A stark turn of events in Victoria, as the embattled leader of the BC Conservatives, John Rustad, has been bounced out of the role by his Party.

Speaker Raj Chouhan did not make any determinations on Rustad’s leadership in the House in the final hours of the now-concluded session of the Legislature, which will now be out over the holiday period until at least mid-January.

That means he remains — on paper at least — the leader of the first opposition in the Legislature.

The BC Conservative Party’s Executive announced earlier in the day that Rustad was being removed from his role as the Party’s leader, with Surrey-White Rock MLA and former BC United caucus member Trevor Halford tapped as its Interim Leader.

In doing so, the BC Conservative Executive also confirmed it is now in the process of trying to coordinate a leadership race — a date for which remains unclear.

The Party, in distancing itself from Rustad, also emphasized that it was an internal caucus vote — rather than the Party Executive — which launched the process to ouster Rustad, saying it drew support from 20 of the elected members who wanted Rustad out.

That would represent a narrow, +1 majority of the 39 member caucus.

Radio NL has since been told by Ward Stamer, the first-term BC Conservative for Kamloops-North Thompson, that he was not among the 20 who voted to oust Rustad.

It’s not clear yet if Kamloops-Centre MLA Peter Milobar had any hand in the internal caucus revolt.

In the fallout from the day, at least two of those who did vote to remove Rustad from the leadership have come out publicly through the Party’s own Conservative Caucus portal.

But rather than accept the will of the majority of his caucus and his Party’s Executive, Rustad — upon hearing the news earlier in the afternoon — refused to step aside.

BC Conservative Leader John Rustad taking questions from reporters following the final afternoon session at the Legislature of 2025, where earlier in the day his Party declared he was no longer its leader/via X

It’s not exactly clear what prompted the Conservative caucus to take the vote at this point in time.

Wednesday was the final day of the 2025 legislative session, as MLA’s are not expected back in session until mid-January.

The move to oust Rustad does follow the release earlier in the day of an Elections BC report which confirmed the Party was hit with a $1,500 fine for not making filing deadlines connected to a Rustad-based fundraiser that the BC Conservative Party put on in March.

That event dubbed “John Rustad Presents an Evening with Friends” was held at the Sutton Place Hotel in downtown Vancouver.

According to Elections BC, that event earned the party net revenues of some $50,000 off of roughly $120,000 in donations.

However, the Party was also hit with sanctions for not being on-time with its reporting, in which a Party official is being cited by Elections BC as saying the Conservative Party of BC didn’t maintain the proper mechanisms to make the declaration in the appropriate amount of time.

Questions about the Party’s oversight and tactics have been under scrutiny since the BC Conservative Policy Convention in Nanaimo earlier in the year, where Rustad was accused of flooding the meeting with “bused-in” supporters to ensure that his policy initiatives — and ultimate leadership — remained in place.

Rustad’s push out the door comes just a couple of months after the results of a grass-roots review of his leadership through the summer and early fall were announced, where card-carrying Conservative Party of BC members were allowed to vote on his continued leadership.

Rustad survived that vote with just over 70% support, though the actual number of Party members who cast ballots was disproportionately low.

The Party reported that 1,268 card-carrying members voted in the process among the roughly 10,000 or more official BC Conservative members on the rolls.

Since then, some within the Party’s Executive, as well as various BC Conservative Riding Associations, began slowly calling for Rustad to step aside, due in part to questions about his ability to keep the various voices along the political spectrum together.

Kicked out of the BC United caucus for his stand on climate change connected to oil and gas development, on top of previous comments linked to gender identity, Rustad throw himself under the Conservative Party of BC banner.

That party, which had essentially laid dormant for years and was never able to elect a member to the Legislature, would be catapulted into the mainstream thanks to the unexpected collapse of the center-right BC United party that had pushed Rustad out.

BC United’s 11th hour spiral and collapse just a few weeks before the last provincial election left centrists and those much further to the social and political right forced into an uneasy marriage.

Rustad — as BC Conservative leader — would end up being thrown into the role of officiant, overseeing a reluctant marriage between the BC Conservative bases of hard-line social conservatives with a more centrist electorate — and candidates — who would have otherwise gone with the former BC Liberals-turned-BC United.

That shotgun wedding would walk Kamloops incumbent Peter Milobar down the aisle, along with Lorne Doerkson who represents Tobiano and communities to the west of Kamloops, as well as now-interim leader Trevor Halford and Elenore Sturko.

Those who were re-elected under the BC Conservative banner and were familiar with the secret passageways in the Legislative buildings would end up being surrounded by a majority of first-time provincial representatives.

Many of them would find themselves emboldened by the meteoric rise in support the party enjoyed — coming within a few dozen votes of turning an NDP minority into a BC Conservative minority.

On top of this, BC Conservatives continue to maintain a non-whipped approach their work in the house.

This means that individual lawmakers within the caucus are free to vote their conscience without party consequence on issues which might not fit in with their constituency, or — as it would turn out — issues which individual MLA’s feel is their social conviction to press forward with.

Since the election, five members of the Conservative Party of BC caucus have either been pushed out or have split from the Party.

Two were ejected from the ranks, while the other three would leave on their own, citing the direction the BC Conservative brand was headed under Rustad’s leadership, which — the hard-right would argue is becoming too flexible on social values, while the center-right component presses back against that approach.

Entering into the Legislative session just two votes short of being able to collapse the NDP government on a confidence vote, the BC Conservatives’ ability to threaten that, as well as put pressure on legislative amendments, were lost when Dallas Brodie was kicked out of caucus, and took a pair of MLA’s with her in protest.

Brodie refused to back down on her controversial positions on the Residential School System, in particular her refuting suggestions there are 215 possible unmarked graves being located on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.

This is a position Brodie continues to hold in forming her OneBC Party, which includes herself and Coldstream-area MLA Tara Armstrong, who along with Peace River-North Conservative Jordan Kealy, walked away from the BC Conservative caucus in solidarity with Brodie.

Kealy continues to sit as an independent.

Brodie’s ouster was then followed by John Rustad kicking Elenore Sturko — one of the Party’s more popular “small c” Conservatives — out of the caucus the same day it was confirmed he had secured the BC Conservative leadership review.

Sturko had been attempting, behind the scenes, to generate enough support within the Conservative caucus to create a vote — at the time — similar to what took place on Wednesday in challenge of Rustad’s leadership.

Instead, he cut the movement off at the knees by sending Sturko to the curb, a move which rattled the centrist faction within the Conservative ranks.

Amelia Boultbee — popular city councillor in Penticton who was wooed directly into running under John Rustad’s leadership — was the last to defect in October, citing Rustad’s leadership style as the key reason for her decision to sit as an Independent, which she does now along side Sturko in the chamber.

Boultbee — in quitting — stated at the time she would be willing to rejoin the Conservative ranks so long as John Rustad was not the leader.

It’s unclear if this could also be the case for Sturko, who many had viewed as a likely challenger for the leadership of the Party in a post-Rustad scenario.

It’s unlikely Dallas Brodie and Tara Armstrong would be convinced to return to the Conservatives, or whether the Party would have them back, given some of the rhetoric which flew toward the Conservative caucus after they split off.