Peter Milobar feels he is ready for this step.
The Kamloops Centre MLA has thrown his hat into the ring to be the next leader of the Conservative Party of B.C. with a confidence that comes from decades holding public office, and a belief that were he to one day become the premier of the province, his experience would guide him through a political landscape fraught with contentions between provinces, and Canada’s increasingly capricious neighbours to the south.
He’s also confident that his experience can help bring stability to a party that has seen turbulent times, with the calamitous departure of former leader John Rustad and the rifts that emerged around the now-imploded OneBC Party, which splintered off from the Conservative Party over its residential school denialism.
Milobar is the most experienced politician to vie for the Conservative leadership so far. He was a Kamloops councillor for six years and mayor for nine. He has been an MLA since 2017, when he was elected as a member of the BC Liberals, and when he was the Official Opposition House Leader and served as the shadow minister for Indigenous relations as well as the environment.
Milobar made an appearance at Jitter Beans Coffee House in Lumby Saturday morning, Jan. 31, where he spoke to the public about his political values and intentions and heard their concerns. There, he told The Morning Star that in turning over a new leaf for the Conservatives, he would lean into his track record of providing stability within the political bodies he’s led.
“I work well with everyone in caucus. It doesn’t mean we agree on everything all the time. It means that we’re able to have those respectful, meaningful policy conversations as a caucus and find ways forward, and that’s a big part of keeping everyone together,” he said.
“I know that we have a very talented and capable caucus right now that I think hasn’t really been given their due with a lot of the turbulence that we’ve experienced over the last little while, but I think as people start to discover that skill set we do have in caucus, that will bode well for the general election.”
Milobar espouses a number of classic conservative values, especially those that call for the government to get out of the way.
“I am a big fan of the government setting the stage for success and then letting the private sector run with that,” he said. “It’s about peeling back unnecessary regulation, unnecessary oversight, contradictory and frustrating rules and procedures from one ministry to the next that really do put a drag on our overall productivity and investment climate for businesses that want to either grow or move or expand or start from scratch.”
When the collapse of the BC Liberals-turned-BC United unfolded in the lead-up to the 2024 provincial election and shifted right-of-centre momentum to an unproven B.C. Conservative Party, Milobar was one of those United MLAs that decided to join the Conservatives. Milobar said he thought abut the Conservatives’ invitation for him to join their ranks for about a week, and decided he saw himself fitting into the party’s ideology and platform.
One area of agreement between Milobar and Rustad that persists to this day is the belief that the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIPA) Act needs to be repealed and replaced with something else.
“First off, repealing DRIPA doesn’t mean you’re racist, full stop,” he said. “It means that it is not working the way the NDP told everyone in B.C. it was going to work, including First Nations, and it’s about resetting that reconciliation path to be one that’s more inclusive and works and still respects Indigenous constitutional rights but also everyone else’s constitutional rights.”
One aspect of DRIPA that’s worth worrying about, according to Milobar, is its decision-making mechanism, given the number of different First Nations that exist in B.C. and ostensibly have decision-making power under the legislation.
“The final decision-maker on a project or on an issue, in my opinion, should always be a statutory decision-maker, a Minister of the Crown,” Milobar said. “DRIPA clouds all of that, and it clouds whether or not it’s one specific Nation or three in an area and how to balance out which has the final say or doesn’t have the final say.
“It’s not about cutting Indigenous communities out of the conversation and making sure that their concerns or aspirations are not taken into account. It’s about bringing back that final decision-maker to the Crown while still reshaping what reconciliation looks like moving forward so that those constitutional requirements are being met, those legal requirements are being met by the government, but not being abdicated by the provinces at the same time.”
DRIPA’s potential to encroach on private property rights has been a Conservative talking point, and Milobar said those rights “need to be more certain” under a new piece of legislation.
On Saturday Milobar was speaking in a highly rural area, having driven past many agricultural establishments on his way to Lumby. He said there are issues facing those in agricultural sectors that need to be addressed.
He said agriculture needs better support from provincial programs and better technology for irrigation and crop science. He added he would look to get rid of “impediments to agriculture on the cost side of production.”
Milobar said COVID sharpened the focus on the need for the food security that local agricultural operators provide, and how food security ties into sovereignty in light of “what’s going on now with the United States.”
So what about what’s going on with the United States? And how best to deal with a president whose hostile tariff policies and incendiary 51st state rhetoric have put Canada on edge?
Milobar said his strategy would be to leave dealings with president Donald Trump to the prime minister wherever possible.
“I’m a big fan of staying in your lane,” he said, explaining this philosophy runs in all directions.
“I’m a big fan of getting out of the way of mayors and councils and letting municipalities and regional districts deal with local things that they should be dealing with. And I’m also a big fan that the province sticks to their thing, and the federal government.
“They have MPs all through B.C. on both parties. Let them deal with federal issues as they need to and make sure the premier is standing up and defending B.C. against the federal government when it needs to, and working with the federal government when it needs to as well.”
His best example of this? Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.
“I don’t think anyone will accuse Danielle Smith of not being conservative. Last I checked, she is more than willing to stand her ground with the federal government on issues, but she’s also working with the prime minister right now about a pipeline,” Milobar said. “That’s probably the easiest example I can use to demonstrate how I view the role of premier.”
The Conservative leadership race wraps up May 30.