John Rustad, leader of the Conservative Party of B.C., in his sit down interview with Vernon Matters (photo by Liam Verster / Vernon Matters)

By Liam Verster

Conservative Leader Visit

Rustad in Vernon: Discusses future of healthcare, economy, and local MLA who walked away

Sep 18, 2025 | 6:00 AM

The leader of the Conservative Party of B.C. made a quick visit to Vernon Wednesday as part of his leadership review, where he held a meet and greet and a sit down with Vernon Matters to discuss a range of topics relevant to residents and British Columbians.

Meeting with Vernon Matters ahead of the event, John Rustad, MLA for Nechako Lakes, spoke about a number of topics.

Local and Provincial Issues

During his multi-day tour he said he’d heard a lot about health care , manufacturing, forestry, and agriculture.

On health care, Rustad said the system was overburdened with administrators, and not enough people delivering care. He proposed following examples of European countries.

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“We have the second most expensive health care system in the world, certainly in the developed nations, and we’re ranked one of the poorest, in the bottom five,” Rustad claimed in his interview with Vernon Matters.

“We’ve got some of the best health care professionals, but the system itself is letting our professionals and the people down.

“We don’t need to reinvent the wheel, let’s look at who’s in the top five. Countries, like in Europe, that are in the top five, how do we do what they do? So we’ll be doing a review of how they do administration, how they provide services, and look at those and say ‘can we do something like that here?’ or ‘can we adapt some of the best practices to who we are, as British Columbians, to make sure we can provide those services?'”

Rustad also said recruitment and retainment of health care workers were key, and that would require reviewing the work environments and making sure they were safe for those providing health care services. He added there also needs to be more daycare to ensure people can work without worry about their children, and there needs to be better use of technology to streamline operations within the health care sector.

For industry and manufacturing, Rustad said the red tape needs to be cut so they can move ahead with their operations and see more investments come into B.C. He said the agricultural sector needed to be better supported so it could increase the amount of food it’s supplying British Columbians, rather than relying on importing food.

However, his main concern was a case of private property rights versus Indigenous rights, pointing specifically to a recent ruling from the B.C. Supreme Court that found the Cowichan Tribes government holds Aboriginal title for land and fishing rights in a portion of the City of Richmond and a section of the Fraser River.

“We need to have economic reconciliation, but at the same time, the court case from Cowichan is putting everybody on edge in terms of their private property rights versus Indigenous rights and how that will play out across the province,” Rustad said.

“The province has said they’ll appeal [the decision], but the problem is both the province and the federal government in the court case didn’t argue to protect private property rights, only the City of Richmond did, which means when they go to appeal they can’t change their arguments.

“We need to take a different approach. This is why, as the Conservative Party, we have written a letter to the Attorney General of Canada to say please put a reference question directly to the Supreme Court. Private property is the foundation of our economy, it’s the foundation of our society, if you undermine those rights you’re undermining the very fabric of who we are as a society.

The Conservative leader said he would be bringing forward legislation relating to these issues when the Legislative Assembly sessions resume in October.

Economy

Rustad spoke to the $11.6-billion dollar deficit reported by the government this week, which the ruling NDP blamed in part on the revenue loss from repealing the Carbon Tax and the ongoing tariff war with the United States. Further plus-$12 billion deficits are forecast in the following two years.

The Conservative Party ran on a platform of repealing the Carbon Tax, and Rustad said he was glad to see it gone for consumers, though noted it remains in place for industry. He also said the NDP rescinded the Carbon Tax well before the most recent budget, and should have compensated for that revenue loss in terms of spending.

As for the trade war, Rustad said his party would have immediately put the focus on finding additional trading partners and ramping up production of local products, mainly pointing at Liquified Natural Gas, so the province could offset the losses from the U.S. market.

The Conservative Party of B.C. platform in the October 2024 Provincial Election did call for an undisclosed increase to the deficit, stating it would be decreased to a balanced budget at an undisclosed time in their second term in office. Rustad said if his party were in power and these issues were to present themselves, then they would have done a review to find ways to offset the planned deficit increase.

Loss of Local MLA

In the last election, the Coldstream-Lake Country-Kelowna riding elected Tara Armstrong as the Conservative MLA. She has since left the party to join a new party formed by another former-Conservative.

“It’s unfortunate that Tara decided to go out and become an Independent and now sitting with OneBC; I would much have prefered to have had everybody to be able to work together,” Rustad told Vernon Matters.

“Unfortunately, she had a very idealistic view of how things should run. She obviously didn’t see how we need to be a big tent to be able to service all people in British Columbia while being true to our conservative values. She disagreed with that, so it’s unfortunate, but I wish her well.”

Armstrong did not speak with any media or attend any All Candidates Forums leading up to the last election, and Rustad acknowledged that she “spends very little time in her riding engaging with people.”

The Conservative Party leader did not outright say if there would be any changes to the candidate vetting process after losing Armstrong and the other member, only indicating they would go through a nomination process. He also claimed they could not do that nomination process in the last election due to “time constraints.”

Visit to Vernon

The meet and greet was held at the Schubert Centre Wednesday evening, where he discussed these same topics with members of the public.

The event was attended by approximately 30 people.

John Rustad, leader of the Conservative Party of B.C., hosting his meet and greet at the Schubert Centre’s Opal Room (photo by Liam Verster / Vernon Matters)

Rustad planned to continue his tour through Kelowna Thursday, then into the Southern Interior.

His tour was also aligned with a leadership review, the results of which Rustad said should be announced around Sept. 22. If the party determines they want to move on without Rustad at the helm, that would then trigger a member vote to be held at a later date.