B.C. Conservative attacks 'super angry' Indigenous colleague over residential schools

Dallas Brodie attends a campaign stop in Vancouver on October 15, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

The British Columbia Conservatives' attorney general critic has doubled down on her comments about residential schools, saying in a video that a group of party colleagues had directed the “most vociferous hatred” at her over her views.

Dallas Brodie didn’t name anyone, but appeared to single out the Conservatives' house leader, A’aliya Warbus, by criticizing an Indigenous woman who sided with the governing NDP to criticize Brodie.

Warbus is the only Indigenous woman in the Opposition ranks.

“There’s a person in our party who’s Indigenous, and she, you know, was super angry and went to town and joined the NDP to call me out,” Brodie said in the video posted to social media.

The rift in the party was triggered last month when Brodie posted on social media platform X that “zero” child burials had been confirmed at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. Brodie also questioned the “apparent mistreatment” of a lawyer who had asked for the rewording of Law Society training material about residential schools.

She said in the subsequent video that the post was cleared by the Conservatives' “head of communications” but that Opposition Leader John Rustad later asked her to delete it.

“I got another call from the party leader asking me to take it down and I just had it back and forth and said, John, why would I take it down? Like, there’s no reason to take it down,” Brodie said.

“He said, well, you know, people are upset.”

She refused, and the post has received more than 500,000 views.

Brodie said some of her colleagues were in the wrong party.

“We’ve actually brought in some people who -- I’m just gonna say this -- I think belong in the NDP,” she said.

She also said it was important to have “the truth” about residential schools, “not his truth, her truth, my grandmother’s truth ... this stuff has to stop.”

Brodie declined an interview request on Thursday through her constituency office due to “meetings and commitments.”

Rustad told reporters on Thursday that he does not support anybody who thinks the Conservative caucus “is somehow trying to deny what happened with residential schools.”

“We are a large tent. We’ve got people across the political spectrum,” Rustad said.

He said it’s important for his members to express themselves but he doesn’t support them “attacking” others.

Warbus was visibly upset when asked about Brodie’s video outside the legislative chamber.

“We’re losing our children, our youth, and we all know it’s because of the legacy of residential schools and the intergenerational trauma that we’ve suffered,” Warbus said.

“It’s not politically smart. It’s not what I came for, and it’s causing division and we need to address the division within the caucus and get on the same page as a team.”

She said that if the Conservative caucus could not do this, she didn’t know why she had sacrificed her time to be a political representative.

On Thursday, the Metis Nation British Columbia called for Brodie’s removal from the B.C. Conservative caucus.

Walter Mineault, president of the group, said he met Brodie last week.

“Ms. Brodie offered me an apology, she acknowledged that her comments were hurtful, she shook my hand and hugged me. When she asked me how she should make amends, I told her that was for her to decide,” Mineault said in a statement.

“I thought she was genuine, clearly, I was wrong.”

B.C. Premier David Eby applauded Warbus for her “integrity” in standing by residential school survivors, saying during question period in the legislature that “despicable things” were taking place and Warbus was right to call them out.

He said outside the legislature that Rustad needed to be very clear about where he stands on the issue.

“He says there’s a big tent. Well, a big tent that has space for racism is not a political tent. That’s a circus tent and he’s got to kick the clown out of the tent,” Eby said.

This report by Marcy Nicholson, The Canadian Press, was first published March 6, 2025.