Q&A: Á'a:líya Warbus on Conservative strife, Brodie video, and Indigenous leaders’ criticism of party

As the BC Conservative Party wrestles with what kind of speech it will tolerate from its members, its house leader Á'a:líya Warbus says she is also defining her own personal lines in the sand.

In an interview with The Current Tuesday, Warbus—who is also the MLA for Chilliwack-Cultus Lake—said she was “frustrated” by comments about residential schools made by her colleague Dallas Brodie and that the resulting friction distracted from the common goals shared by the BC Conservative caucus. (You can read the entire interview below.)

Last week, Conservative leader John Rustad ejected Brodie from the party over remarks she made on a podcast in which she questioned the testimony of residential school survivors. Although Brodie had escaped party discipline for previous comments on residential schools, Rustad said he couldn’t forgive Brodie’s “mocking” of survivors’ testimony. In the same podcast, Brodie derided Warbus for suggesting that those questioning the accounts of survivors need to better educate themselves and talk to the people who attended residential schools. Brodie said Warbus was “super angry” and had “joined the NDP” in its criticism. Two BC Conservative colleagues have since also left the party.

Warbus became the first Stó:lō member of the legislature when she was elected last spring. After she was nominated for the party last spring, Warbus admitted to The Current that she came to politics from a “left perspective,” but that she also shared common goals with Rustad and his fledgling party—especially when it came to the government’s response to the opioid epidemic, which had claimed the lives of several of her family members.

After the BC Conservatives nearly claimed victory last fall, Rustad named Warbus the party’s house leader, one of the three top leadership positions in the legislature.

Warbus told The Current this week that she has been trying to “focus on things we can accomplish,” rather than getting pulled into “culture war” issues.

Those issues have historically created problems in previous right-of-centre parties. During the 2020 provincial election, the BC Liberals banished then-Chilliwack MLA Laurie Throness from the party following a series of controversial comments on birth control and LGBTQ issues.

John Rustad himself became a Conservative after he was removed from the BC Liberals following comments made about climate change. As the BC Conservatives rose to prominence, Rustad trumpeted his “big tent” approach and declined to remove candidates with a record of derogatory comments about Muslims and Palestinians. The ejection of Brodie marked a turn from that approach, with Rustad drawing the first boundaries around what he allows from members.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and concision. Both Warbus and FVC editor Tyler Olsen also had time limitations that prevented the conversation from continuing beyond the final question.

FVC: How did you feel when you saw the video that was posted last week?

Á’a:líya Warbus: I'm gonna have to kind of go back now to when it was brought to my attention. I felt frustrated when I saw the video.

As a political person, and somebody who's elected, I do consistently—and it's a difficult thing to do—have to check my own bias and values and what I believe that I'm here to do, and that is represent my riding, and the people that elected me to this position. For me, that means looking at the issues that are important and top of mind.

The video frustrated me because I felt it really took away from the priorities that we have as a caucus and a team, and it really distracts, it takes away from the larger conversation of reconciliation. I do not think that [a residential school debate] is a strong focus for us right now. We want to be united, Indigenous/non-Indigenous. We want to be united in a lot of ways in government right now, at all levels and even across party lines, because there are so many things that are imposing onto our sovereignty—even as a nation right now. That's a huge conversation that's giving people a lot of pause and a lot to think about right now. What I'm hearing is that they're worried, they're scared. They don't know what's next. They don't know how these impositions of a totally other government that's out of our control will affect their businesses and their livelihood.

And this felt completely irrelevant to that conversation and the focus that many of us have as MLAs, which is working with our constituents in our riding to represent the voices of the people that we work for, that have elected us. I just didn't understand. I was frustrated by the video.

FVC: Inevitably, with something like this, you're going to have your own thoughts personally. I understand maybe you want to keep to the politics; that's your job, and I understand that. Does it give you insight, though, into the difficulties that have faced Indigenous politicians in office before—I'm thinking even Melanie Mark and previous politicians, and the fact that we just don't have any Indigenous politicians—that you're being asked here to kind of separate these two sides. Is that a challenge? Or has this made you think about kind of that process and how you'll be able to do it in the future?

Warbus: Yes. The short answer to all of that is yes. Absolutely.

When we're asked to do a job—and I should say, when I'm asked to do a job and represent an electorate or community, I often have to [differentiate] between the issue and my connection to the issue. I have to wear different hats as House leader, as MLA for Chilliwack-Cultus Lake, and as an Indigenous person who has lived the atrocities that we've faced. Where those all align is the very tricky nature of being in this business and working to again, go back to the issue, battle the issue. One of the best pieces of advice I received, and this was very early on in the campaign, by a more seasoned politician, is debate the issue, not the person. And be hard on the issue, not the person.

I take very seriously the wisdom that's been passed down to me from Indigenous leaders, from people working as city councillors and mayors, from my elders, and from even other people in my caucus that have been doing this a lot longer than me. I take their advice on notice, because I'm so new to this. What I really tried to do is put my best foot forward, and sometimes I have to separate heart and mind. It doesn't feel good in the moment, but that also allows me not to be reactive and to give time and patience to something, and realize—and this is one of the best learning things that came out of this, for me—that if this conversation is happening here among our caucus, that certainly means it's happening out there.

We can't measure, with any certainty what, level that exists within our society. But it definitely is there. And what does that contention mean? It means that there are parts of reconciliation that we have not addressed as a community. There are parts of our humanity that are still in question, that we have to face.

My honest to goodness feeling is that if we do it with malice—and if we do not put kindness for ourselves and for other people first—then we are going to absolutely destroy each other and continue to do that, as we see happening in the larger world right now. And to be a leader means that sometimes, for me anyways, I do have to remove, not my values, not what I think is right or wrong, but I have to remove the emotion I might have that's attached to something so I can think clearly. If I'm very angry or if I'm very upset, yeah, that could charge something and give passion to it. But if I am going to lead with that and not think things through, then I don't feel I'm doing my job as a leader, and that is to set an example and a tone of how conversations can happen in a productive way.

FVC: How do you process feedback and comments from people like UBCIC Grand Chief Stuart Philip that characterized this as indicative of a party that has permitted anti-Indigenous racism. How do you, as somebody who is coming to this with your perspective, take that in, and what do you do with that?

Warbus: Something that's always going to be true is that the perception of politics is very different than the application and the experience. So there could be very nuanced things happening at a person-to-person level, or at a caucus level, that we as the party members have to work out, and it could take time. What I find happens with people who aren't in the room or aren't directly involved, is it starts to spin out through the media, through clips, through headlines, through he-said she-said, through "I heard.” What I try to do is stay focused on what's in front of me, what I know to be true and to be factual. Maybe it's a stretch, and maybe it's something that I'll have to to learn through experience, but I give people enough chance to be complex. I don't think that one statement can define a person. I think that you have to really see the words and actions of a person, to say that you know them and you know their nature and you know their intentions.

And that’s potentially what happened here—because none of us knew each other, this literally was built, it feels like to me, overnight, there's so many MLAs who never even had a chance to have a conversation with another MLA—and then all of a sudden, we're thrown into work together, and within two weeks, things got very elevated on a number of things. And we did start to find out what people's priorities and their characters are. But I'm the type of person who gives people that chance. I give them that chance in the room to create a relationship with me, and then I see what they will do with the information they're given. And I give them a chance to get new information, to get to know me, to get up-front facts, to see if they're able to either change perspective, or at least respect my point of view and be someone that I can say we can work alongside, even though we don't agree on everything. And again, that line, it's not so clearly defined. You don't just all of a sudden say, ‘Well, you said it's one thing. And this is why.’ Again, those are clips. Those are representations of someone's opinion or their response in that moment, and how that question was framed or set up.

That's why I think it can be very worrisome and dangerous to just go off of something that you read or you hear, and if you don't sit down and have a good conversation with someone that's more fleshed out, nuanced, and you don't give a chance to get to know somebody that you may, on paper, disagree with, then we're no better off than we were a decade or two decades ago. We're still slinging rocks from our own unique parts of a conversation, or community, or the world even.

I'm an open person, I'm a patient person, I'm a kind person, and those are some of the traits that I really value about myself. But do I have my pressure points? Do I have my line for where that becomes: ‘Not for me. No, thank you’? Absolutely. But I'm defining that as I move through the world of politics and learn how it actually works. And it can be a very stressful place. It can be a high pressure place. It can be almost a place to where you have to have your guard up and and protect yourself, because reading through what people's intentions are can be difficult too.

So anyways, to answer your question in a more succinct way, the core of your question is that perspective, right? To each their own. Everybody needs to have their voice in this. I would never oppose one of our Indigenous leaders in our province that have earned their spot in the landscape and fought long and hard for Indigenous rights, inclusion, reconciliation. I'm always supportive of everyone to have their say, and for many Elders and people who've actually directly lived these atrocities, you press the tender spot of something in history, they're going to react, and you have to allow them to have their say and have their reaction, just as everybody else in this space is having their say. I'm always going to respect and and give way for that, because we need to get it all out. If we don't get it all out, we're never going to work it out.

FVC: We know this party is kind of defining itself as it goes. You talked about how people and are getting to know each other. The dismissal of Dallas Brodie sets the first kind of line of what is permitted and what is not. As this process continues, what happens next? How does this party become something that stays true to the idea that its members will have its say, while putting down those guard rails? And then how do you figure out your place in it, and where you're going to stand in it? And how does it not become something like the BC Liberals [and] maintain [itself] while ensuring that people like yourself from different parts of the spectrum are comfortable with their colleagues?

Warbus: What I've been championing within caucus is for us to continue to find the common ground that I know is there on the big-ticket issues that provincial MLAs should be advocating and focusing on, and pulling everyone back to the work at hand. Stay focused. Stick to the the big-ticket items that are affecting people in all of our communities, across the board.

There are healthcare issues, there's housing issues. We are having issues with our homeless population, our youth, with drugs, with overdoses, the opioid crisis. You name it and BC has got it, in terms of places that we are at a loss, and we're seeing frustration and failure and people absolutely just fleeing from the province—not just businesses, but people, our next generation. And for me, pulling people back to those brass-tacks goals that are right in front of us is the way that you build a strong party of MLAs who are working very, very hard.

What I see, in the critics that I see with their files, they’re very passionate about their work, about their case work, and about the work in their own riding. So my bit is for everyone to stay focused on what's in front of us. And the goal is that we bring the province back to balance—not just considering the deficit, but balance where there truly is an attainable future for the next generation. That's what I do, is I just go back to the work, because that's why I came here, that's why I wanted to be an elected member. It’s to make change in the valley, in Chilliwack. And the only way I know how to do that is to take my work seriously, focus on that, and not get pulled off into the boundaries of what ends up being a culture war that really is not conducive to our core goals, projects, focus and things we can accomplish.

This conversation, even in and of itself, and why we're having this interview, for me is a huge [distraction] from the wins that we've seen, in terms of secure care for people, or involuntary care, and actually helping people who are struggling with their mental health. That was something we achieved during the campaign. Getting safe supply rolled back into supervised consumption, getting it out of the hands of drug dealers, and potentially our kids and our youth. Big win there, right? And then that's from an opposition standpoint.

Jodi Toor’s private member’s bill—Mike Farnworth said in the time that he's been here, which has been since the ‘90s, he's never seen a private member's bill get to committee stage. And this bill is about supporting pregnant women, perinatal, postpartum, with their mental health. It's such an important bill. We've made progress on things, making our own companies competitive against the American companies by another private member’s bill, and that is all for the people of British Columbia. That affects positively everybody.

So in terms of just staying focused and doing the work—to me, that's what I want to do. That's what I want to encourage people around me to do. When we get caught up in these conversations that really aren't attached to policy, or anything that can be done or achieved from this office, then I feel we get dragged into the undertow of a lot of time suck, energy suck and and we need to have faith and trust in our communities that we are going to continue to work out those issues as people.

They will always be there. But do we need to be hammering away at them all day long, every day, in this building, and in this position? From my perspective? No.