By Kimball Cariou
Originally published in People’s Voice
Not many people were paying close attention to the contest this spring for leadership of British Columbia’s fractious Conservative party. But that changed on May 30, with the narrow victory of Kerry-Lynne Findlay. A former cabinet minister in Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, the new leader of the Official Opposition in BC has deep links with far-right, racist, white nationalist movements which are gaining traction across much of western Canada.
Findlay is not a member of the current Legislature in Victoria. But if a member of her caucus resigns, that would open the door for a byelection and a much higher public profile for a politician whose views closely mirror Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.
In her victory speech, Findlay declared that she is guided by the ideas of “faith, family and freedom,” a phrase frequently used by US Christian nationalists. The words eerily echo another slogan popularized by Adolf Hitler: “Kinder, Kuche, Kirche” (“Children, Kitchen, Church”).
Analysts who track Findlay’s political trajectory warn that her slogans should not be dismissed as mistakes or misunderstandings. Her victory reflects the conscious strategy of fascist movements to seize on the opportunity created in 2024 by the implosion of BC’s main right-wing, pro-corporate political party. After governing for sixteen years under Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark, the defeated BC Liberals rebranded themselves in 2023 as “BC United” in hopes of ousting the NDP.
That strategy backfired spectacularly, allowing room for the rapidly growing provincial Conservatives to push BC United out of the 2024 election. By that point, the Conservatives had been largely taken over by the far-right, but they came perilously close to winning a majority in the Legislature. Divisions in their caucus over the blatantly racist views of some MLAs forced the ouster of leader John Rustad, and now the most pro-fascist elements of the party have Findlay to project their views.
Findlay’s rise has been quietly welcomed by some NDP politicians, who calculate that she will be “too divisive” to win an election. That could allow the NDP to maintain its course under Premier David Eby, who has almost completely dropped any progressive social and economic policies in an attempt to appeal to centre-right voters. But analysts who study the rise of fascist and far-right “populist” movements in other countries point out that this approach by reformist parties like the NDP has often failed.
Those who dismiss Kerry-Lynn Findlay as an outlier should look next door. As in BC, the political right in Alberta went through a rebranding and an influx of MAGA-type members. The outcome was the election of US Big Oil shill Danielle Smith as premier. Far from being an isolated force, Smith’s backers are pushing their reactionary demands to the top of the political agenda in Canada. In both provinces, anti-Indigenous hatred and bogus arguments about “provincial rights” are among the favoured political tools driving the rise of fascist movements.
But other ideological weapons are being used to whip up hatred and fear. Findlay’s husband Brent Chapman – the Conservative MLA for Surrey South – is among those who cultivate a wide range of conspiracies and lies. Chapman’s well-documented record includes promotion of the infamous lie that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was fake, the Quebec City Mosque massacre was “suspicious,” that residential school deaths are a “massive fraud,” that Palestinians are “inbred,” and so forth. Some expect Chapman will resign so that Findlay can enter the Legislature.
Findlay herself has been exposed for insinuations about antisemitic conspiracy theories about George Soros and Chrystia Freeland. (She later called her postings on this topic “thoughtless” and never paid any political price.)
During the BC Conservative leadership race, she accused one opponent of conflict of interest – because he is married to an Indigenous woman. Her “faith, family and freedom” slogan is a conscious signal of her intention to attack reproductive rights, ban books, encourage violence against 2SLGBTIQ+ people, and dismantle the separation of church and state.
The next BC provincial election is scheduled for 2028. But nobody would be surprised if Eby found a convenient reason to go to the voters in the near future, banking on Findlay’s extremism to bolster the NDP’s flagging popularity. That would be a dangerous gamble, not to mention somewhat hypocritical for a premier who continuously retreats in the face of pressures by the far-right on “hot button” issues around crime, social equality and Indigenous rights.
Findlay’s victory should be a warning that politics in BC needs far more vigorous intervention by progressive forces – Indigenous peoples, environmentalists, advocates for expanded funding of housing and childcare, the more activist elements of the labour movement – to expose and defeat the Conservatives and to put the NDP’s feet to the fire around its own tilt to the right.
Otherwise, Canada’s west coast could soon be governed by the most reactionary premier on Canadian history.