An alleged BC Conservative private investigator list looks almost random

PENTICTON — CHEK News reported Thursday that the Conservative Party of BC hired a private investigator to look at 14 people, including the one of the organization's own correspondents..Shaw wrote it was "certainly a first" for him to have a political party put a private investigator on him. .The published sheet mixes sitting Conservatives, former Conservative MLAs, two former party officers and the firm attached to one of them, a former party president, an NDP caucus staffer, Lululemon founder Chip Wilson, Winnipeg communications consultant Jonathan Ross, and Shaw himself.CHEK named former executive director Angelo Isidorou, former managing director Philip Dippenaar, Isidorou's firm Fountainhead Communications, former party president Aisha Estey, sitting Skeena MLA Claire Rattée, sitting Surrey North MLA Mandeep Dhaliwal, Independents Rosalyn Bird, Brennan Day and Á'a:líya Warbus, Penticton-Summerland NDP MLA Amelia Boultbee, NDP caucus issues-management director Matt Hannah, Ross, Shaw and Wilson..The Western Standard has not independently confirmed whether the list is real or complete.Conservative Leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay, asked about a private investigator at the Union of BC Municipalities convention Thursday, called the story an allegation."I had no knowledge of it, I was unaware of it, so I can't really respond," she told reporters. "And they are just allegations at the moment. The party is looking into it.".The Western Standard can confirm it was in unsolicited receipt last week of a confidential dossier that appeared to have been completed by a private investigator on one of the people CHEK listed. That file is a different document from the list CHEK published Thursday. It does not name who commissioned the work, nor does it does establish that the Conservative party hired anyone to look at MLAs, Shaw, or Chip Wilson.The Western Standard is not naming the person who sent the dossier but can confirm it did not come from a sitting Conservative MLA, and it did not come directly from anyone within Findlay’s current, or previous, leadership staff..Day, who left the caucus August 26 and sits as an Independent Conservative, gave CHEK the only named-MLA quote on the list Thursday. "Confirmation that a private investigator was assigned and that I was among the MLAs being investigated only reinforces why I chose to part company with the Kerry-Lynne Findlay Conservatives," he said. "It is impossible to point your guns outward at the government when you're too busy pointing them inward at your own caucus."If the list CHEK printed is real and complete, one of the more curious questions (along with, "why have a list at all?" and "to what end was the list created for?") is who is not on it.Teresa Wat, for example, is not on the list.Wat was named and labelled "CCP" in a July 29 @thefindlayfiles post of an allegedly leaked leadership-campaign chat. If the alleged "CCP" comment was an insinuation of collusion with a foreign government, it would make it all the more confounding for her to be absent from any such list..Wat left the caucus August 26 after the apology she said she was promised never arrived. She joined Peter Milobar's still-unnamed vehicle September 11..Speaking of Peter Milobar: him and Ian Paton are not on the list either.They walked August 14 and August 24, stood on the legislature steps and said they would build a new centre-right party. .That still-unnamed caucus now numbers seven sitting MLAs. Unlike Milobar and Paton, three of those seven — Bird, Warbus and, from the earlier Conservative bench, Boultbee after she crossed to the NDP — do appear on CHEK's list..Trevor Halford is not on the list. He held the Official Opposition leader's chair from December 2025 until Findlay's June reorganization and still sits in the Conservative caucus. His name has circulated among Conservatives as a possible stand-in should Findlay leave. Rob Shaw is on the list, but not Jas Johal. Johal, a former Richmond-Queensborough BC Liberal MLA, now a CKNW commentator, has built a reputation for breaking information on Conservative staffing fights, board standoffs, and caucus sentiment ———sometimes well before sitting members themselves have become aware of the information.Perhaps the most random-appearing of them all is Chip Wilson.Chip, as he goes by, is not an MLA, not party staff, and not a politics reporter on the British Columbia beat. He is the Lululemon founder who, in the last days of the 2024 campaign, put signs on his Point Grey mansion defending Conservatives against a "far right" label and calling the NDP "communist." Elections BC later fined him $600 for running those signs as unregistered third-party advertising. The NDP said a donor matching his legal name, Dennis Wilson, gave the Conservatives the 2024 maximum. Premier David Eby once called him "a Rustad man." But aside from being a supporter of former BC Conservative leader John Rustad — who, incidentally, is also not on the list — it would be challenging to quickly yield any tidy reason for why a Findlay-era investigator would feel the need to put Chip Wilson, of all people, on any such a list..Surrey-Cloverdale Independent MLA Elenore Sturko, removed from the Conservative caucus in September 2025, and also not featured on the list, is one of few sitting MLAs to react to the story publicly as of Thursday afternoon. ."Kerry-Lynne Findlay is unfit to lead a political party much less the province," she posted to X on Thursday. "She pledged to unite British Columbians but instead, deepened the chasm within her own ranks with one foolish decision after the next. Now, under her leadership, a P.I. was hired to conduct a witch hunt."This is a developing story.

An alleged BC Conservative private investigator list looks almost random

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