The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - December 04, 2025


BC politics in Chaos - Rustad Out & New BC Liberal in？


Episode Stats

Length

17 minutes

Words per Minute

188.66698

Word Count

3,385

Sentence Count

206

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary

Wyatt Claypool breaks down the chaos inside the BC Conservative Party and what it means for the future of BC politics and the province as a whole. Also, we talk about why John Rustad should have been kicked out of the party in the first place.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. It's been an absolutely insane day at the British Columbia
00:00:07.460 Legislature, and I know I've said it's an insane day on previous occasions, but this day literally
00:00:14.460 jumped the shark. So we have an internal civil war going on right now inside the BC Conservative
00:00:21.080 Party. Full disclosure, I work for 1BC, which is an actual Conservative Party, and we've been having
00:00:27.080 a wonderful time today just watching the Conservatives slowly implode in a civil war
00:00:33.940 where it's BC Liberals versus other BC Liberals. The whole thing doesn't make any sense because you
00:00:40.000 can't really draw an ideological line around what's going on and why it's happening. It's really just
00:00:46.520 who wants to be the leader are those opposing John and those who don't like the people who are going
00:00:52.120 to potentially run as leader supporting him. You really can't say, well, there's the progressives
00:00:56.520 and there's the social Conservatives. It's like they're on both sides. And now we may actually
00:01:01.780 have everything descend into lawsuits between John Restad and his team and the BC Conservative
00:01:07.520 Board because the board today voted to get rid of him and replace him with interim leader Trevor
00:01:14.520 Halford. But we don't even know if Trevor Halford's actually the interim leader or he's just the party
00:01:18.780 declared interim leader, but John is still the leader of the BC Conservative Caucus. You understand what
00:01:24.580 I mean when I say this day is jump the shark. I can't even talk about what we were doing as one BC today.
00:01:31.340 That is going to be another video because you don't want to hear me try and combine these topics together.
00:01:38.160 You are going to be thrown into cognitive whiplash if I do that. We are going to focus on the BC Conservatives
00:01:45.080 and what this could mean for BC politics. Now, again, let's go back to the start. And when I say
00:01:51.480 the start, I mean all the way back to the BC Conservatives almost winning the provincial election.
00:01:57.280 Maybe they, in fact, did win because there was some limited voter fraud in the ridings that the
00:02:02.560 NDP needed to hold on to their majority. Surry Guilford and a couple others where they were
00:02:07.980 like super, super close. And the election rules are such that one bad actor could potentially send
00:02:13.780 in a bunch of mail-in ballots or people who weren't going to vote anyways. But that's another story for
00:02:18.780 another day. But in the aftermath of the BC election, everyone rallied around the leader.
00:02:24.200 John almost got us there. We had 44 seats and the NDP only beat us out in a couple of ridings by like
00:02:31.000 200 combined votes. It is the squeakiest of squeaker elections. And so naturally, a lot of people
00:02:37.700 willing to support him. I back then was more of a BC Conservative guy. Now, I do come from Alberta,
00:02:43.640 but I involve myself in all kinds of politics. I have even gotten involved in New Brunswick
00:02:48.960 provincial politics before because, hey, I'd go stir crazy if I wasn't involved in politics wherever I
00:02:54.440 could get involved. And after a little while, it became clear that John Rustad really didn't want
00:03:01.560 to be the John Rustad from the election. And he wanted to go back hard reset and become the John
00:03:08.760 Rustad from the BC Liberals again. Remember, Rustad was elected back in 2005 as a BC Liberal.
00:03:15.400 He was kicked out of the party by Kevin Falcon in 2023 over some remarks about climate change,
00:03:21.500 which may have been Kevin Falcon trying to be a tough guy and he's going to slam down the first person
00:03:25.860 stands up to him, which was a bad idea. Rustad then becomes the BC Conservative leader. Bruce
00:03:31.940 Bandman joins him. They become an official party. They start racing up in the polls and a few people
00:03:36.520 cross the floor. And by election time, the BC Liberals, who changed the name to BC United and
00:03:41.620 took a dirt nap after that, were completely gone and the Conservatives were ascendant as the new
00:03:46.280 opposition. Very funny because the exact same thing proceeded to happen with John Rustad as the
00:03:52.500 leader of the BC Conservatives. He kicks out Dallas Brody for making horrible remarks about the Kamloops
00:03:59.240 residential school in the graves, which Dallas Brody, the one BC leader now, is totally right
00:04:04.500 about. She was kicked out for that. She started a new party from scratch, which again, I work for in
00:04:09.920 caucus. I get paid very little because it's not about the money for me. It's about the principle of
00:04:14.500 the matter. But she starts a party. Other people leave. Tara Armstrong joins Dallas Brody. They started
00:04:20.460 it together. And now we have the one BC party shooting up in the polls and the BC Conservatives
00:04:25.560 not as much following the polls. They are falling. But one BC actually, oddly enough, takes votes both
00:04:31.960 from the Conservatives and the NDP at the same time. One BC kind of grabs up a lot of these old hard hat
00:04:37.700 John Horgan voters, like blue collar NDP guys who are getting sick of the NDP being this hyper
00:04:42.760 progressive far left party. And then we're also taking the principled Conservatives from the BC
00:04:48.320 Conservative Party who want to vote for one BC. By the way, shameless plug, you guys should go
00:04:53.000 check out the documentary we just released from the caucus side down in the description below,
00:04:57.760 Making a Killing. And if you like the party, you should consider joining and donating to it.
00:05:02.000 These are two separate things. That was a caucus documentary. Doesn't technically have anything
00:05:06.320 to do with the party, although the MLAs from the party produced it with the caucus budget. And then
00:05:11.620 there is the party with all the actual partisan, you know, electioneering type stuff on the other side.
00:05:18.320 But get involved with both. Follow the caucus. Follow the party. Both of them are great, obviously.
00:05:24.040 But so now we're in a situation where with the BC Conservatives, I'm sorry, the story is a bit
00:05:29.460 rambling, but it's just how this is going to have to go. So the Conservatives are falling in donations,
00:05:35.180 kind of falling in the polls. It's very clear people don't like the NDP, but they also don't
00:05:40.360 really like the current version of the BC Conservative Party that doesn't really stand for anything.
00:05:44.960 If you follow them in the legislature, they say some generic stuff about healthcare,
00:05:50.100 you know, safe supplies bad. Every once in a while, they put their head up above the parapet and say,
00:05:55.680 oh, we don't like soji anymore. But it's a party where it's dubious whether they actually oppose
00:06:01.180 DRIPA or not, since they still endorse UNDRIP. But then they say they're against DRIPA, this being the
00:06:06.460 Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, which is based off the UN's own model legislation
00:06:11.740 that BC is the only jurisdiction on the planet crazy enough to pass it into law. And so John
00:06:19.440 starts having everyone start grumbling in the background that he's doing bad things for the
00:06:25.080 party. But remember, at the AGM in March, the executive board gave John dictatorial powers.
00:06:31.560 They rigged their own AGM, they bused people in to vote for John's slate for the board,
00:06:35.460 they voted for his constitution, that basically made it so that it's impossible to remove him.
00:06:40.800 And that is what is undergirding all the drama. So over the past several months, people start
00:06:45.500 grumbling harder, and they want to get rid of him. But in the leadership review, he gets 71-72%
00:06:50.380 of the vote on his side. Now the same people telling voters to go vote for him in the leadership review
00:06:55.780 are now wanting to get rid of him. Or do they really have a problem with John? Or do they just want
00:07:00.940 to be leader? That's the problem in all of us. The people who want to get rid of John are not
00:07:05.300 exactly principled conservatives, and they all want to run for leader. The main people who want
00:07:10.040 to run for leader are individuals like Peter Milibar, like Gavin Dew, Eleanor Sturko, who's
00:07:16.040 currently sitting as an independent. You have people like Uri Fulmer who want to run, Bruce Bandman.
00:07:21.900 A lot of people who, whether they're sitting MLAs or not sitting MLAs, are old BC liberal people.
00:07:27.840 One of the top prospects for people who think they're on the more edgy right is Caroline
00:07:35.020 Elliott, who is Kevin Falcon's sister, the former BC liberal and BC united leader. This is how comical
00:07:41.540 it is. And the guy they want to make the interim leader, Trevor Halford, was also a BC liberal.
00:07:47.800 It's absolutely insane that this keeps happening over and over again. Here's a photo of Trevor
00:07:53.200 Halford at an event sometime in the last couple of years. This is just funny to me. Guys, this is the
00:08:00.320 new BC conservative interim leader, if he even is the current leader. He is on the left right there.
00:08:06.980 This was from an account on X called Populism Updates that said, in British Columbia, the leader
00:08:12.220 of the center-right BC united party posted this photo yesterday via Davis, Kyle, whatever. But you can see
00:08:20.440 Kevin Falcon there on the right. In the middle, I don't know if that's Eleanor Sturko or somebody
00:08:25.560 else, but then there is Trevor Halford on the left, and they are taking a photo with a bunch of
00:08:32.160 furries at some sort of pride event. Trevor Halford's not conservative. That's the problem.
00:08:38.260 Everyone who's currently ousting Rustad doesn't really have an ideological issue with how he was
00:08:43.380 doing things. They just don't like him because they think if they swap the leader out, the donations
00:08:47.480 are going to come back in and everything's going to be good. There's maybe a couple slightly
00:08:51.540 conservative people thinking of running for leader, but the current wedge of people going
00:08:55.820 is our more left people. So I want to bring up on my feed here, I have it my bookmarks of Trevor
00:09:04.160 Halford speaking about him being potentially the leader, and then I want to go to John Rustad's
00:09:08.680 response because he's going to fight this one out, and potentially it's going to be turning into
00:09:13.320 lawsuits on the board level because the board technically doesn't actually have authority
00:09:17.440 to get rid of John because they helped him rig the last AGM to give him dictatorial powers,
00:09:24.120 and they're all surprised Pikachu at the fact that he became a dictator.
00:09:28.040 So this is Trevor Halford speaking outside of the office. I'm not sure if you can hear this very well,
00:09:33.580 but this is when he was addressing the media after coming out of the office. This is a video I shot
00:09:37.340 today. That might actually be too quiet right now. I'm not going to bore you guys. But he came out,
00:09:49.340 he was talking about how he's, you know, the board has put him in as interim leader. But even still,
00:09:54.860 at this point, people are too cowardly to actually come out and put their names forward as people who
00:09:59.360 oppose John. Some people will kind of say that maybe it's time for John to move on. But this morning,
00:10:05.060 a letter leaked that 20, or actually they phrased it as a majority of BC conservative MLAs want John
00:10:11.200 gone. But it's 20 out of 39 want him gone, and they wouldn't even make their names public.
00:10:16.700 Come on, guys. There's too many people who think that the way you fix the BC conservatives is just
00:10:22.420 get rid of Rustad. The problems go deeper than that. The executive team were paying themselves massive
00:10:29.120 salaries and big bonuses and renting a high, high rent, like office space in downtown Vancouver, paying
00:10:36.740 massive money into into media companies for advertising. They were blowing the money out the
00:10:42.520 party. And now they have to lay off a bunch of staff. The BC conservatives are hemorrhaging staff
00:10:46.620 right now because they can't pay them. And they're blaming John. It's partially John's fault. But he's
00:10:51.220 sitting in the jacuzzi with you guys. You guys are the ones who have been blowing money, too. And now you're
00:10:56.360 trying to blame John for it all. Now, I blame John for a lot. Again, I'm with 1BC. I would endorse
00:11:01.440 everyone in BC voting for the 1BC party. But the idea that this is all a John problem is patently
00:11:09.260 absurd. So you had Trevor Halford come out, talk to the media here. And then you also had John Rustad
00:11:16.000 come out and checking it out. Can we say nothing's changed?
00:11:21.080 Some of your MLA's have said that their leader, they considered to be an interim leader, Trevor
00:11:25.600 Halford. Some have said that you are their leader. What is your view? Who is the leader of your party?
00:11:30.160 So I'm currently still the leader of the party. Nothing has changed since we've discussed this
00:11:34.040 this one. Still the leader? What does that mean? Do you intend to? We've heard that there's been a vote
00:11:39.280 of a majority of your caucus as well as your board of directors. First of all, there hasn't been a caucus meeting
00:11:43.820 that we've had at this particular point. So obviously, there'll need to be a caucus meeting
00:11:48.040 going forward. Now, the hilarious thing, and he moves on basically after the saying,
00:11:52.180 we have never had a caucus meeting. So people saying that caucus voted me out is wrong.
00:11:56.720 The funny thing is they were supposed to have a caucus meeting last night, but it just turned
00:12:00.160 into like rib fest or whatever. They just sat around having ribs or something with some people
00:12:03.940 who want to show up and, you know, be loyal to John. But that was kind of it.
00:12:07.440 But here is one BC leader, Dallas Brody, of course, I work for saying congratulations
00:12:13.800 to the new leader of the BC Liberal Party. Sorry, I mean the BC Conservatives, because Trevor
00:12:19.120 Halford was not like a we're not saying he's colloquially a liberal because he used to follow
00:12:24.840 the Liberal Party. And maybe he like, you know, was a BC United MLA candidate in the last cycle,
00:12:31.540 but then swapped over to Conservative when United died. There are some people like that that would
00:12:35.700 represent people like Gavin do, who originally going to run for BC United. But when they fell
00:12:39.560 apart, they end up joining the BC Conservatives. Trevor Halford was a BC Liberal MLA. And this is
00:12:48.220 the guy you're going to make the interim leader, the guy who is very friendly to the progressive side
00:12:53.840 of the party. And the billboard Chris reacted to the post Dallas put out and he says,
00:12:59.140 Liberal John Rusted has been replaced with Liberal Trevor Halford as head of the BC Conservative Party
00:13:04.080 from Grock. Trevor Halford, the MLA for Surrey White Rock in British Columbia and interim leader
00:13:10.060 for the BC Conservative Party since 2025, has demonstrated a supportive stance on LGBTQ plus
00:13:16.120 inclusion and rights through public action and statements, despite occasional criticisms tied
00:13:20.580 to his party's broader associations. And he goes over all these things that he has done that all this
00:13:27.200 woke kind of performative stuff in the legislature, because this is what the BC Liberals were like.
00:13:33.400 This is why the party right now is going down. It's not because John's the leader. It's because the
00:13:37.940 entire party culture is centered around the idea that we just need to be this soft center, center left
00:13:44.920 party that just waits for the NDP to screw up enough. And then we will get into office and bring
00:13:50.200 nice, inclusive, slightly more business oriented government to this province. It's not going to work
00:13:57.760 that way. You actually need big change or nothing's ever going to happen. And this is when I was stating
00:14:04.300 on Twitter that all this is going to turn into lawsuits. I said, watch the lawsuit start between
00:14:09.180 John's side and the board. As Jared Yeager from the Western Standard posted this, it says,
00:14:15.240 Article 1102 of the party constitution states that the leader can only be removed from office by
00:14:21.560 resignation, death, incapacitation, or the leadership review vote, resulting in less than 50% support of
00:14:27.900 the party members. The board certified that John Rustad is professionally incapacitated,
00:14:32.880 thus unable to continue as party leader. So they're effectively the strategy of the board,
00:14:38.600 who again, can't really get rid of him because they rigged it so that John couldn't be gotten rid of.
00:14:43.300 Ironically, they are now the people who want him gone. And they are just now declaring him
00:14:47.940 effectively dead. According to the BC Conservative Party, John Resta died today. And that's why
00:14:54.040 Trevor Halford, another BC liberal, needs to be the guy, at least on the interim, until we make like
00:15:00.600 Peter Milibar, Sterko, or Gavin Dew. Gavin Dew, who is literally a Barack Obama GOTV guy for New
00:15:07.520 Hampshire. Yeah, let's make him the leader. He'll bring conservatism back. The BC Conservatives don't do
00:15:13.300 anything all day in the legislature. They have 39 MLAs, you know, because Jordan Keeley left sitting
00:15:18.200 as an independent. Eleanor got kicked out, currently sitting as an independent. Amelia Boltby left,
00:15:23.560 currently sitting as an independent. And of course, Dallas Brody and Tara Armstrong are one BC MLAs.
00:15:28.140 But even though they have 39 MLAs remaining, and they had more in previous weeks, they don't get
00:15:35.060 anything done all day. They like argue with the NDP in committee meetings about commas and trash
00:15:40.940 legislation. They ask the same question about health care every single day. They ask the same
00:15:46.600 question about crime. And crime and health care are big issues. But you have 39 MLAs, and you have
00:15:51.620 multiple questions in question period every single day. And you can only fart out the exact same question
00:15:56.980 over and over again. A nurse was punched in a hospital. Okay, that's maybe a question you can ask once or twice.
00:16:02.880 But they'll just go like, in like a carousel run through question period saying, someone was punched
00:16:09.320 in my riding, what do you say to them? And then the NDP minister gets up and says, Oh, I'm very sorry.
00:16:15.680 I'm so sorry to that person who was punched. But we have this new initiative going that says don't
00:16:20.440 punch people and that it's going to fix the problem. And the Conservatives get up and like that's not
00:16:24.720 enough. What are you going to say to this person who was punched in my riding? It's like, guys,
00:16:28.720 you not know how media works. Nobody is paying attention to the boring garbage you're doing.
00:16:34.580 Actually call out the NDP for other things. But they don't want to touch other things because
00:16:38.900 other things are controversial. And that's what 1BC does. Even though we only get one question a day,
00:16:43.800 we suck all the air out of the room. Because we actually ask about the grave hoaxes. We ask about
00:16:49.140 DRIPA. We ask about all of the trans propaganda in classrooms. We ask about fraud. We ask about a
00:16:56.680 bunch of way more than just the boilerplate economic questions and the boilerplate questions
00:17:04.400 about crime in hospitals. Anyways, so where are we now? Now, I think we're going to have a civil war
00:17:12.640 over the Christmas break. Will John probably go? Yeah, probably. But I think there is going to be a
00:17:18.320 lot more. He might even be gone in like an hour here. Who knows? But I think there's going to be an
00:17:23.440 internal ongoing fight. But I wouldn't hold your breath that the Conservative Party is suddenly
00:17:27.880 going to start being conservative again. Most of the people lining up to replace John are all
00:17:32.660 liberals. And they're, in fact, probably more liberal than John in the case of people like
00:17:37.020 Milibar, Sterko, and Dew. And if multiple of them run, they're all going to be passing each other's
00:17:43.000 votes to one another in the leadership race, which means it's going to be very difficult for
00:17:46.780 someone even slightly conservative to actually win. But anyways, with that all being said,
00:17:53.360 thank you guys for watching, and I will see you guys later.