Independents branded 'NDP farm team' for helping shut down FOI debate

Surrey-Cloverdale Conservative Candidate Eleanor Sturko, speaks during a news conference in Vancouver, on Friday, Oct. 11, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ethan Cairns

VICTORIA — Two former B.C. Conservatives now sitting as Independents say they voted with their consciences when they helped the governing NDP shut down debate on changes to freedom of information rules in a 3 a.m. vote.

Ex-colleagues of Amelia Boultbee and Elenore Sturko accused them of joining the “NDP farm team” on Thursday and having an “orange epiphany” by voting with 46 NDP legislators to advance the legislation, while the Conservatives, three other Independents and two B.C. Greens voted against.

Both Sturko and Boultbee said they judged on merit the amendments to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, that the Conservatives say will hurt transparency and accountability.

Among other changes, the amendments would give the B.C. Privacy Commissioner the power to allow public bodies to ignore requests that are deemed abusive or that would slow down operations.

Critics say that the bill will make it more difficult to access government records, while the government says it modernizes and streamlines the legislation by giving public bodies more flexibility when it comes to responding to information requests.

Boultbee, who quit the Conservatives last October, said she’s “unconstrained” by ideology and has not received an offer to join the NDP.

“I do what I think is best for my constituents and British Columbians, whoever it so happens to be doing that work, whether it’s the NDP, the (B.C.) Greens, even if it was the B.C. Conservatives,” she said. “I’m here to get that work done.”

Sturko, meanwhile, said the bill would have still advanced to a legislative committee without her vote, and she did “due diligence” on the amendments.

“It’s not uncommon to have either the opposition or independents vote alongside government,” Sturko said. “In fact, the Conservatives, multiple times in just the last three weeks, allowed legislation to pass even without any standing votes.”

Conservative MLA Harman Bhangu said on social media that the pair were “weak independents,” who “have officially been called up to the BC NDP farm team,” while colleague Korky Neufeld said in a video that they had had “an orange epiphany” and lost a chance to hold the government to account.

Sturko, a former RCMP officer who represents Surrey-South, said the Conservatives “have been quite hostile” toward her since she was kicked out of the caucus last September.

“I don’t take it to heart what they say,” she said. “That is, after all, politics. They take any opportunity they can to diminish me, but my job remains one where I actually have to evaluate legislation that I am putting my votes behind.”

Like Sturko, Boultbee said she likes parts of the bill, and rejects Bhangu’s claim that she had switched sides.

“I’m not asking, and they have not offered me anything,” Boultbee said of the NDP. “We are debating a piece of legislation, because we are trying to solve a problem for British Columbians. It’s that simple.”

Interim Conservative leader Trevor Halford said Thursday that his caucus would still be debating the bill if government had not shut down debate.

Halford said that government’s decision to shut down debate shows that government does not want to be transparent.

“We are going to keep fighting when it comes to Bill 9,” he said. “We will fight in committee, and we are not going to stop.”

He said the two Independent MLAs will have to justify their votes to their constituents.

“For us, we are focused on holding the government to account on an egregious piece of legislation,” he said. “That, to me, is a no-brainer. I don’t know how they get up and support this.”

Both Boultbee and Sturko said they look forward to reviewing the legislation at committee stage before third reading.

The legislature rose around 4 a.m., before sitting again at 10 a.m. Thursday.

This report by Wolfgang Depner, The Canadian Press, was first published May 7, 2026.