Exactly what they signed up for
Rustad's united right did not even hold five months
When Kevin Falcon stood next to John Rustad and announced his unconditional surrender in the 2024 BC election, Conservative candidates across the province celebrated the incredible increase in their chances of being elected to the legislature. One was affected more than any other the others — Dallas Brodie, the Conservative candidate for Vancouver-Quilchena.
Vancouver-Quilchena is one of the province’s wealthiest ridings, and has reliably voted for the right-wing candidate in every election since its creation in 1991. It has been so reliable, it has been vacated twice to allow a newly-elected opposition leader to enter the legislature; Gordon Campbell in 1993 and Kevin Falcon in 2022. Until 2024, the NDP had never gotten more than 30% in the riding, and for the past thirty years it has been represented by either a party leader or a cabinet minister.
Dallas Brodie is no stranger to the spotlight in Vancouver. She famously clashed with renowned broadcaster Rafe Mair when she produced his show on CKNW. She accused Mair of forcing her to fetch him coffee — with sprinkles — using inappropriate language around her, and telling inappropriate jokes. In 2003 Mair was fired, with the Globe and Mail citing Brodie as the reason.
Brodie had already sought a seat in the legislature in 2022, when she ran for the BC Conservative party in the by-election to replace Andrew Wilkinson, former leader of the BC Liberals. Wilkinson had resigned his seat so that his replacement, Kevin Falcon, could enter the legislature after winning the leadership race. Brodie’s hopes were dashed with a poor showing of only 6.6% support among her neighbours. Before Falcon dropped out of the race, seat projections still showed he was the favourite to hold the seat, even if United was wiped off the map everywhere else.
With Falcon resigning, Brodie went from an unlikely runner-up to almost certain to be elected. She quickly set the stage for what she would prioritize as the elected voice of Vancouver-Quilchena — getting Indigenous people to take responsibility for the state of the Downtown East Side. Her party leader John Rustad — formerly the Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation in Christy Clark’s cabinet — stood by Brodie and kept her on the ballot. Brodie was elected by a majority of voters in Vancouver-Quilchena — 52% — giving her a mandate to represent them for the next four years.
Brodie is one of the wealthiest MLAs in the legislature. She is the owner and president of Three Cedars Holdings Inc., which owns four residential and two commercial buildings in Vancouver. Her home address in West Vancouver is assessed at almost $3.6 million. In a podcast from August 2020, she described how, growing up, her family’s cook would visit opium dens in Chinatown on the weekends. She also suggested that people in their twenties should be comfortable with cockroaches and mice in their apartments, because she had them.
“They want an apartment that looks all like that right now. And they're only like, 27. I mean, right. You know, didn't you have an apartment with cockroaches in it when you were in your 20s? I sure did. Cockroaches, mice, whatever, you know, like, but you sort of, but you were working on the long game?”
– Dallas Brodie, The Social Ramp Podcast
None of this would be a surprise to Kevin Falcon — these are all details from the dossier BC United prepared on BC Conservatives that he handed over to John Rustad. Brodie had already been selected as the Conservative candidate in his riding. He had already run against her once before. He knew when he surrendered his party that it would clear the way for Brodie to represent Vancouver-Quilchena.
It was inevitable, as the Conservative Party grew from practically defunct to the official opposition that there would be friction. Not even a month after she was sworn in, Brodie signed a letter attacking her colleague Elenore Sturko — a lesbian who formerly worked for the RCMP — for siding with the Vancouver Police Board in removing their vice-chair after offensive comments surfaced. Rustad had been leader of the opposition for all of three weeks when Brodie started questioning “our commitment to the core values shared by Conservatives.”
Brodie also found herself offside with her party when the issue of tariffs imposed by the United States on Canadian goods came to the BC Legislature. Brodie, along with four of her Conservative colleagues, voted against a motion opposing the tariffs. She did not explain her vote to reporters, but posted on social media, “The gravest threat to British Columbia’s sovereignty isn’t Trump’s annexation talk. Or tariffs. It’s David Eby’s inside job. He’s giving it away, one secret deal at a time.”
That same day Brodie posted on social media, “the number of confirmed child burials at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School site is zero.” She defended a lawyer who filed a lawsuit over the same claim. Brodie added, “No one should be afraid of the truth. Not lawyers, their governing bodies, or anyone else.” This led to significant tension within the Conservatives, particularly with House Leader Á'a:líya Warbus, who is a member of the Stó:lō Nation and daughter of the former Grand Chief of Stó:lō Tribal Council and Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia, Steven Point.
A conflict between Brodie and Warbus was one of the first likely fractures identified by pundits after the Conservative surge in the 2024 election. For almost two weeks after Brodie’s post, Rustad tried to find a way for his caucus to get along. Brodie, however, took her cause to the public. On a podcast appearance, she defended her post, criticized Rustad for asking her to take it down, and suggested Warbus belonged in the NDP. She also mocked residential school survivors’ testimony using a “child-like voice”.
Rustad is well familiar with what it feels like to have the mighty arm of the party come down on an MLA. He was thrown out of the BC Liberals for his posts about climate change. Being on the other side of the equation, he may have a bit of sympathy for the position he put Falcon in. At first, he defended Brodie, but after a caucus meeting devolved into shouting — and Brodie storming out of the room while daring Rustad to remove her from their caucus — Rustad was forced to follow in Kevin Falcon’s footsteps and eject her from the party.
"As a result of her decision to publicly mock and belittle testimony from former residential school students, including by mimicking individuals recounting stories of abuses — including child sex abuse — MLA Brodie is not welcome to return to our Conservative Party of BC Caucus.”
–John Rustad, March 2025
Following Brodie two more MLAs left the Conservative caucus — both of whom feature in the United Dossier, signed the letter calling for Sturko to be cancelled, and voted against opposing tariffs — Tara Armstrong and Jordan Kealy. Armstrong called Rustad “corrupt” and said he “abandoned the truth and his moral compass in a quest for power.” Kealy promised to help form a new right-wing political party.
“Honestly, I think I can do that job a whole lot better without the toxic mess the BC Conservatives have become.”
Jordan Kealy, March 2025
The new independent team now has more seats than the Green Party, and would be granted official party status if they formed a formal caucus.
When John Rustad and his Conservative Party nominated Dallas Brodie to run against Kevin Falcon, they knew what they were signing up for. Her social media history is long and messy. She has not hidden what she believes, or how she expresses her opinion. Once it became clear Falcon and his party were defeated, Rustad also knew Brodie would likely be the next MLA for Vancouver-Quilchena.
After 30 years of being represented by some of the most significant and influential MLAs in the province, Vancouver-Quilchena is now represented by an independent, tossed from her party after a scandal. Rustad, the man who built a movement after being kicked from his party over a social media post, is only a few months later kicking out one of his MLAs over a social media post. The Conservative Party, which united the fractured right-wing of British Columbia and came within a few seats of forming government last fall, is now fractured again.
“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”
–Oprah Winfrey, October 2011