Independent MLAs have claimed that BC Conservatives' leadership "rigged" the party's annual general meeting to ensure John Rustad and his slate of directors stayed in power.Dallas Brodie, Tara Armstrong, and Jordan Kealy alleged that executives spent $100,000 to bus in voters for Team Rustad.."John Rustad was complicit in a scheme to rig the results of the BC Conservative Party’s AGM on March 1st," the trio wrote in a press release. "According to confessions made to MLA Armstrong by a senior member of John Rustad's executive staff who claims to have participated in the scheme, approximately $100,000 was paid to secure votes from over 100 members of the South Asian community and on other measures to obtain votes for John Rustad's slate of directors and constitutional amendments.".They went on to allege that, according "numerous sources," senior members of Mr. Rustad’s staff "handpicked the persons who were allowed to vote as delegates based upon the perceived political leanings of those people or their allegiance to Mr. Rustad."The trio added that a number of witnesses came to them recalling "observations of large numbers of South Asian men arriving together and being signed up manually as voting delegates despite not having names listed in the party's records." Brodie even claimed that she'd personally heard Rustad discuss "Indo-packing" during a meeting in late 2024..Brodie, Armstrong, and Kealy made it clear they did not believe any of the civilians in question "knowingly participated in wrongdoing," and called on Rustad and the BC Conservatives to launch an independent audit of the AGM elections The MLAs are calling on John Rustad, the Conservative Party’s MLAs, and its board of directors to launch an independent audit of the party’s AGM elections. In an email to the Western Standard, the BC Conservatives categorically rejected the allegations, saying they "have no basis in reality.""The independents are trying to distract British Columbians from the fact that they have now on multiple occasions, saved the NDP from a snap election," the party continued. "They continuously do not show up for confidence motions. Their seats sit empty as we continue to fight to bring down this radical socialist government. They care more about collecting taxpayer dollar pay cheques and saving David Eby, than they do about grassroots British Columbians."
