAs.
Rustad said in an interview last month that critics like Sharkey and others "want this party to be something that it is not."
"I have said this all way through the campaign, and I don't know why people haven't heard it — it's not about being Conservative or Liberal, or NDP, or Green. It's just standing for what's right and fighting for the average everyday people. That is the party that we have built," Rustad said.
Conservative member of the legislature Gavin Dew said the current party "has had incredible success in building a new voter coalition" that includes many more young voters and more voters from different cultural communities.
"We have made incredible strides with blue-collar voters," Dew added. "We do incredibly well with suburban voters. So, we have made all this progress, but it is clear that we still need to win over that incremental voters, which I would say is that middle-of-the-road voter."
If the party holds its current coalition together and adds more "economically oriented voters" from the middle of the spectrum to this coalition, Conservatives can hold government for "multiple terms," Dew said in an interview.
Prest is more skeptical. While strong poll numbers now and victory down the line might entice both wings of the Conservatives to put aside their differences, "there isn't really a stable policy compromise that would make both of those sides happy" in the long-term, he said.
"In some really important ways, the divides between populist and more middle-of-the-road Conservatives are deeper than the divides between middle-of-the-road Conservatives and NDP, " Prest said.
Picture Courtesy: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito
