Year-end interview: John Rustad on B.C. Conservatives' remarkable 2024

It's been quite the year for B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad – his party soaring from less than two per cent of the popular vote and no seats in the 2020 election to nearly winning this year’s election.

It’s been quite the year for B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad – his party soaring from less than two per cent of the popular vote and no seats in the 2020 election to nearly winning this year’s election.

“Obviously, it would have been great if we could have formed government, but I’m really proud of what weve been able to achieve as a political party and as an entity,” said Rustad on Dec. 10, reflecting on his party’s astounding result.

“I mean, it’s been since the 1930s, since the Conservative Party has really been a force in British Columbia.”

The collapse of BC United in late August was a dramatic event, mere weeks before the election, and was seen as helping pave the way for Rustad’s party. But, looking back, he thinks if that had happened earlier it might have been enough to push the B.C. Conservatives over the top.

“If BC United had pulled the pin three months earlier and then we would have had nomination races, all that sort of stuff, maybe that would have made a difference in terms of the election,” he said from his corner office in the legislature as the new leader of the Official Opposition.

Still, his party won 44 seats – more than any Opposition in B.C. history. The flip side of it for the MLA for Nechako Lakes is that he’s the leader of a party with 36 new MLAs

“Look at any family in the province. There’s issues that crop up in any family, and we are just a large family as the Conservative Party,” said Rustad, reflecting on inevitable squabbles within his caucus.