BREAKING: MLA Brennan Day calls it a day on the BC Conservative caucus

PENTICTON - Courtenay-Comox MLA Brennan Day has left the Conservative Party of BC, saying he has lost confidence in Leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay and will sit in the legislature as an Independent.Day posted a signed Legislative Assembly letter on X Wednesday afternoon. It takes effect immediately. He is the fifth Conservative MLA to walk out of Findlay’s caucus in 12 days, and the second to go on Wednesday after Richmond-Bridgeport MLA Teresa Wat.“The current direction of the Conservative Party of BC under Kerry-Lynne Findlay is no longer something I can support,” Day wrote. “More fundamentally, I have lost confidence in the judgment, conduct, and ethical standards of her leadership and those she has chosen to surround herself with.”.The line about the people around Findlay landed hours after the leader announced she had ordered her chief of staff to fire the caucus director of operations. Findlay did not name the official. Radio host Jas Johal and CBC legislative reporter Katie DeRosa identified him as Apollo Chung.Day did not mention Chung, Wat or the leaked staff audio that circulated on X this week. He framed the break as a question of integrity.“Public office demands integrity,” he wrote. “I cannot ask others to meet that standard while remaining silent when I believe my own party’s leadership has fallen short of it. Nor can I reconcile doing so with the commitments I made to the people who sent me to Victoria.”.The departure is a reversal of the role Day played inside the same caucus eight months ago. On December 3, 2025, the Courtenay-Comox MLA organized the 20 individually signed statements of non-confidence that the party board used to remove John Rustad as leader. Rob Shaw reported that Day led the signature drive after Rustad cancelled caucus meetings that would have let MLAs confront him before winter break.Day told reporters that day he had not had confidence in Rustad “for quite some time” and backed Surrey-White Rock MLA Trevor Halford as interim leader. In May he endorsed Kamloops Centre MLA Peter Milobar in the leadership contest Findlay won on May 30. Milobar left caucus on August 14. Delta South MLA Ian Paton, another Milobar endorser, followed on August 24. The pair have said they will register a new centre-right party before the fall sitting.Prince George-Valemount MLA Rosalyn Bird quit Tuesday, pointing to “political infighting, name-calling and division.” Wat left Wednesday morning after saying Findlay had questioned her loyalty to Canada in a leaked leadership-campaign chat and then failed to issue a promised public apology.Findlay called Wat’s exit a “betrayal” of volunteers and voters and said she had already apologized privately and prepared a second statement..Day won Courtenay-Comox in October 2024 by 92 votes, 13,481 to 13,389, over two-term New Democrat Ronna-Rae Leonard. It was one of the tightest races in the province. He had lost the same riding as the BC Liberal candidate in 2020. Before the legislature he lived in the Comox Valley for three decades, held degrees in political science and international relations from Vancouver Island University, ran an industrial supply and training firm, and served as executive director of the Eureka Support Society, a Courtenay mental-health agency.Findlay kept him as critic for seniors and rural health when she named her shadow cabinet on June 30. He was still working that file Wednesday morning, quoting a Business in Vancouver report on a possible multi-billion-dollar error in natural-gas royalties and writing that he found it “hard to believe an error this big is a ‘mistake.’”In his resignation letter he said he entered politics “to serve the people of Courtenay-Comox and to help build a serious, principled, right-of-centre alternative to David Eby’s NDP government.” He pledged to keep fighting for “responsible government, fiscal discipline, individual freedom, strong public services, and an economy that rewards hard work and opportunity,” and to hold “David Eby and the NDP, the most destructive government in British Columbia’s history, to account.”“My loyalty remains where it has always belonged: with the people that put their trust in me to serve with integrity.”.The Conservatives won 44 seats in the 2024 election. After Day’s announcement they are down to 33 sitting caucus members, not counting Abbotsford-Mission MLA Reann Gasper, who has said she will resign her seat so Findlay can seek it in a by-election. Five MLAs have now left Findlay’s caucus in 12 days.The legislature is not sitting. When it returns in the fall, Day will sit outside the official opposition, as will Wat, Milobar, Paton and Bird. Official opposition status depends on caucus size. Each further exit tightens the arithmetic against a party that formed official opposition less than two years ago.Day’s riding is not a safe Conservative seat. A 92-vote win over the NDP, with the Greens taking more than 20% in 2024, leaves little room for a fractured right-of-centre vote if a general election arrives before the next scheduled date.Findlay told reporters in Vancouver on Tuesday that some members “do not have a vision for prosperity and hope that we’re presenting for all British Columbians.” She has denied running a purge, saying earlier executive departures were voluntary or board decisions.Day’s letter answers that argument on his own terms. The MLA who gathered the signatures to remove the last leader has now written that he cannot remain silent about the next one..In an email to the Western Standard on Tuesday evening — after Bird’s resignation and before Wat’s — he declined to join the guessing about further exits and still identified himself as a Conservative MLA.“I have tremendous respect for Peter, Ian and Rosalyn,” he wrote. “They made decisions they believe are right for themselves and their constituents. I’m not going to add to the speculation about who may or may not leave next.”He said he had not run “to participate in internal political fights,” but because “healthcare is failing, families are struggling, our economy is underperforming, and BC needs a credible alternative to the NDP; the most destructive government British Columbia has had to endure.”“My conservatism isn’t complicated: responsible government, lower taxes, individual freedom, personal responsibility, free enterprise, strong communities and competent public services,” the email said. “I also believe conservatism must be a broad coalition. We won’t build a government by deciding which conservatives are conservative enough.”

BREAKING: MLA Brennan Day calls it a day on the BC Conservative caucus

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