PODCAST: John Rustad

“I get if we were 15 points behind the NDP and the NDP were sailing high… [but] we’re 42-44 in the polls, and we’re not doing well enough?” 

—John Rustad

If the BC Conservative Party were a ship and John Rustad its captain, in the last couple of years he helped refit an paretic vessel, then took it into battle on the high seas; he weathered storms and won bounty; he made crew walk the plank, while others jumped the rail; he narrowly averted a mutiny, and now despite choppy seas and restless factions still circling the deck, he remains resolute at the helm, eyes fixed on the horizon.

About this tumultuous political odyssey, he appears more sanguine than agitated.

“I believe most things in life, if not all things in life, come and go in waves. And those waves can be nice and smooth and simple, or those waves can be very sharp and condensed and have huge peaks and valleys.” 

John Rustad

Taking over leadership and re-building a party from zero elected MLAs in spring 2023, to nearly winning government and securing Official Opposition in October 2024 “was an unbelievable climb,” he said, with an inevitable downside – people’s expectations. 

“Everybody saw themselves differently in term of what the Conservative Party should be… but it’s impossible to meet perfection.”

Aboriginal title, reconciliation agreements and private property 

It is a relished pastime of the BC NDP government premier and his ministers to hold Rustad’s previous time in BC Liberal cabinet as an indictment of the whole Opposition bench. Everything the NDP perceive as corrupt, heartless or unwise done by previous Liberal governments is laid at Rustad’s feet. 

But as the former Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation minister for four years (along with Forests for a time), who served directly prior to the BC NDP forming government in 2017, his experience has perhaps never been more relevant. 

Because no one else in the legislature has spent four years in that chair. And agree or disagree with his opinions and approach to reconciliation, there’s no doubt he knows the file. 

And these days, there is no political topic hotter in B.C. than the government’s reconciliation agenda, and no task more contentious, complex and imperative to resolve than how to both justly recognize Aboriginal title and irrevocably protect property.

John Rustad joined Northern Beat in the press gallery recording studio this week to discuss all this and more.

Podcast producer: Rob Shaw