VICTORIA — OneBC interim leader Dallas Brodie says she doesn’t understand why the Conservatives are running a candidate in her riding during the B.C. election but she’s prepared to make a deal with her former party. Brodie, who is the incumbent legislator in Vancouver-Quilchena, will face Conservative candidate Carson Binda, who was the provincial director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation before entering elected politics. Binda’s candidacy was announced on Sept. 29, two days after Brodie said on social media that her party would not run candidates in a handful of ridings where “true” Conservatives were on the ballot. Brodie says OneBC’s decision was a sign of good faith following earlier talks with B.C. Conservative interim leader Lorne Doerkson, but the party has since announced that it would run candidates in two of those ridings. They include Kelowna-Centre, where Kristina Loewen won by 40 votes in the last election, but Brodie says her party can win the riding because it’s the “conservative choice” and the Conservatives should be concerned about losing to the NDP. Brodie says OneBC is willing to withdraw its yet-to-be-named candidate in exchange for talks with the Conservatives. “We have been making gestures and taking actions to show our willingness to make deals,” she says. “This is the other side that is just sitting there like an ostrich with its head in the sand, trying to just do the Never-Brodie thing and push us away.” The leader says she doesn’t understand the Conservatives, because they need her. “I mean, in many ways, they created me,” she says. Then-leader John Rustad kicked Brodie out of the B.C. Conservative caucus last year for mocking the testimony of residential school survivors. When asked this week about electoral co-operation with OneBC, Doerkson said that conversations have taken place. “But there has been nothing formal,” he said. “We will be bringing conservative values for certain to the people of British Columbia after elected.” OneBC emerged as a splinter group from the Conservatives in 2025, but lacked official status in the legislature as a recognized party when the election was called. This report by Wolfgang Depner of The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 1, 2026.
