From phoenix to Icarus: BC Conservatives rose from the ashes in 2024 to nearly take power only to fly too close to the sun in 2026
Electing Kerry-Lynne Findlay as leader, who made Heather Maahs interim leader, was always political suicide, but it's happening so fast
August 28, 2026
And there we have it, the man who left BC United to cross the floor in 2023 to join John Rustad giving the BC Conservatives official party status is the latest to flee the sinking ship.
Abbotsford South MLA Bruce Banman said Thursday he would sit as an independent, leaving the BC Conservatives knowing that new leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay is too divisive, too extremist, too unelectable. He’s hoping others follow.
“Person after person has informed me they have decided that our new leader is unelectable,” he said in a release issued Thursday. “I am joining an ever increasing number of MLAs to sit as an Independent MLA in the B.C. Legislature. I would encourage my fellow MLAs regardless of political affiliation to join me.”
Banman is the fifth member to quit just this week and the sixth since Findlay became leader.
Kamloops MLA Peter Milobar resigned on August 14 to sit as an independent. Then Monday (August 24) Delta South MLA Ian Paton quit the party. Tuesday it was Prince George-Valemount MLA Rosalyn Bird. Wednesday morning it was Richmond Bridgeport MLA Teresa Wat. By the afternoon, Courtenay-Comox MLA Brennan Day fled the sinking ship, too. Then Banman on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Premier David Eby and the NDP caucus are popping popcorn, sitting back and enjoying the show.
While the departure of these MLAs is the public-facing side of the start of the demise of the upstart BC Conservatives, the quiet departure of former MLAs who were important party insiders is even more telling. When members at the leadership convention bewilderingly chose Findlay over Caroline Elliott, critical and experienced party members knew they were toast. Former Mission mayor and BC Liberal MLA Randy Hawes and former Chilliwack mayor and BC Liberal MLA John Les both tore up their BC Conservative membership cards and fled.
That’s just two senior insiders we know about.
The fact that Findlay made inexperienced Chilliwack North MLA Heather Maahs the Leader of the Opposition was enough of a signal to many moderates and centre-right BC Conservatives that the party was taking a severe right turn. Remember, Maahs was one of five BC Conservative MLAs who expressed their devotion to Donald Trump by declining to vote in the legislature to condemn the U.S. president's economically punishing tariffs.
This earned her and others the MAGA-lite moniker. The other four were Dallas Brodie, Tara Armstrong, Jordan Kealy and Brent Chapman. Where are they now? Brodie is a residential school denialist who felt the party wasn’t right wing enough for her. She and Armstrong left the party to start OneBC, although now Armstrong sits as an independent. Then there is Kealy, who is a farmer who believes the government controls the weather with chemtrails. He was also charged with sexual assault in June, but denies the allegation. He also left to sit as an independent.
And Chapman, well golly, he's Findlay's husband. An openly pro-Trump Canadian for a decade, to give you a sense of who he is – something that might shine light on Findlay, his wife, and Maahs their new bestie – in 2017 he shared a graphic showing the proper way to commit suicide by gunshot for liberals upset about Trump's victory. He also said the horrific mass shootings at the Quebec mosque, Sandy Hook Elementary School, and the Pulse Nightclub were faked for political reasons. More recently, he posted that harm reduction policy is akin to Nazis holding children at gunpoint in the Warsaw Ghetto, and that child deaths at residential schools is a cult-like “massive fraud” akin to Jonestown and Charles Manson.
Maybe this is what Kerry-Lynne Findlay wanted
Sean Speer, a former Stephen Harper senior economic advisor and editor of The Hub, weighed in on the Findlay matter Thursday suggesting that she is in a political world where she doesn’t feel comfortable. Because of this, she has surrounded herself with far right conservatives from the core of the burgeoning version of the party whose strategy is to mobilize the base, pick fights, and turn up the volume to 11.
“The result is a caricature of conservatism: all the signals, grievances and performative aggression, without much evidence of the political judgment that determines when any of it is actually useful,” Speer said.
“And now nobody is happy. Moderates think she’s gone off the deep end. Pragmatists think she’s unelectable. And even genuine movement conservatives like Bruce Banman are walking away.”
There’s obviously a lot of controversy right now around the BC Conservatives. Here’s my take.
— Sean Speer (@Sean_Speer) August 28, 2026
Kerry-Lynne Findlay was never much of a movement conservative. I remember her in Ottawa as a pretty conventional (and unremarkable) Harper-era minister.
Then she found herself in a…
Long-time legislative reporter Rob Shaw made very interesting observations about the situation in a piece posted August 26, suggesting maybe this whittling down members is actually what Findlay wants. Findlay and her husband MLA Brent Chapman have long sought control of the BC Conservative Party dating back to when they spoke at nearly empty party meetings.
Now they have control.
With each and every departure this week, Findlay called the MLAs' decisions selfish or a party distraction. With each disgruntled departure it could spark more. Or maybe, just maybe, the party is cleansing itself of those not conservative enough leaving a core of devout loyalists.
“Findlay supporters have referred to this option as a kind of a puritanical cleansing, where anyone who questions the leader’s brand of conservatism is either fired or booted out the door,” Shaw writes. “Normally, a leader would quit rather than risk this kind of political damage. But it’s clearly a preferred option of Findlay herself, based on her reaction to the defections so far.”
Take the fact that she lives in White Rock. Chapman is the MLA for White Rock. Findlay needs an MLA to step down so she can get a seat in the legislature. So why didn’t Chapman step down?
This is exactly what Randy Hawes asked. Hawes is the former MLA for Abbotsford Mission who helped BC Conservative candidate Reann Gasper win in that exact riding. Gasper resigned on August 22 so Findlay can run in her winnable electoral district.
“I stated to anyone who would listen that her asking MLAs to step down so she could run in their seat was very wrong,” Hawes posted on his Facebook page on August 24. “Her husband, Brent Chapman, is the MLA for Surrey South. She lives there but apparently did not ask her husband to step down. A search of Mr. Chapman's name reveals a number of racist and conspiracy statement he made in past and later recanted.”
Findlay and Chapman are upon the thrones they so desired and neither will go easily now that they control the party.
By the time that byelection is called in Abbotsford Mission, and if Findlay wins, don't be surprised if the entire caucus is down to the BC Conservatives puritans, the happy trio of Findlay, Chapman and Maahs.
In 2024, Rustad's version of the party got ever so close to becoming government in British Columbia. In 2026, it appears they flew too close to the sun.
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Paul J. Henderson
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