John Rustad

John Rustad leads BC United, the Conservative opposition in British Columbia. His party has been focused heavily on reversing NDP policies — carbon tax, housing regulations, drug decriminalization. I get that he's in opposition so criticizing the government is his job. But his actual platform on affordability has been weak. Promising to cut the carbon tax while not explaining concretely how housing costs will come down for regular people isn't a plan. BC families are squeezed and they need real solutions. An opposition that just says "we're not the NDP" hasn't earned the trust of people who are genuinely struggling.

John Rustad led the BC Conservatives, positioning himself from the right against David Eby's NDP. He's taken positions skeptical of climate science, which in British Columbia — a province that experienced record heat events killing hundreds, catastrophic wildfires, and devastating floods — feels disconnected from reality. I understand people are frustrated with carbon pricing and its cost to working families. That's legitimate and I'm one of them. But a leader who casts doubt on climate science in a province living through the consequences doesn't offer a serious alternative. He did better in 2024 than anyone expected. Losing in BC while most of the country went conservative tells its own story.

John Rustad was expelled from the BC Liberal caucus in 2022 specifically because he questioned established climate science — one of the only sitting MLAs in Canada removed from a caucus for that reason. He then led the BC Conservative Party to near-victory in the 2024 provincial election. His public climate record is extensive: he suggested that "cows burping and farting" affecting the weather was "nonsense," and research into his candidates revealed widespread online climate conspiracy theories, including claims that Canada's record wildfires were set by arsonists. In the weeks before the 2024 vote, Rustad suddenly insisted he believed climate change was real — just not a "crisis." His platform, however, called for dramatically expanding natural gas production, building new pipelines, easing LNG emissions tests, and facilitating old-growth logging. BC is experiencing record wildfires, flooding, and extreme weather. A political leader who treats climate science as an inconvenient obstacle to resource extraction is not offering solutions — he's offering a comfortable story.