In a podcast, Vancouver-Quilchena MLA Dallas Brodie accused her house leader, Á’a:líya Warbus, of siding with the NDP
B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad was forced to respond to festering divisions within his party on Thursday after a video clip surfaced showing Vancouver-Quilchena MLA Dallas Brodie deriding her party’s house leader, Á’a:líya Warbus.
“What I encourage all of our members to do is to understand that we need to be a big tent and party, that where we have differences and issues, that we deal with them internally,” he told reporters.
“But at the end of the day, we need also to make sure that people have the ability to be able to express that. But no, I don’t support any of our members going out and attacking other members.”
Rustad later refused to say whether he had any plans to expel Brodie from the party, saying that any discipline was being handled internally.
Brodie’s comments towards Warbus were made in a recent podcast hosted by former Mount Royal professor Frances Widdowson, who was fired in 2021 over social media comments.
In the episode, Brodie said Warbus had “sided with the NDP” in criticizing her statement that “the number of confirmed child burials at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School site is zero.”
The Tk’emlúps First Nation in Kamloops announced in 2021 that they had found grave sites on the residential school grounds. They later clarified they found 215 “anomalies” that could be grave sites but further investigation was needed.
“There’s a person in our party who’s Indigenous and she was super angry and went to town and joined the NDP to call me out,” Brodie told Widdowson.
“In our party, we’ve actually brought in some people who, I’m just going to say this, belong in the NDP.”
Responding to Brodie’s attacks, Warbus said it is time for the Conservatives to get on the same page and focus on issues such as the threat of U.S. tariffs, the NDP’s projected $10.9 billion deficit and the toxic drug crisis.
She called Brodie’s comments “not politically smart.”
“It’s not what I came for, and it’s causing division, and we need to address the division within the caucus and get on the same page as a team. If we cannot do that, then I do not know why I came here and sacrificed my time to be a political representative,” said Warbus.
Rustad and Kamloops Centre MLA Peter Milobar have also spoken out against Brodie’s comments, with the party leader saying it is a fact that over 4,000 children who were sent to residential schools never came home.
For Milobar, the issue is personal as his wife, children, grandchildren are Indigenous and his son-in-law is a member of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Nation.
“When denialism does from time to time raise up in the broader conversation, both in B.C. and across the country, it has a direct impact on Tk’emlúps,” he said in the house. “They’re faced with people literally showing up with shovels to try to prove a point, to get into secure areas. We wouldn’t expect that in any other situation, yet it seems to be fair game.”
The B.C. Assembly of First Nations has called for Brodie to be ejected from the Conservatives over her comments, with assembly board member and Tk’emlúps Chief Rosanne Casimir saying “her denialism of our histories undermines the reality of the profound trauma and cultural loss experienced by First Nations.”