Rustad’s partner in rise of B.C. Conservatives hails him as party’s ‘founding father’
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VICTORIA — A former British Columbia Conservative executive who helped John Rustad orchestrate the rise of the party from obscurity is honouring its former leader as a trailblazer who transformed the province’s political scene.
Former Conservative executive director Angelo Isidorou says Rustad, who has announced his retirement from politics, was “sent to the wilderness” when he was expelled from the B.C. Liberals in 2022, but “came back and created a movement.”
Isidorou says the B.C. Conservatives would not exist in their modern form without the legislator from Nechako Lakes and its predecessor riding in northern B.C., where he has been an MLA since 2005.
The Conservatives received less than two per cent of the vote in the 2020 B.C. election, but Isidorou says Rustad legitimatized the party when he joined in February 2023, then convinced Bruce Banman to follow, conferring official party status.
