By Saturday evening, sometime after 6 p.m., the Conservative Party of B.C. will have a new leader.
Until then, the race remains wide open. All five candidates are still firmly in the race — although many question if all of them would be able to unite the party after the vote is finalized.
Angelo Isidorou, the party’s executive director, acknowledges there appears to be some tension between the candidates and their supporters, but says this is mostly just normal competition that happens in these sorts of contests.
“I mean, leadership races are pretty nasty in general,” he said. “This is certainly a very competitive leadership race where I think all five contestants feel strongly that they have a path to victory.”
Doors open at Saturday’s leadership convention in Vancouver at 4:30 p.m., with “something special” planned to honour interim Leader Trevor Halford before an independent auditor takes the stage to explain the process. Scrutineers from the campaigns will then join the auditor and party officials, and the tabulating will begin.
Voters filled out preferential ballots, with rules stipulating that if no candidate reaches 50 per cent of the vote outright, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their second-place votes redistributed. This system will continue in rounds until a candidate exceeds the 50-per-cent threshold.
The five finalists are Capilano University Chancellor Yuri Fulmer, conservative commentator Caroline Elliot, Kamloops Centre MLA Peter Milobar, former federal Conservative MP Kerry-Lynne Findlay and former B.C. Liberal minister Iain Black.
Since the race began at the start of this year, the Conservative Party’s membership ranks have swelled from roughly 7,000 to approximately 42,000, though not all of those new members were able to verify their eligibility to vote in the contest in time. The party ended up with about 26,000 eligible voting members, with more than 24,000 casting ballots.
Voting closes as of Friday morning.
Some of the negativity directed between the candidates’ camps became public during the televised Global BC debate earlier in May. During that debate, Findlay suggested Milobar had a conflict of interest on property rights issues because his wife is Indigenous.
But much of the vitriol directed at and between the candidates has taken place online. Halford has noticed.
“Sometimes I look at it, and I kind of have a bit of a side eye, to be honest with you,” he said.
He said he plans to “do his utmost” to ensure the party comes back together, especially after all the work he has done to “stabilize” the caucus.
But some of what has happened during the campaign does not seem to sit well with him, such as when Findlay held a press conference at the legislature earlier in the week to address allegations in the media of malfeasance during her last federal election campaign in 2025, which she lost.
Findlay had reporters attend to hear her statement, only to turn away, refuse to take questions, and shut the door of her SUV on them as they asked for more comment.
“It’s very important in terms of accountability and making sure that you know we have a healthy, respectful relationship with everybody, including media,” Halford said when asked about the incident.
Isidorou, having been instrumental in taking the party from irrelevance to the Official Opposition, urges the sides to put their differences aside after the race.
“I strongly encourage and strongly hope that all of our supporters, all the leadership candidates, come together to make whatever effort is necessary to tell people we are all in the same family here, and we are all not each other’s enemy,” he said.
Halford may be heavily involved in the transfer of power, especially if the successful candidate is not a sitting MLA. Milobar is the only one of the five who currently holds a seat in the legislature, and if he does not win, it will be a bit more complex for the new leader to figure out how to interact with the Conservative Caucus.
“It’s not going to be figured out overnight,” Isidorou said.
One path forward is for a sitting member to step down, allowing a by-election to take place. But scheduling this will be at the mercy of the governing party, and Premier David Eby can drag the process out for six months. It also requires a volunteer to step aside, and Isidorou said none have come forward at this stage.
“I think people are really just hanging tight to see where this goes,” he said.
One thing Isidorou is surely pleased with is where the leadership race has left the party financially. The sudden surge in donations allowed the party to pay off its $5 million debt from the 2024 election a year and a half sooner than expected.
The party also pulled in more money in the first quarter of the year than the NDP for the first time. The Conservatives brought in almost $1.1 million, compared to the NDP’s $700,000. Isidorou said the party is on track for a similar result in the second quarter.