Every time John Rustad leaves his house — which is often, because Rustad has one of the busiest travel schedules of any politician, anywhere in British Columbia — he says goodbye to his wife Kim and his parrot Biardi, in that order.
In return, he gets encouragement from his wife, who has been a driving force in helping him reshape the political landscape of British Columbia as the leader of the BC Conservative party. But he gets melancholy expressions of sorrow from the parrot.
“Whenever I leave, it always says in this sad face, ‘Bye,’” says Rustad.
Rustad and Biardi have a special bond — which is good because African grey parrots can live longer than most people.
“If it stays healthy, it will live to maybe 85 years old,” says Rustad. “So we will have to figure out who to will it to.”
Biardi may well become the first parrot to co-occupy the premier’s office. Rustad is riding a wave of momentum that could seriously challenge BC NDP Leader David Eby on Oct. 19. If successful, it will cap a meteoric political rise for the 61-year-old Prince George native, who says he never really aspired to be a party leader but has chosen to step up in the moment presented to him.
“Politics was never an ambition in life,” he says.
Still, he’s seized the opportunity — a mixture of the brand recognition of the hugely popular federal Conservatives, the mismanagement and collapse of the former BC United and the sudden realignment of the right-wing coalition behind his party.
Some might call it luck. But there’s also the old adage that you have to be good to be lucky.
“Luck is where opportunity meets preparation,” says Rustad.
Rustad may be the recognizable political name in his family, but it’s his wife Kim who is the driving force.
“She was the one who actually pushed me really hard to do this,” he recounts. “She said, ‘Look you need to do this. I want you to do this.’
“And I said, ‘Well you know what this means? I’m going to be home one day a week if that.’
“And she said, ‘I understand. I want you do this.’”
The estimate has proved prophetic.
For most of this year, Rustad has averaged one day a week at home, at best. Sometimes, he’s gone for weeks at a time, crisscrossing the province to build up a network of 93 local riding associations and candidates.
It has meant a sacrifice for the Rustads, who live on a lake an hour outside of Prince George. They have no kids (shortly after getting married Kim developed cervical cancer) but they do have six nieces and nephews, plus a grand-niece and a grand-nephew.
“We would borrow them and take them on trips, take them down to Disneyland and Mexico and things like that,” says Rustad. “We pretty much spoil them.”
Rustad was running his own timber supply and watershed consulting firm in Prince George in the 1990s prior to entering politics — first as a local school board trustee, then in 2005 as the BC Liberal MLA for Nechako Lakes, and later in ministerial portfolios for Aboriginal relations, forestry and natural resources.
In 2022, he was fired from the Liberal caucus by leader Kevin Falcon over publicly questioning the science of climate change.
While the move has since formed part of the mythos of how Rustad ascended to his current perch, in reality, around that time, he wasn’t even sure he’d continue in politics.
“So 2022 was a tough year for Kim and I,” he says. “My dad passed away in January. My father-in-law passed in February. I had shingles in April. And my mother passed in July. And I was talking to Kim about just retiring, quite frankly — because I thought there was no way Kevin Falcon was going to win and I didn’t want to waste any more time sitting in Opposition with him.”
But again, his wife intervened to prop him back up.
“After getting kicked out of the BC Liberal party, that sort of created the door of okay, now what. And that’s when she pushed me to consider going after the leadership.”
He started exploring the BC Conservatives, which had logged a dismal 1.9 per cent of the popular vote in the 2020 election and was going nowhere fast.
Five separate streams of events would eventually come together to elevate the party from the basement to the political penthouse: An influx of politically skilled supporters of blogger Aaron Gunn, who decided to take over the BC Conservatives after Gunn was booted from the 2021 BC Liberal leadership race; the rapid rise in popularity of the federal Conservative brand, which fuelled the reputation of the provincial party by extension (despite there being no formal link); Rustad’s decision to join the BC Conservatives in early 2023, giving it major profile with its first MLA in the legislature; the disastrous rebranding of the BC Liberals as BC United, which confused its supporters; and the poor leadership of United under Falcon, who alienated his closest advisors with a series of miscalculated political decisions that ultimately led to the collapse of the party.
Although many doubted these factors could all come together, Rustad says he’s always viewed his metric of success as actually winning the election.
“The most interesting part of this is to see the transformation from last year,” says Rustad.
“I remember doing an interview with Andrew [MacLeod] from The Tyee and he said, ‘How do you define success?’ And I said, ‘Winning.’ And he said, ‘What? Your riding?’ And I said, ‘No, winning the election, forming the government.’ And his jaw dropped. And he wrote it down.
“Of course, nobody thought you could do this in a year, take a political party from two to three per cent to challenge to form government.
“Lots of people ask me about it and I put it down simply to people are really desperate and looking for change.”
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No matter who wins the upcoming election, it seems likely that Rustad’s four-person caucus will grow. He’s said he intends to give his current and future MLAs freedom to speak their mind and not whip them into voting in rigid ideological positions — though, how tenable that position will be if MLAs break on fundamental platform issues or legislation is an open question.
Former cabinet colleagues remember Rustad as a somewhat low-key BC Liberal minister who didn’t rock the boat and mostly did what he was told. Over the years, he never expressed the extreme social positions he and his party now advocate, such as banning transgendered athletes from women’s sports, curtailing gender-neutral washrooms, removing certain books from school libraries and scrapping the SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) learning module.
They are positions that have left Rustad and the Conservatives ripe for attack by the NDP, combined with the controversial opinions of some candidates who have called LGBTQ people “degenerates,” claimed COVID-19 vaccines give you magnetism, believed in the chemtrails conspiracy, claimed 5G wireless signals lead to genocide, and called for criminal investigations into Dr. Bonnie Henry and NDP Health Minister Adrian Dix.
Eby called it a “deeply sexist, divisive approach that we've seen result in such awful outcomes in the United States.”
“The desperation and that huge interest on the part of the BC Conservatives to import the American culture wars to British Columbia, I don't understand it,” said Eby.
The Conservative candidates are, in some cases, emboldened by the party’s strong showing in months’ worth of polling. Although the party trumpets the polling numbers publicly, and even constructs social media campaigns based upon the numbers, Rustad privately urges caution.
“This is what I tell all of our candidates: ignore the polls and run as if you're two or three points behind,” he says. “You’ve got to fight for every single vote.”
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Yet the popularity of Rustad’s approach, so far, can be seen on the ground during his campaigning.
On a Sunday afternoon in late August, Rustad arrives at the Queensborough Community Centre in Richmond for a planned rally and finds himself facing off against a rival event planned by the BC NDP.
Outside, local NDP MLA Aman Singh is speaking on an amphitheatre stage to a crowd of maybe 50 people. Singh is also flanked by a dozen protesters from a local landlord group upset about the NDP rental policies and restrictions on short-term rentals.
Inside, more than 200 people crowded into a room to hear Rustad speak, alongside seven local candidates. The crowd is so big it threatens to violate the fire code, so the organizers open the rolling garage-style doors to let people stand outside as well. It’s a marked contrast in attendance and energy compared to the BC NDP event.
“I don’t use written remarks,” Rustad says, before entering the room. “It’s often just an issue of thinking what I want to say, and what perhaps the crowd is here to hear.”
Inside, he delivers a speech that touches upon the elimination of the carbon tax, scrapping the SOGI in schools, paying for private health-care spaces to reduce wait times for services like cancer care, and slashing government bureaucracy.
“We’re also going to stop this decriminalization and safe supply,” he says. “It’s destroying families.”
The speech, while at times a bit unfocused and lacking in traditional stop-for-applause high points, nonetheless seems to go well. Multiple people approach Rustad’s staff to ask how they could organize fundraising events. He spends almost 45 minutes posing for selfies, shaking hands and working the crowd.
Back in the car, en route to the next event, Rustad pulls out his phone to compose a post on X (formerly Twitter). Yes, Rustad tweets his own material.
“I actually just like doing it,” he says. But increasingly, he admits, he doesn’t read the comments.
At the next stop, in Vancouver’s Chinatown, Richmond Centre MLA Teresa Wat, who defected from the former BC United party to join the Conservatives, introduces him to members of the Chinese Cultural Centre. Rustad listens to concerns over rampant local drug use, vandalism and racist hate speech sprayed on the community centre. He promises to return to meet more members and hear suggestions about revitalizing Chinatown.
“I was just here last week, meeting with the business sector,” he says, while walking outside the building towards the Light Up Chinatown event.
“Drugs and crime is the No. 1 issue. Nobody is feeling safe. Everybody is concerned about what’s going on.”
New Democrats say the Conservative drug policies will worsen deaths in the toxic drug crisis by making it harder to access clean government safe supply. But Rustad says he’s hearing the NDP policies are too permissive, too radical and moving street disorder in the wrong direction. It’s part of a wave of discontent Rustad says the NDP is failing to see.
“I was shocked, shocked they didn't drop the writ in March,” he says, of an early election call by Eby.
“I was like, what are you guys doing? They just didn't see us as a possible threat at all.
“They didn’t see what’s happening. I was just that guy from Nechako. And I was like okay I’m not going to try to wake them up to the reality of what’s going on, on the ground.”
To Rustad, it feels like the province is in the middle of a change election. He says he feels it while campaigning, hears it from voters, senses it in the political air.
“This is a grassroots thing, people just talking at the ground level about just wanting change,” he says.
“The interesting piece in going around the province and talking to people who did not vote in the last two elections, and maybe they want to vote in this election. And that is going to be very interesting to see how the voter turnout changes in this election.
“They are people that will not vote NDP, and felt the Liberal party was corrupt and didn't want to waste their time because they felt they couldn’t vote for them. And now they have an option.”
B.C.’s voter turnout rate hasn’t increased since 2001. But if it does in this election, Rustad says it will benefit him.
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With his punishing travel and work schedule, Rustad says he doesn’t have many hobbies. He used to golf, but that has fallen by the wayside. He doesn’t have time to read.
On flights, he says he gravitates towards easy-to-watch films.
“I love all the Marvel comic stuff, and movies about space and action and adventure.”
“If I’ve got spare time, usually I’m studying market conditions, and touching on where things are going on in the world and trying to figure out where things are going,” he says. “That’s a hobby of mine.”
Does it help him unwind?
“Oh, I don’t know if it relaxes me,” he says, chuckling. “But it is something I like to do.”
His one genuine moment of respite comes when he goes home and digs out his riding lawn mower, fires it up, and begins circling his two and a half acres.
“Cutting the grass is very therapeutic,” he says.
It takes an hour. He’s not reachable by phone. The mower is loud enough to drown out the rest of the world. He’s focused on a single task.
“It’s a period of time where you just sit there, mowing the lawn,” he says.
He doesn’t drink coffee, but nonetheless gets his caffeine kick through chai lattes. He’s currently trying to quit, but it perhaps will not last the campaign.
“I was getting to be way too dependent on caffeine to get me through the day.”
Rustad is acutely aware of both his momentum and of peaking too early — both as a party, and a leader.
“That is a concern, which is one of the reasons why we haven’t rolled out a lot of policy,” he says, of holding off major policy plans until closer to the campaign.
But, after running so fast for 17 months, he’s fighting burnout.
“It’s definitely a problem,” he says. “I’m certainly feeling it. I’m feeling the stress and the fatigue.”
He misses his wife and his parrot — including Biardi’s ability to pick up on words he’s not supposed to.
“I was coming back from work one night and got back in late and had some dinner in the oven for me … and the bird yelled out just really loud, ‘Oh shit,’” says Rustad, laughing.
“And I was like, what the hell? Where did this come from? I asked Kim, and she was sheepish, and she said … she pulled out a container of milk and dropped and splattered all over the floor. So she yelled out, ‘Oh shit.’ It was the only time she said it. She wasn't going to tell me about it, of course. Until the bird did.”
He doesn’t get to see much of that at home anymore. Rustad’s motto to staff over the last 17 months has been that he’s not going to be outworked by any of the other parties. So he continues to live out of his suitcase, in different communities each night, on the campaign trail, in rooms of supporters both big and small. He’s building to an apex, on Oct. 19.
“At the end of the day, what it really boils down to is I just want to get shit done,” he says.
“That is, essentially, it.”
Rob Shaw has spent more than 16 years covering B.C. politics, now reporting for CHEK News and writing for Glacier Media. He is the co-author of the national bestselling book A Matter of Confidence, host of the weekly podcast Political Capital, and a regular guest on CBC Radio.
