The leader of British Columbia’s second-youngest political party is making her pitch to voters.
Karin Kirkpatrick is the leader of CentreBC, which was founded in March – just a few months before the Conservative Party of BC spin-off OneBC was created.
She’s a former BC United/BC Liberal MLA who represented a riding in West Vancouver between 2020 and 2024.
When BC United was eclipsed last year by the BC Conservatives – and after her then-leader, Kevin Falcon, agreed to clear the way for John Rustad’s party – Kirkpatrick tried to hold onto her riding as an independent. Despite winning more than 20 per cent of the vote, she was beaten by her BC Conservative rival.
Now, having had several months to regroup after last October’s election, Kirkpatrick’s back in the game: and she’s gunning for both the BC NDP and the BC Conservatives.
BC United’s collapse, she told NowMedia video host Jim Csek, was “like watching a car accident in slow motion.”
When Falcon agreed to bow out and allow Rustad to monopolize the right, he left many members of the caucus “upset and frustrated,” she said.
“Kevin Falcon never phoned anybody to say, This is why I did it,” Kirkpatrick said, branding the saga a “terrible experience” and accusing her former boss of “throw[ing] them under the bus.”
Instead of bringing veteran MLAs from BC United into the BC Conservative tent, Rustad and chose to remain loyal, for the most part, to his own candidates, in the process losing “some really good candidates.”
“I am sure if some different decisions had been made by the Conservatives – and they had chosen the candidates that were originally screened by the BC United – they would've actually had more success in certain ridings,” she said.
But all that is behind Kirkpatrick. The focus now is CentreBC, which she said already has members in 83 of BC’s 93 ridings, with “strong support” in the Okanagan.
“We've got a couple things going for us,” she said. “First, I just want to say we're not splitting the right, because that was a concern that we continue to hear.
“We are taking as many NDP votes as we are taking votes from the other side.”
She added: “We have been speaking to NDP MLAs. We have been speaking to Conservative MLAs. So we are not splitting the right; we are appealing to the broader group of British Columbians.”
While Kirkpatrick said she doesn’t have any defections to her party to announce just yet, she acknowledged that that is a target.
Meanwhile, behind-the-scenes defections have already occurred, she said, with BC United and BC NDP riding associations “giving up their memberships in those parties and … becoming our riding associations.”
In her comprehensive interview with Csek, she also discussed:
Her professional training as an accountant and her view that “government should run like a credit union”
Her commitment to “pragmatism” and “real numbers” rather than “ideology”
The need for good leaders to change their mind “when presented with new, compelling evidence”
That she’s “Canadian first” – before British Columbian – and that Canadians must “work together to ensure access to resources and markets”
The importance of forestry and mining, with the latter “more palatable now” – but it “can’t take 20 years to permit a mine”
How BC’s “youth are fleeing” due to a “lack of opportunity” in the province
That she predicts the BC Conservatives will “end up with someone to the right of Rustad” because “his party thinks he’s too far to the left”
Kirkpatrick also acknowledged that she hasn’t been elected the leader of CentreBC.
“A leadership race is healthy,” she said. “I've already had good people express interest in that. It's a great way to build the party and raise the profile, and I'm just hoping that we don't have an election before we get to that place where we can actually have a democratically elected leader.”
