BC Conservative Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream MLA Tara Armstrong.

Image Credit: Facebook/Tara Armstrong

Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream MLA Tara Armstrong has left the Conservative Party of BC to sit as an Independent after fellow party member Dallas Brodie was ousted for mocking residential school survivors.

Armstrong — along with Vancouver-Quilchena’s Brodie and Peace River North’s Jordan Kealy — held a press conference at the legislature in Victoria today, March 10, to say they would sit as Independents as they explore setting up a new political party.

“I’m not just standing up for Dallas. I’m standing up for every one of my constituents and every British Columbian who is being sold out by David Eby and John Rustad,” Armstrong said in a media release distributed on X.com.

Armstrong told reporters outside the legislature BC Conservative leader Rustad “caved to the woke liberals who have infiltrated the party.”

She said no one was surprised when Premier David Eby attacked Brodie for "telling the truth about Kamloops," but Rustad’s “cowardly decision stabbed her in the back revealed just how corrupt he has become.”

The “cowardly decision” Armstrong is referring to is ousting Brodie from the party after she made fun of residential school survivors on a podcast following weeks of controversy around her statements about the Kamloops Indian Residential School.

Armstrong said on X.com that after a few short months in office she doesn’t recognize the BC Conservative Party.

“No one was surprised when David Eby attacked Dallas Brodie for telling the truth about Kamloops. But John Rustad’s cowardly decision to stab her in the back revealed just how corrupt he has become. But under John Rustad’s leadership, one compromise after another has transformed that party into something I no longer recognize,” she said in her post. “He’s abandoned the truth and his moral compass in a quest for power. And the reality is, he will end up with neither.”

Rustad at first brushed the disagreement off as "family" issues within the caucus, but then an interview with Brodie was posted on social media, in which she criticized people who disagreed with her and ridiculed others. It was important to have "the truth" about residential schools, "not his truth, her truth, my grandmother's truth," Brodie said during the interview, using a high-pitched sing-song voice.

The Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc First Nation said in 2021 that ground-penetrating radar provided “confirmation of the remains of 215 children” at the school site but last year said the radar found “confirmation of 215 anomalies.”

Canada's special interlocutor on unmarked graves and missing children said in a report issued last year that despite the "well-documented reality" of residential-school deaths, some Canadians have made a concerted effort to attack the truths of survivors, Indigenous families and communities.

Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation called Brodie's comments racist, and previously said there is "no place in B.C. for residential school denialism."

All three MLAs were also part of the minority of BC Conservative members that voted against the motion to condemn president Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada.

iNFOnews.ca reached out to Armstrong with questions by phone, email and a Facebook message but there was no response. An attempt was also made to contact her via X.com but her account won't accept messages.

— With files from The Canadian Press. 

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