Influential ‘Freedom Convoy’ group in Alberta is helping B.C.’s far right elect Conservatives

A far-right Albertan organization has given advice to a growing activist group called BC Rising in its effort to elect B.C. Conservatives and wield influence within the party.

Leaders from Take Back Alberta, a hardline faction within Alberta’s United Conservative Party that helped oust former Premier Jason Kenney and elect Premier Danielle Smith, have shared organizing tips with BC Rising over the past year, The Breach has learned.

BC Rising first emerged from a movement against COVID health mandates in the province, and gained attention for spreading climate conspiracy theories. 

Over the last year, it has focused on helping the Conservatives win this Saturday’s B.C. election, organizing well-attended town halls, running its own candidates for the party, and mobilizing the vote. 

In a series of events on the platform Rumble and Zoom since late 2023, the movement has received pointers from Take Back Alberta’s organizers, including their founder David Parker, who has styled himself a “black belt” in organizing.

In one video presentation from last December, which was removed this week after The Breach posed questions about it to BC Rising, Parker encouraged the group to throw themselves behind B.C. Conservative leader John Rustad and “become the political party.”

Take Back Alberta, which grew out of a convoy blockade in Coutts, Alberta, when hundreds of vehicles blocked the Canada-US border in 2022, later turned its attention to elections.

It hosted town halls across the province of Alberta, which powered a successful effort to take over half the party’s governing board as well as many riding executives. It also took credit for mobilizing significant support for Danielle Smith to become the UCP’s leader.

Now, BC Rising is trying to push for a similar political shake up in British Columbia.

The group has followed elements of the Take Back Alberta model, organizing more than two dozen town halls, often with several hundred people in attendance and many more watching online.

Several people affiliated with the group are running as candidates for B.C. Conservatives, including COVID conspiracists, climate denialists, and anti-LGBTQ activists.

David Parker told The Breach that BC Rising was “receptive” to his presentation.

“They love what happened in Alberta, and they would love to replicate it,” he said. “They’re attempting to use the model.”

But unlike Take Back Alberta, Parker said that BC Rising has not fully understood his model, for instance not attempting to take over the B.C. Conservatives party structure.

“I think they tried to do their own thing. Everybody wants to do their own thing, right?” he said. “And they don’t want to have David come into B.C. from Alberta, they want to do it themselves.” 

“They’re trying to figure out the model and that’s good. That’s happening all over the country, and frankly, it’s happening all over the world.” 

Conservative leader John Rustad, who was kicked out of the B.C. Liberal party for denying climate change, shares some similar views to BC Rising and Take Back Alberta.

In his leadership campaign in 2023, he suggested he was the only MLA to support the “freedom movement” that protested against government health measures around COVID-19.

A few months after Rustad became leader of the party, one organizer with BC Rising suggested the group’s goal should be to become a “powerful lobby group” within the party.

Like BC Rising, Take Back Alberta started as a fringe group, before having a major influence on a governing party—offering a lesson about how far-right groups can train activists to crowd out less radical voices within upstart Conservative parties.

The Conservatives are neck-and-neck in the polls with the B.C. NDP, which makes up the current government, with Rustad promising to repeal many of their policies if he wins.

“What [B.C. Conservative executive director] Angelo Isidorou and John Rustad and their little crew have been able to do is one of the most impressive political stories in Canadian history,” Parker said. “I’m at the edge of my seat.”

Rallying far-right sentiment

BC Rising’s viewpoints have been front and centre at the group’s BC TownHalls initiative, which have aired grievances against the B.C. NDP.

The group describes these meetings as “non-partisan.”

But they often feature far-right talking points such as climate denialism, referring to COVID protection measures as “totalitarian,” and spreading conspiracy theories about the pandemic. 

The group wants to see an end to sex and gender identity education in schools, hopes to repeal B.C.’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) and believes that 15-minute cities are part of a government plot to remove individual freedoms.

The town halls have provided an effective method of recruitment.

With several hundred attendees at each meeting and many more watching through livestreams, BC Rising has hosted at least two dozen such meetings this year, giving the group significant reach among the province’s voters. 

B.C. Conservative leader John Rustad spoke at one B.C. TownHall event earlier this year in Campbell River, where he called recently-passed NDP policies meant to combat the housing crisis “authoritarian.” 

While BC Rising denied running B.C. TownHalls in an email to The Breach, the organization’s website announced the launch of the initiative in January and the project is described as being “authorized” by BC Rising. 

Taking pointers from far-right Albertan group

The town hall initiative is part of the group’s “election readiness” preparation, but the group didn’t come up with the idea by itself. 

BC Rising has been receiving support from Take Back Alberta, a loose coalition of Christian Nationalists, Alberta separatists, sovereigntists and others who seek to reject COVID mandates and climate policies.

Its founder David Parker worked as a staffer for Stephen Harper’s Prime Minister’s Office, a number of Conservative MPs, and Jason Kenney’s UCP leadership team. 

Parker turned on Kenney after the then Premier restricted religious gatherings for health reasons.

By organizing town halls and flooding board elections and nomination races with their members, Take Back Alberta managed to wield significant influence within the United Conservative Party. 

Many see Smith’s sharp turn against trans people with “parental rights” policies as an attempt to pander to Take Back Alberta and their supporters.

Recently, Parker has been mired in trouble with Elections Canada and is facing contempt of court charges for refusing to disclose the names of donors to his group. 

While some say the group’s influence over Premier Smith might be waning, they still control much of UCP’s structure, and are expanding.

The organization had incorporated as a federal non profit last year, and Parker boasted about the spread of the movement to other provinces, including British Columbia.

‘You’re gonna have to recruit an army’

In December 2023, David Parker held a public Zoom meeting with BC Rising to encourage the group to follow his organization’s lead.

In the call, Parker advised BC Rising’s members that they, too, could achieve success, boasting that “we, the ‘freedom movement of Alberta,’ run the United Conservative Party.”

BC Rising, Parker suggested, should target select ridings. He warned attendees that there is “no silver bullet” and that “you’re gonna have to recruit an army.”

He advised that BC Rising throw itself behind Rustad, even if he wasn’t their ideal candidate, the point being to “stop the NDP” and to “become the political party,” not to be “ideologically pure.” 

Parker’s personal pep talk isn’t the only support that BC Rising has been receiving from Take Back Alberta. 

Laureen Darr, an organizer with BC Rising, promoted a series of webinars about getting politically active with Benita Pederson, a former Take Back Alberta leader who organized far-right protests targeting schools and educators in opposition to sex education.

The series, named “Empower BC,” covered aspects of the political process and  how to become a candidate.

Full recordings from these meetings are not available online, but one BC Rising member promoted a February webinar featuring Alexandra Carlile, who ran Danielle Smith’s byelection campaign in 2022 while also working as a business lobbyist.

Another speaker was Cam Wilson, the executive director of the Wilberforce Project, an anti-abortion organization that has campaigned to support UCP candidates and says it has pushed the UCP to “stan[d] for pro-life policy”. 

These tactics are becoming widespread across Canada. Far-right groups are mobilizing to influence political positions at every level, from local school boards to provincial and federal elections.

Another similar far-right group, WeUnify, told BC Rising members in a public meeting in May of this year that they were trying to have their own “Take Back Alberta” moment. 

Like BC Rising, WeUnify campaigns against COVID-19 health mandates, and claims to have worked closely with the B.C. Conservatives on their 2024 conference.

Conservative candidates associated with BC Rising

Several candidates associated with BC Rising are standing as B.C. Conservatives in this Saturday’s election, including some who have already been dropped by the party.

Anna Kindy, who is running in North Island is a physician who has donated to the Freedom Convoy and has spoken out against vaccines at Freedom Convoy adjacent events. 

Marina Sapozhnikov, who is running in Juan de Fuca-Malahat was in the news for spreading climate denialism on Twitter.  Sapozhnikov is part of the BC Rising network, has spoken at BC Townhalls, and is a member of the Land Keepers Society, the conspiratorial group opposing the Cowichan Estuary Restoration Project. 

Rosalyn Bird and Kari Simpson also support BC Rising. Bird is a candidate for Prince George-Valemount who pushes for involuntary addiction treatment and repealing DRIPA.

Simpson is vice-president for the B.C. Conservative’s Langley-Abbotsford riding association, and a known anti-LGBTQ activist, who launched a human rights complaint to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal for welcoming trans people in their bathrooms. 

In a BC Rising meeting, Simpson said that sexual orientation and gender identity education is part of a “deliberate agenda to undermine the culture of our nation.” 

Though she isn’t running herself, Simpson’s husband was the runner-up for the Langley-Abbotsford nomination, and Simpson has been accused of threats and harassment in attempts to get her preferred candidate in her riding.

Candidates who have been dropped include Stephen Malthouse, who was running in Ladysmith-Oceanside. A former doctor whose license to practice medicine was suspended in 2022, he chairs BC Rising’s healthcare policy committee, which opposes vaccine mandates. 

He was dropped by the party just after his candidacy was announced, for spreading misinformation about vaccines. 

Jan Webb, a nurse who had been announced as a candidate for Esquimalt-Colwood, was dropped for the same reason.

In an email to The Breach, BC Rising denied specifically running candidates in elections and stated that BC Rising “supports all candidates that wish to present their position.”

In his call with BC Rising last year, Parker seemed confident that Take Back Alberta’s approach was spreading. 

“We’re seeing massive growth in Saskatchewan,” he told attendees, “A ‘Take Back Ontario’ has started, and I see it happening in B.C.”

“And the biggest way I see it happening in B.C. right now is what’s happening with the B.C. Conservatives.”

-files from Martin Lukacs