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Les Leyne: From remarkable breakthrough to humiliating departure for Rustad

3 13
06.12.2025

Thirteen months of seething tension and raging arguments within the Conservative Party of B.C. caucus and membership culminated in John Rustad resigning as Opposition Leader on Thursday.

The day previous, a one-person majority of his caucus had urged him to quit because he was “professionally incapacitated,” which sounds like one of the boxes to be ticked under the new involuntary-care regime for distressed people.

He dismissed that with a double-edged response: “I’m not going anywhere.”

The mutineers joined — anonymously — to name Surrey-White Rock MLA Trevor Halford as interim leader, but Rustad rejected that as well.

So “His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition” spent a surreal day with two leaders of two different factions. It looked like the job-sharing arrangement from hell.

But an evening contemplating his only option prompted his reasonably graceful surrender on Thursday.

He went from one of the most remarkable........

© Times Colonist