Photo: Michael Potestio

Kamloops Centre MLA Peter Milobar (left) and Kamloops-North THompson MLA Ward Stamer celebrate on election night.

Kamloops’ two Opposition B.C. Conservative MLAs feel their party remains strong despite losing three members amid a very public fracture relating to controversial comments made about the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.

Dallas Brodie, Tara Armstrong and Jordan Kealy say they will sit in the legislature as Independents for now, but will "explore" the idea of forming a new political party, since the threshold for party status in the B.C. legislature is two members.

Kamloops Centre MLA Peter Milobar said he’s not concerned the trio might form a new party and attract more members from the Conservatives' ranks.

“No,” said Milobar, who last year had a front-row seat to the implosion of his former BC United Party.

“They'll ultimately do whatever they feel they need to do, and only they can speak to their own timelines or what they may or may not put together. I’m very confident in the strength of our 41 we got a lot of talent and diverse opinions.”

Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream representative Armstrong, and Kealy, the MLA from Peace River North — who vowed more would leave the party — followed Vancouver-Quilchena’s Brodie out the door in solidarity when she was removed from the Conservative caucus over insensitive remarks she made about residential schools.

“We're stronger — I can tell you right now we're stronger,” Kamloops-North Thompson MLA Ward Stamer said of his party’s shrunken numbers. “Everybody is totally focused in what we need to do, and that's to bring this government down.”

Stamer said he feels his party is still strong as those three independent MLAs are still more likely to vote along the same lines as the Conservatives opposed to with the governing NDP.

Tact matters, Milobar says

Milobar said that, typically, when issues around residential schools flare up, he feels it starts to bring out the worst in comments and perspectives that people can have.

"[It] essentially retraumatizes a lot of people,” Milobar said. “It undermines what they’re conveying back in terms of very impactful and horrific things that happen within their own personal life or their family's life and the intergenerational trauma that it creates.”

Brodie's removal came after she posted on social media last month that "zero" child burials had been confirmed at the former Kamloops school.

Milobar noted the Tk’emlúps band has said their findings are only potential graves, but, as elected officials, it’s important how one phrases things and convey an issue.

Milobar also spoke out against offensive comments failed Conservative candidate Marina Sapozhnikov made about Indigenous peoples last fall ahead of the provincial election.

Asked if he was concerned others in the party held insensitive view towards Indigenous people, Milobar said he had not seen anything "directly."

Podcast was final straw

Conservatives Leader John Rustad ejected Brodie, his attorney general critic, from caucus, citing comments he says "mock and belittle" residential school survivors — an incident that followed her tweet, which Rustad has said wasn't what ultimately got her kicked out.

Brodie’s tweet, however, drew public outcry, and criticism from within her own party — including from Conservative house leader A'aliya Warbus, who is Indigenous, and Milobar, who spoke out against denialism in the Legislature a few days after Brodie’s Tweet.

Brodie then appeared in a video podcast saying it was important to have "the truth" about residential schools, "not his truth, her truth, my grandmother's truth … this stuff has to stop."

Brodie used a high-pitched singsong voice as she mimicked those she disagreed with.

"As a result of her decision to publicly mock and belittle testimony from former residential school students, including by mimicking individuals recounting stories of abuses — including child sex abuse — MLA Brodie is not welcome to return to our Conservative Party of BC Caucus," Rustad said in a statement.

Prior to the division, the governing NDP held a one seat majority government with 47 seats to the Conservatives’ 44 and the Green Party’s two. The Greens and NDP finalized a pact to work together last week, consolidating the New Democrats' hold on the provincial legislature.