B.C. Conservative leadership hopeful Fulmer enters ‘unite the right’ deal with Brodie

VICTORIA — B.C. Conservative leadership candidate Yuri Fulmer and breakaway MLA Dallas Brodie have announced a “unite the right accord” to avoid vote-splitting if Fulmer becomes Opposition leader.

“British Columbians are desperate for real change, but they are concerned that a split vote will hand the NDP another majority,” Brodie, the leader and sole legislator for the OneBC party, said in a joint statement with Fulmer.

“Today, we have resolved those concerns.”

Brodie has drawn accusations of bigotry for campaigning against what her party calls the “reconciliation industry,” while entrepreneur Fulmer is one of six remaining candidates to succeed former leader John Rustad.

Fulmer said in an interview that he made the deal with Brodie because he is a “pragmatist” and a business person, who sees OneBC polling around the double-digits.

“I want British Columbians to know, that there is a path to defeating the NDP,” he said. “When members of the Conservative Party pick a leader, they need to know that there is only one leader that can bring the right together, avoid a vote split that results in an NDP government, and that’s me. They deserve to know that.”

The Conservatives came within three seats of winning a majority in 2024, but Fulmer said the current existence of OneBC has changed the political calculus.

“Any of the other Conservative candidates, who are standing around, wishing that OneBC would go away are naive, and they are burying their heads in the sand,” he said.

Fulmer acknowledged that OneBC might not win any seats, despite its current polling, but a vote split could still cost the Conservatives seats elsewhere.

“That’s a risk I’m absolutely not prepared to take,” he said. “The highest goal is defeating the NDP, and installing a Conservative government to put our province back together.

“The risk of a vote split is now gone.”

The accord says OneBC would not run candidates in 88 out of B.C.’s 93 ridings, in exchange for the Conservatives not running candidates in five ridings.

Brodie, who started OneBC after being ejected from the Conservative caucus in early March 2025 by Rustad for “mocking” former residential school students, said she was throwing “full support” behind Fulmer to become premier.

Fulmer welcomed the endorsement.

“I am incredibly proud to welcome Dallas Brodie’s endorsement and to sign this unite-the-right accord,” he said. “This is what building a winning coalition looks like.”

The accord does not identify the five ridings where OneBC would be the “standard-bearer” for the right if Fulmer wins the leadership.

“The specific ridings will be determined through mutual negotiation and finalized immediately following the Conservative leadership election,” it says.

Brodie is the only OneBC member in the legislature, representing Vancouver-Quilchena, where she was elected for the first time in 2024, standing as a B.C. Conservative.

Brodie founded OneBC last June with fellow former Conservative Tara Armstrong, but they fell out and Armstrong now sits as an Independent.

The accord also says OneBC has agreed to a formal confidence-and-supply agreement to support a future Fulmer government, if the two parties “collectively secure” a majority of seats.

“Under this agreement, OneBC will provide confidence to a Conservative government, strictly contingent upon Yuri Fulmer serving as premier of British Columbia.”

When asked about the ideological consistency between a Conservative party under Fulmer and OneBC, Fulmer said questions about OneBC’s policies should be directed to Brodie.

“I’m happy to talk about my leadership and about what I bring to this,” he said. “But the reason that we have signed this agreement is so that OneBC can continue to be its own party, and (Brodie) can continue to be the leader of OneBC.”

Also running for the Conservative leadership are contractor Warren Hamm, former B.C. Liberal minister Iain Black, former federal MP Kerry-Lynne Findlay, commentator Caroline Elliott and current MLA Peter Milobar.

Milobar, a former mayor of Kamloops, has previously called out comments by Brodie about the former residential school in that community, without mentioning her by name.

“My wife and my kids are all Indigenous,” Milobar said in the legislature on Feb. 25, 2025. “My grandchildren are Indigenous. My son-in-law is a Tk’emlups band member. These types of things are very personal, so when denialism does from time to time raise up in the broader conversation both in B.C. and across the country, it has a direct effect on Tk’emlups.”

Rustad kicked Brodie out of the party days after her comments about residential school students that Rustad said mocked them. Conservative MLAs Jordan Kealy and Armstrong left the party in solidarity.

Brodie and Armstrong formed OneBC, but the party lost its official party status in the legislature in December, when Armstrong left the party.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 30, 2026.

Wolfgang Depner, The Canadian Press