The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - December 04, 2025


John Rustad Resigns - BC Conservatives will become MORE LIBERAL


Episode Stats


Length

16 minutes

Words per minute

181.77997

Word count

3,027

Sentence count

175

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Trevor Halford is the new interim leader of the BC Tory Party of Canada, and John Rustad has resigned as the party's leader. Does this mean that the BC Tories are now a conservative party again?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here.
00:00:02.920 Well, it's official.
00:00:05.340 John Rustad has resigned as the BC Conservative Party leader,
00:00:09.940 and the new interim leader is BC Conservative MLA Trevor Halford.
00:00:15.300 I do want to cut in a second to the video of Rustad resigning
00:00:19.580 and Trevor Halford giving a little bit of a speech,
00:00:22.660 but I want to answer a question I know is going to be on the minds of a lot of British Columbians.
00:00:28.260 Does this all mean that the BC Conservative Party is going to be conservative again?
00:00:34.180 I will answer that by just saying no.
00:00:37.520 No, they're not going to become conservative just because John is gone.
00:00:41.140 Now, full disclosure, I do work for the 1BC Party Caucus,
00:00:45.280 where I only make $25,000 a year upon my own request because it's not about the money.
00:00:51.600 I actually happen to care about conservative principles,
00:00:55.120 and the BC Conservative Party is not conservative.
00:00:57.420 Why do you think it took this long to actually get rid of John Rustad as a conservative leader
00:01:04.240 if the caucus actually cared so much about principle?
00:01:08.020 There was so many red flags leading up to the point where John Rustad was taken out,
00:01:13.520 and it points to the fact that John Rustad is a symptom of a problem.
00:01:17.800 He was not the actual problem.
00:01:20.240 The only reason they got rid of John Rustad is because the donations started drying up.
00:01:25.560 There were so many people belittling anyone challenging John as leader prior to this point
00:01:31.500 because why are you whining? Stop dissenting.
00:01:35.980 Just unify. We need to beat the NDP.
00:01:38.760 Who cares what John's doing? We're going to win this one.
00:01:42.160 And then quarter after quarter, the donations kept going down,
00:01:46.140 and then they decided that maybe he is too liberal for the party.
00:01:50.600 But they didn't decide he was too liberal.
00:01:52.440 They just said that people have lost confidence in you, John,
00:01:55.460 because the people who are likely going to run for the leadership of the party
00:01:59.620 are more liberal than John Rustad.
00:02:02.160 John Rustad was no conservative,
00:02:04.040 and they are going to be more to the left of John Rustad
00:02:07.600 because they don't want to touch anything about reconciliation.
00:02:10.980 They don't want to repeal DRIPA.
00:02:13.360 They really don't want to talk about SOGI or anything socially conservative.
00:02:17.440 They just want to talk about ER closures and crime.
00:02:21.540 That is it because they're not conservative people.
00:02:24.200 They get uncomfortable talking about conservative topics,
00:02:27.520 things that are controversial.
00:02:29.680 But anyways, I will now be jumping over to the tape of John Rustad resigning,
00:02:34.540 and then also Trevor Halford giving his opening speech
00:02:37.860 as the official interim leader of the party.
00:02:40.540 As you will know from yesterday,
00:02:41.960 there was a big kerfuffle over if John was actually gone
00:02:45.500 or Trevor was the new leader
00:02:47.360 because there was this, like, internal fight.
00:02:49.400 The party board was trying to get rid of John,
00:02:51.220 which technically they actually didn't have the authority to do
00:02:53.880 because at the rig day GM back in March,
00:02:57.740 John Rustad and his lackeys basically installed a friendly board
00:03:01.940 and passed a new constitution that gave him dictatorial powers.
00:03:05.540 Ironically enough, John was then taken out
00:03:08.480 partially by the board that he ended up hacking the AGM for,
00:03:13.520 but that's a complete, you know, non-story
00:03:16.840 if you're one of the people who just wants to pretend
00:03:19.220 that John was the problem.
00:03:21.000 Not all the people who were helping him rig stuff
00:03:23.400 and steal money from their own donors.
00:03:25.600 It was just John, guys.
00:03:27.940 By the way, if you want to join the 1BC party,
00:03:30.880 I will be putting the link in the description below
00:03:33.140 and pinning the link at the top of the comments.
00:03:36.060 Also, the donation link
00:03:37.300 and the 1BC party caucus documentary that we made,
00:03:41.920 the Making a Killing documentary
00:03:43.540 that goes over the Kamloops grave hoax,
00:03:46.240 as well as the reconciliation industry's hold
00:03:49.740 over the province of British Columbia.
00:03:52.280 But here, let's get to John Rustad's resignation today.
00:03:56.220 This is being clipped by Trending Politics.
00:03:58.580 Hopefully, you'll be able to hear the clip.
00:04:03.880 You all good?
00:04:04.940 How's it going?
00:04:05.780 Very good?
00:04:07.160 Yes.
00:04:08.680 Okay.
00:04:09.540 First of all, thanks for coming together on short notice.
00:04:12.280 Obviously, it's been a very interesting session,
00:04:15.060 a very interesting ending session.
00:04:16.900 So I'm just going to start off with the obvious here this morning
00:04:19.880 that I am announcing that I'm Stephanie Allen
00:04:22.220 as the leader of the Conservative Party of British Columbia.
00:04:24.860 I will be remaining as an MLA
00:04:26.500 and sharing those work that needs to be done
00:04:29.540 with regards to representing my writing, the chocolate links.
00:04:32.340 So yeah, John is leaving.
00:04:38.220 He is going to be staying on as an MLA.
00:04:40.340 But yeah, he is no longer the leader.
00:04:42.080 He has made that official today.
00:04:43.560 But now let's jump down to a gaggle of the BC Conservative MLAs
00:04:48.180 clapping for Trevor Halford.
00:04:50.440 And then we need to talk a little bit about Trevor Halford.
00:04:54.920 Is he the interim leader?
00:04:56.260 And it technically doesn't matter.
00:04:57.960 Sure, that's what people will tell you on surface-level politics.
00:05:02.500 At the same time, if you pick Trevor Halford
00:05:05.080 to try and signal the party has changed,
00:05:07.520 it's a very weird pick.
00:05:09.180 He is not more conservative than John Rustad.
00:05:12.260 He's, in fact, more liberal than John Rustad.
00:05:15.140 Thank you, guys.
00:05:23.600 I just want to begin with a couple quick things,
00:05:25.220 if you'll allow me.
00:05:26.780 Number one, you'll see that not all of us are up here today.
00:05:30.260 We do have some people that are away, actually.
00:05:33.080 A few people have actually left
00:05:34.340 and leave to attend Christmas concerts with the kids,
00:05:37.260 which I'm looking forward to going to mine this weekend.
00:05:40.020 So, you know, but we're feeling good.
00:05:43.880 But I did want to take this time, really.
00:05:48.720 You know, I've known John for over 20 years.
00:05:51.760 When I first came into this building
00:05:53.380 and started as an ALA assistant legislative assistant,
00:05:56.440 the word assistant twice in my title,
00:05:59.320 John was there.
00:06:00.780 And John has been a friend.
00:06:02.860 He's been a mentor.
00:06:03.660 And he's gotten us to this place.
00:06:06.500 You know, we have a duty to him.
00:06:11.820 We have a duty to British Columbians
00:06:13.340 to get us to that next chapter.
00:06:16.860 It's just this kind of dumb, happy talk
00:06:20.120 that, oh, my goodness, guys,
00:06:21.560 John, you made some mistakes,
00:06:23.280 but it's so great that he brought us to this point.
00:06:26.020 It's so great, blah, blah.
00:06:27.540 And I used to like John Rustad
00:06:29.200 before the provincial election
00:06:30.460 because, you know, at times he actually showed
00:06:32.640 maybe he has instincts as a real conservative
00:06:34.600 and he's going to go stay the course.
00:06:36.760 But after not losing,
00:06:38.080 after not winning the last election,
00:06:40.060 I heard in the background, he's like,
00:06:41.480 well, we lost because there's too many
00:06:42.680 far right people around.
00:06:43.960 That's why we lost.
00:06:45.120 It wasn't because we ran a campaign
00:06:47.100 that didn't actually run on a tax cut
00:06:49.400 or anything that people wanted.
00:06:51.040 And it just sounded like
00:06:52.180 basically tinkering around the edges.
00:06:54.640 Would it have been better
00:06:55.480 to have a conservative government
00:06:56.660 than an NDP government?
00:06:58.460 Sure.
00:06:59.100 But the only way a conservative government
00:07:00.960 is going to get in
00:07:02.060 is if they're actually conservative
00:07:03.680 because voters have dignity
00:07:05.240 and they do not show up to cast ballots
00:07:06.980 for people who want to change things a little bit.
00:07:09.580 They want real, you know, full fat reform.
00:07:12.140 They do not want people showing up
00:07:13.660 and say, how about we just crank down
00:07:16.120 the top level tax rate by a quarter percent?
00:07:19.340 Is that good enough?
00:07:20.320 You actually need someone to get into office
00:07:23.120 who's going to make substantial changes
00:07:25.100 or voters are just not going to have
00:07:27.520 the energy to even show up.
00:07:29.220 That's how 1BC literally has gone
00:07:32.400 from zero percent in the polls
00:07:34.420 to being between five to eight points.
00:07:37.360 I think we're probably actually higher
00:07:38.640 at this point in a very short amount of time.
00:07:41.540 In fact, growing faster
00:07:42.840 than the BC conservatives did
00:07:44.360 when John Rustad had first joined them
00:07:47.080 and become the interim leader
00:07:48.980 after Kevin Falcon had kicked him
00:07:50.620 out of the BC liberals.
00:07:51.900 It's funny that part of the story of Rustad
00:07:54.360 is after the election,
00:07:55.320 he then pulled a Kevin Falcon
00:07:57.140 by getting rid of Dallas Brody
00:07:59.680 for like effectively the same reasons.
00:08:01.880 Oh my goodness, he has said
00:08:02.880 Dallas Brody, just like Rustad,
00:08:06.020 had said something unkosher
00:08:08.240 about like climate change
00:08:09.980 or about the Kamloops grave hoax.
00:08:12.740 Parties get so crazy about like,
00:08:16.000 oh my goodness, this person's off messaging.
00:08:18.480 We have to get rid of them
00:08:19.380 because they are not being disciplined.
00:08:21.740 Okay, Dallas was also saying something
00:08:23.180 that everyone agrees with
00:08:24.320 and wants to hear politicians say.
00:08:26.620 If it was up to all these idiots
00:08:27.980 who were saying that Dallas
00:08:29.780 should be kicked out,
00:08:31.720 the party would basically
00:08:33.620 still have John Rustad leading it.
00:08:36.200 The thing is that the only reason
00:08:37.820 that they got rid of him again
00:08:38.900 was the donations dried up.
00:08:40.520 These people don't actually care
00:08:41.880 about the principle.
00:08:43.000 Because guys, John Rustad,
00:08:45.680 after the election,
00:08:46.720 shifted the party's ideology
00:08:48.140 more to the left.
00:08:49.880 He rigged the AGM.
00:08:51.040 He kicked Dallas Brody out of caucus.
00:08:54.040 The party then had a leadership review process
00:08:57.040 and vote that was completely messed up
00:08:59.700 in which everyone was still encouraging people
00:09:01.980 to go vote for John.
00:09:03.160 All these MLAs were still backing John
00:09:05.380 despite all of the problems.
00:09:07.500 I would have MLAs talk to us
00:09:09.940 and they would say,
00:09:10.920 well, you know, it's better now.
00:09:12.640 Things have calmed down.
00:09:14.420 And it's like, no, nothing's gotten better.
00:09:16.820 What are you talking about?
00:09:17.860 And they're basically just saying
00:09:19.020 because they're being more compliant,
00:09:20.480 John's being nicer to them,
00:09:21.600 so maybe we should just let him be leader.
00:09:23.560 The same thing is going to happen.
00:09:25.200 Do you know the sort of people
00:09:26.220 who are going to try and run
00:09:27.640 to replace John Rustad?
00:09:29.360 It's people like Gavin Dew,
00:09:31.200 Bruce Bandman,
00:09:32.600 Peter Milibar,
00:09:33.980 Eleanor Sterko.
00:09:35.640 Caroline Elliott is considered
00:09:37.160 some new right-wing type person
00:09:39.520 who can lead the party.
00:09:40.660 She's Kevin Falcon's sister-in-law.
00:09:42.960 She was a BC United loyalist
00:09:45.420 until five seconds ago,
00:09:46.640 and now people think she's on
00:09:47.940 the cutting edge of politics
00:09:49.000 because every once in a while
00:09:50.280 she'll copy something
00:09:51.500 that Dallas Brody says
00:09:52.640 and not attribute it to her.
00:09:54.400 On her own sub-stack,
00:09:55.980 she was talking at one point
00:09:57.280 about a 1BC bill.
00:09:59.680 I think it was the flag bill
00:10:00.880 or it was getting rid of land acknowledgements
00:10:03.320 or something like that.
00:10:04.580 And she refused to actually name it
00:10:07.580 as a 1BC bill.
00:10:08.980 She just kept saying
00:10:09.580 there was a bill in the legislature
00:10:10.780 because she's just a party loyalist.
00:10:13.160 She just wants to be the leader.
00:10:14.200 She's also really boring,
00:10:16.040 so I don't think she's going to win,
00:10:17.200 and she's one of the more 0.84
00:10:18.000 technically conservative options.
00:10:20.020 But the entire leadership race
00:10:21.460 in the BC Conservative Party
00:10:22.820 is going to be a bunch of old BC liberals
00:10:25.000 who thought the party
00:10:26.440 was too right-wing under John Rustad.
00:10:29.820 I am not kidding.
00:10:31.240 I've been told this multiple times
00:10:32.960 by different people,
00:10:34.440 staff members,
00:10:35.440 and MLAs from the Conservative Party,
00:10:37.540 that Trevor Halford,
00:10:39.080 the current interim Conservative Party leader,
00:10:41.940 thought that Rustad was too right-wing,
00:10:44.820 that he was too controversial,
00:10:46.280 and we needed to kind of like
00:10:47.320 tone things down a little bit.
00:10:49.160 And remember,
00:10:49.960 Halford was one of the guys
00:10:51.080 who was formerly a BC Liberal MLA
00:10:53.600 who crossed the floor
00:10:54.760 right before the election
00:10:56.120 in order to not get absolutely swamped
00:10:58.580 as an independent
00:10:59.440 like some of his colleagues ended up doing.
00:11:01.800 This is a photo of Trevor Halford
00:11:04.020 kneeling down and taking a photo
00:11:05.880 with Eleanor Sturko and Kevin Falcon
00:11:07.920 with a bunch of furries.
00:11:09.860 This guy's not very conservative.
00:11:12.120 It was embarrassing enough
00:11:13.800 that Populism Updates,
00:11:15.700 which is just kind of an international account
00:11:18.500 that like posts a lot of really cringy stuff
00:11:21.160 that politicians do,
00:11:22.340 plus celebrating more populist politicians,
00:11:24.920 they took the time
00:11:26.200 to mock Trevor, Eleanor, and Kevin for this
00:11:28.940 because it is quite ridiculous
00:11:31.440 that we have politicians
00:11:32.440 who are supposedly,
00:11:33.700 even back then,
00:11:34.460 they were supposedly on the center-right,
00:11:35.980 but they're taking photos of people
00:11:38.700 in fetish costumes.
00:11:41.600 It's all so tiring.
00:11:44.120 Again, you guys should go check out
00:11:46.080 the Making a Killing documentary
00:11:47.600 that the 1BC party released.
00:11:49.680 Do you think any of these people
00:11:50.700 are going to start doing things
00:11:52.580 against the reconciliation industry?
00:11:54.620 They're going to start talking about SOGI
00:11:56.340 or any of this stuff?
00:11:57.500 No, the BC conservatives
00:11:58.660 every single day
00:11:59.920 only ask about a handful of issues.
00:12:03.200 Actually, a handful is generous.
00:12:04.400 A handful implies there might be
00:12:05.920 like eight or something.
00:12:06.780 No, they talk about
00:12:07.720 basically two or three issues.
00:12:10.340 There will be
00:12:10.900 the occasional economy issue,
00:12:13.320 something about ER closures
00:12:14.620 or safety in the hospitals for nurses,
00:12:16.600 and then there will be crime and drugs.
00:12:19.260 Those are the only things
00:12:20.720 that they actually talk about.
00:12:22.140 Everything else is so too risky
00:12:23.640 to talk about.
00:12:26.060 Oh my goodness,
00:12:26.580 you can't talk about DREPA
00:12:28.380 and the reconciliation industry
00:12:31.860 that's destroying the province.
00:12:33.020 You can't talk about the grave hoax
00:12:35.200 that's caused tens of millions
00:12:37.100 to hundreds of millions of dollars
00:12:38.960 get transferred to corrupt ban councils
00:12:41.360 who won't even excavate the graves
00:12:43.640 that they took the money in
00:12:45.040 in the first place to do.
00:12:46.600 These people will not talk about that
00:12:48.300 because they're not conservative.
00:12:50.460 Peter Milibar and all these people
00:12:52.140 were attacking Dallas Brody
00:12:54.140 when she got kicked out
00:12:55.300 of the BC Conservative Party as a racist.
00:12:57.500 All of these people did that.
00:12:59.040 None of them sent out a message
00:13:00.240 saying your guys are wrong,
00:13:01.280 even if they stayed in the party.
00:13:02.680 None of them ended up saying,
00:13:04.060 no, you're wrong about Dallas.
00:13:05.180 She's not racist.
00:13:06.340 None of them said anything
00:13:07.340 about the 1BC event
00:13:09.780 at the University of Victoria
00:13:11.120 being attacked by a bunch
00:13:12.700 of left-wing agitators
00:13:13.940 where one guy tried to throw punches
00:13:15.980 at one of our 1BC volunteers
00:13:17.780 and another one was pelting him
00:13:19.720 or it might have been the same guy
00:13:20.720 pelting our chief of staff
00:13:22.340 who is legally blind
00:13:23.720 with a bunch of orange,
00:13:26.460 like a smoke flares.
00:13:27.760 Like, the thing is,
00:13:29.440 none of them said anything
00:13:30.400 about that.
00:13:31.640 None of them have said anything
00:13:32.560 about our documentary.
00:13:34.000 They are just keeping to themselves
00:13:35.540 hoping that people are stupid enough
00:13:37.240 to come back
00:13:37.900 and start donating to them
00:13:39.260 simply because
00:13:40.520 they have swapped the leader out.
00:13:42.460 Again,
00:13:43.160 all this is just about the donations.
00:13:45.400 The party was having to lay off staff
00:13:47.060 because they're so bankrupt.
00:13:48.780 Guys,
00:13:49.500 even if the Conservative Party
00:13:50.580 was bringing in triple the donations,
00:13:53.260 they would still be bankrupt
00:13:54.340 pretty much.
00:13:54.980 They blew tons of money
00:13:56.620 at the election
00:13:57.200 and were in deep debt.
00:13:58.800 Yeah, they have a per-vote subsidy,
00:14:00.300 but based on how
00:14:01.080 the drunken sailors
00:14:02.120 who run the executive team
00:14:03.380 spend money,
00:14:04.300 they don't have a lot of it on hand
00:14:05.900 even if they had
00:14:06.780 double the donations.
00:14:08.620 They are literally renting.
00:14:10.520 I think it's on Water Street
00:14:11.740 or something like that.
00:14:12.440 They have a BC Conservative Party office
00:14:14.480 that they pay thousands of dollars
00:14:16.280 to rent per month.
00:14:18.340 They have, like,
00:14:19.580 people on massive salaries
00:14:21.320 on party side
00:14:22.220 giving out big bonuses
00:14:23.540 to their executive team
00:14:25.020 on donor money.
00:14:26.980 You know,
00:14:27.440 the donors who paid good money
00:14:28.940 to show up to the AGM
00:14:29.960 and then they rigged the vote.
00:14:31.540 Think of how many retired couples 1.00
00:14:32.880 paid thousands of dollars
00:14:34.420 to show up,
00:14:35.020 buy a $300 ticket,
00:14:36.660 get a plane ticket,
00:14:37.600 some of them coming from remote areas
00:14:39.280 where the travel costs a lot,
00:14:41.040 getting a hotel room
00:14:41.960 for two or three nights,
00:14:43.140 and then the whole thing
00:14:44.200 is just rigged
00:14:44.820 because they basically made sure
00:14:46.520 to only have
00:14:47.340 a certain amount
00:14:48.300 of more populist,
00:14:50.100 principled,
00:14:50.580 conservative members,
00:14:51.300 and the rest of it
00:14:52.000 was stacked loyalists
00:14:53.180 or literally guys
00:14:54.620 they bust in
00:14:55.320 just to vote
00:14:55.780 for whatever John wanted.
00:14:57.420 That happened.
00:14:58.700 And none of the MLAs
00:14:59.720 called it out publicly
00:15:00.760 other than Dallas Brody,
00:15:03.240 Kara Armstrong,
00:15:04.180 the one BC house leader,
00:15:05.620 as well as independent MLA
00:15:07.840 Jordan Healy.
00:15:09.020 They were the only ones
00:15:09.700 to say anything.
00:15:10.540 All these people
00:15:11.080 aren't going to revisit the AGM.
00:15:12.380 They don't care.
00:15:13.080 It was all John's.
00:15:13.760 Everything's just John's fault.
00:15:15.020 Guys, don't worry.
00:15:15.740 It's all John's fault.
00:15:17.160 No, it wasn't.
00:15:18.280 There are a lot of people
00:15:19.320 who were contributing to this.
00:15:21.440 Again,
00:15:22.160 why do you think
00:15:22.780 none of them
00:15:23.260 were wanting to get rid of him
00:15:24.840 after they got rid of Dallas?
00:15:26.400 They kicked her out 1.00
00:15:27.080 and called her a racist.
00:15:28.040 They were all fine with that
00:15:29.120 because it just depends
00:15:30.440 on what works for them.
00:15:31.880 If they feel like
00:15:32.520 they can get away with it,
00:15:33.720 then it's okay.
00:15:34.600 If they can no longer
00:15:35.500 get away with it,
00:15:36.260 then they'll throw somebody
00:15:37.180 under the bus.
00:15:39.420 Oh my goodness.
00:15:40.200 But yeah,
00:15:40.640 the leadership race
00:15:41.520 is going to shape up
00:15:42.460 to basically be
00:15:43.460 a BC liberal inauguration
00:15:45.360 once again.
00:15:46.560 There are rumors
00:15:47.160 there might be
00:15:47.900 some more conservative people
00:15:49.000 who want to run.
00:15:50.440 Even then,
00:15:51.040 actually,
00:15:51.380 there's some background
00:15:52.120 in a few of them
00:15:52.780 that I know of.
00:15:54.020 They're the ones
00:15:54.580 who installed
00:15:55.160 a bunch of the executive team
00:15:56.580 that currently led
00:15:57.680 to all these problems.
00:15:58.800 And they're going to come back
00:15:59.640 and save the party.
00:16:01.060 The A team's going to save the party.
00:16:02.580 All the people
00:16:03.040 with the letter A
00:16:04.220 at the start of their names
00:16:05.000 who are the architects
00:16:06.240 of this big failure
00:16:07.960 that we're currently living through.
00:16:10.180 But anyways,
00:16:11.360 that should be it
00:16:12.340 for me today, guys.
00:16:13.420 Remember,
00:16:14.220 if you're in British Columbia
00:16:15.240 and you like
00:16:15.860 what the 1BC party
00:16:16.880 has been doing,
00:16:17.580 check out the links
00:16:18.260 in the description below
00:16:19.320 and pinned at the top
00:16:20.180 of the comments
00:16:20.680 and go watch
00:16:21.720 the Making a Killing documentary.
00:16:23.640 It's absolutely fantastic
00:16:25.100 and it is a very,
00:16:26.980 very well done
00:16:27.680 takedown
00:16:28.200 of the entire
00:16:29.000 reconciliation industry,
00:16:30.720 including the Kamloops
00:16:32.000 grave hoax.
00:16:33.280 Anyways,
00:16:34.060 with all that being said,
00:16:35.840 thank you guys for watching.
00:16:36.960 Like, share, subscribe
00:16:37.580 and I'll see you all later.