A high-profile former B.C. Conservative caucus member has accused the party of “cozying up to the far right” in an effort to win this month’s provincial election. Conservative Leader Lorne Doerkson confirmed this week that the party had been in informal talks with OneBC—a splinter party led by Dallas Brodie, who was ejected from the Conservatives last year for mocking residential school survivors. Elenore Sturko, now head of the more moderate CentreBC party, said voters “deserve to know exactly what those conversations are about.” “It’s clear to me this is the same party, filled with extremists,” Sturko said in a statement Friday. OneBC has publicly offered to make a deal with the Conservatives that would see the further-right party abstain from running candidates in certain key ridings to avoid splitting the right-wing vote on Oct. 24. It’s unclear what terms such a deal might include. Asked about the discussions Tuesday, Doerkson said there had been “nothing formal,” while reiterating his party’s commitment to embracing conservative values. “That’s not up for conversation,” Doerkson said at the time. “We will bring conservative values, for certain, to the people of British Columbia.” Sturko noted word of the OneBC talks emerged days after the Conservative leader condemned Sunday’s gathering of white nationalists at the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation, where masked attendees carried a sign mocking reports of possible unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. Brodie called those reports “the worst lie in Canadian history” last year while speaking inside the B.C. legislature, and accused the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation of “pretending to have found” potential grave sites. While remains have not been exhumed since the Kamloops discovery, a previous investigation by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission identified thousands of children’s deaths at residential school sites across the country—including a conservative estimate of 51 in Kamloops. “This is not about ordinary disagreements within conservatism. This is about where you draw the line,” Sturko said. “You cannot campaign on bringing ‘conservative values’ to British Columbia while quietly opening the door to a political movement that has been associated with residential-school denial.” In response to Sturko’s concerns, a B.C. Conservative spokesperson told CTV News on Friday: “This election is about affordability, emergency rooms that close at night, and whether young people can afford to build a life here. We have 93 candidates focused on fixing those problems after nine years of David Eby making every one of them worse, and all of our candidates are running to win.” The party did not respond to a question about whether negotiations with OneBC were ongoing. Among the Conservatives’ candidates is Carson Binda of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, who is running against Brodie in her Vancouver-Quilchena riding—a decision that surprised the OneBC leader this week.
