Praise from Poilievre, but ex-B. C. Conservative MLAs say new leader will polarize

Two former B.C. Conservative legislators now sitting as Independents say new leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay will polarize the province.

Amelia Boultbee said Findlay’s victory on Saturday showed that part of the B.C. Conservative base and board want to take the party “further and further to the right,” and “engage in Donald Trump-style populism,” while Elenore Sturko said it was sad the party doesn’t not represent centrist voices.

Findlay won the five-person race to succeed John Rustad by the narrowest of margins, by 51 per cent to 49 per cent over Caroline Elliott after the distribution of the preferences of all the other candidates’ supporters.

Findlay is a social Conservative and former federal minister who hailed “faith, family and freedom” in her victory speech.

Boultbee said in an interview on Monday that Trump-style populism was popular with a portion of the Conservative base, but that was not where most British Columbians wanted to go. 

“There’s a world, in which I might have been able to get behind her, if she had cut out some of the more further-to-the-right stuff,” Boultbee said. 

She said she was not surprised that Findlay won the race.

“She’s an experienced politician, she does have an impressive resume,” she said. “I want to be clear: to the extent that I’m saying something that sounds critical, I don’t mean disrespect toward (Kerry-Lynne Findlay). We are both from the same sorority (at the University of British Columbia), we are both lawyers.” 

Boultbee said she wished the Conservatives the best, regardless of whether she continued in provincial politics.

“I still have to live in this province, so I really am praying for the B.C. Conservatives to do well, and I hope it brings out the best in everybody, because that is not what we have been seeing,” she says.

Both Boultbee and Sturko occupied what had been the more progressive end of the B.C. Conservative spectrum and exited the party caucus last year after disputes with Rustad.

Sturko had been a star recruit for Rustad and the Conservatives, but she said on Monday that she was proud that she started her political career with the former B.C. Liberals before the party rebranded as BC United. 

B.C. Conservative MLA Elenore Sturko listens during a news conference after former BC United MLA Teresa Wat joined the Conservatives, in Richmond, B.C., on Tuesday, July 30, 2024.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

Rustad said at the time that the Conservatives were a big-tent party and Sturko said she joined the Conservatives to rebuild a broad anti-NDP coalition. 

“The idea that people with centre voices would be discouraged from participating in a political party is sad, and it has become more and more evident since the 2024 election and now even more so evident with the election of Kerry-Lynne Findlay, that this is a party that doesn’t represent centre voices,” Sturko said.

British Columbia, she said, was best served when it avoided extremes. 

“We need to stay away from the extremes brought in by (Premier) David Eby and his radical policies, his activist agenda, but also extreme policies on the right.” 

She said in a social media post that Findlay’s election had left a void in the political landscape for those who are looking for an alternative to “NDP incompetence.”

“I feel strongly that British Columbian is best served, when it is represented by a government that values broad perspectives and stays away from polarizing extremes,” the post said. “I believe that the majority of British Columbians feel the same.”

Not everyone shares Boultbee and Sturko’s concerns about the direction of B.C.’s main Opposition party, which Rustad brought within a whisker of victory in the 2024 provincial election

Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Monday that the province needed Findlay’s leadership.

“I congratulated leader Findlay on her victory. I want to thank her for her very public and consistent support of me and my leadership over many years, something she did emphasize during her leadership race,” he said Monday.

“And I think that what British Columbians want from her leadership is what she ran on and what Canada needs — we need an affordable British Columbia with safe streets, where the economy is self-reliant. We need to lock up criminals, cut back on the cost of government, reduce deficits, ban drugs, support parental rights, all things that Kerry-Lynne Findlay ran on, and I hope that she succeeds.”

While Boultbee said she would never say never to returning to the B.C. Conservatives, nobody had reached out to her, and her attention was on representing her riding in the Okanagan.

Sturko said she had not reached out to the party. “They have not reached out to me, nor would I expect them to. I do not wish to return to the party.”

— With files by Sarah Ritchie in Ottawa

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 1, 2026.

By Wolfgang Depner | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.