Rob Shaw: Rustad is moving fast from conservative darling to ‘paranoid’ punchline
As the Conservatives implode, the rest of the B.C. political spectrum is moving in to divide up the spoils.
By: Rob Shaw
Only a year ago, John Rustad was the new darling of conservative politics. The 62-year-old mild-mannered, bespectacled former forestry consultant had somehow sparked a lightning bolt of conservative populism in British Columbia, riding it from obscurity to within two seats of toppling B.C. NDP Premier David Eby’s government in the fall election.
Since then, though, it’s been a freefall. A leadership review tainted by fake memberships, caucus defections and public firings, all within the last seven months, have marked Rustad’s decline from populist to punchline.
This past week, the beleaguered B.C. Conservative leader hit a new low when he had the phones of his MLAs searched to try to find the source of embarrassing leaks about his party’s internal troubles.
Rustad found nothing. But the search to find the leaker was itself leaked to the media, in the kind of cosmic irony that tends to befall troubled politicians.
“We expect discipline in caucus,” said Rustad. “We expect people to be part of our team, to be able to move forward, and if anyone is working against that then we have a series of disciplinary actions that we will be taking.”
Still, the wheels are wobbling badly on the Team Rustad bus.
Two B.C. Conservative MLAs defied their leader and refused to vote in favour of a bill to ban gender-altering surgery for minors, which was put on the floor of the legislature by the breakaway far-right party called OneBC. Instead, the MLAs stood in the hallway, ignoring the whipped vote.
Inside the Conservative caucus, Rustad narrowly avoided a secret ballot on his leadership — the second attempt by some of his 40 MLAs to challenge his position in less than a month.
His relationship with the Conservative party executive and board has also collapsed, leaving him alienated from once-loyal strategists.
Even federal Conservative MP Aaron Gunn, a founding member of the B.C. Conservative movement, has begun taking thinly veiled shots at Rustad on social media, accusing him of not standing up for free speech after Rustad fired a junior political staffer over posts that called the day of remembrance on residential schools a “disgrace.”
He’s also lost ground amongst moderates, after last month firing Elenore Sturko, a former RCMP officer and member of the LGBTQ community. She’d given the B.C. Conservatives a boost of credibility when she became one of the first MLAs to join last year, dampening down criticism the party was a cesspool of homophobia, transphobia and intolerance. But Rustad accused her of disloyalty and ejected her on Sept. 22.
As the Conservatives implode, the rest of the political spectrum is already moving in to divide up the spoils.
Premier Eby has been circling moderate conservative voters by talking up LNG and mining projects like a born-again resource hawk. On the other flank, two MLAs who broke to form OneBC are whipping up the far-right online fringe, posting culture-war-style videos railing against trans rights and immigration, while creating conspiracy-adjacent documentaries on Indigenous reconciliation.
The small but vocal online community of conservative influencers that used to support the B.C. Conservatives now trash the party to anyone who will listen.
All of this has left Rustad in a kind of political no-man’s-land. He’s squeezed from the centre by a government evolving to stay in power, and on the right by a breakaway party chasing the angry fringe. His caucus is out to get him, or so he thinks. He’s lost his top strategists. And the party base is out for his head.
Even by the high standards of weirdness that define B.C. politics, it’s been a spectacle to observe.
At his most recent media availability late last week, Rustad was peppered with questions over searching his MLAs’ phones.
“John, are you paranoid?” a Canadian Press reporter asked. “That’s the question that looms over all of this.”
Rustad laughed it off, with a “No.”
But in an extraordinary scene, his chief of staff, Brad Zubyk, launched on the reporter, wagging his finger in his face while unloading a profanity-laced tirade in front of the cameras.
“Give me a break, that’s bullshit, shut up,” Zubyk fumed. “You’re cut off. You’re not getting another question, ever.”
The intervention did not save Rustad — he spent another five minutes getting shellacked by the press corps on the cellphone issue before he could extricate himself from the scrum.
By the end of the event, it was hard to tell if Rustad was defending his leadership or just trying to survive it.
The man who once brought down the B.C. Liberals now looks poised to bring down himself, as a movement he helped start tries to move on without him.
Correction: The spelling of Brad Zubyk’s name has been corrected.
Rob Shaw has spent more than 17 years covering B.C. politics. He now reports for CHEK News out of Victoria. He’s the host of the weekly podcast and YouTube show Political Capital, a weekly political correspondent for CBC Radio’s All Points West and Radio West programs, and a contributing columnist to Business in Vancouver and BC Business Magazine. You can reach him at rob@robshawnews.com.
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OneBC “railing against trans rights”?
What rights was OneBC “railing” against? The rights of a minor to medically transition?
That is not “a right”. It is child abuse.
Not sure if that quote is hyperbole, gaslighting or deliberate misinformation, but you can put me in the ‘disappointed’ column.
Rustad and his enablers must be smoking some crazy shit if they think this is good for his party or, like, democracy. Conservatives in BC (as in most provinces) need a sizable mass of centrist voters if they are to manage majorities or even functional minorities. And right now we desperately need greater breadth and depth all along the political spectrum, not more fringe bullshit and plays from the would-be authoritarian handbook.