Toward the end of last week’s leaders’ debate during the B.C. election campaign, there was a moment for a pair of political cameos.
After the leaders of the BC Conservatives, Green Party and NDP had clashed over the course of the debate, 30 seconds each was allotted for former BC Conservative MLAs Elenore Sturko and Dallas Brodie to talk about their new parties, CentreBC and OneBC, respectively.
“We wanted to use that time to tell British Columbians what the point of us is,” Ms. Sturko said about her party in an interview on Wednesday.
That has been an existential issue for both parties. They exist in the shadows of the election coming to a conclusion this Saturday, struggling for attention and relevance in what’s mainly a showdown between the Conservatives and NDP, with the Greens in the ring.
It is the first time since 1996 that B.C. voters have been able to take their pick from more than three parties with elected members in the Legislature.
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Ms. Sturko, a former Mountie who was first elected in 2022, has been telling voters that she isn’t pretending CentreBC will form government. CentreBC has only 35 candidates, and there are 93 seats in the provincial legislature.
Instead, Ms. Sturko said she hopes her party will win at least two seats in the election – but acknowledged even that will be a challenge.
“Some folks are like, `I love everything about your party. I love what your party stands for. I am a centrist. I am very worried though. If I vote for you the NDP will get in, and we hate them,’” she said.
“So that is a factor for us.”
As is NDP Leader David Eby calling a snap election two years before a vote was expected, leaving her party scrambling, Ms. Sturko said.
“We definitely would have benefited from more runway,” she said.
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CentreBC was created in 2025 to offer an option for moderate voters. For a time in September, it was led by former Kamloops mayor Peter Milobar, who had quit the BC Conservatives in August over the leadership of Kerry-Lynne Findlay.
However, Mr. Milobar and some other defectors who had joined CentreBC returned to the BC Conservatives after a snap election was called. By then, Ms. Findlay was no longer the Conservative leader.
Ms. Sturko, once a star candidate for the BC Conservatives, was removed from the caucus in 2025 by former leader John Rustad, who had said at the time that she was not a team player. After sitting as an independent, she joined CentreBC in September. The member of the legislature from Surrey, who is gay, has said she was prevented from expressing her “more socially Liberal beliefs” while she was a Conservative.
Dallas Brodie of OneBC, which is running 34 candidates with an additional five unaffiliated candidates, said she would be happy to get four or five people in the legislature.
And then she clarified: “I’d be happy with two. I’d be happy with one.”
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Ms. Brodie said the election came about so quickly that it was hard for her party to get organized. Still, she said she has been getting media attention. “I feel like, for a small party, we have been very good at getting our message out there.”
OneBC had two seats in the legislature before the snap election, but the other MLA is not running for re-election. Ms. Brodie had co-founded the party in 2025, after then-Conservative leader John Rustad kicked her out of his caucus, alleging she had publicly mocked and belittled testimony from former residential school students.
She was accused of mimicking individuals who recounted stories of abuses – including child sexual abuse. “I spoke the truth because it matters. I will never back down from it. It is an indisputable fact that the number of bodies discovered at Kamloops is zero,” she wrote on social media after she was ejected from caucus.
In the legislature, OneBC has proposed a bill against gender-affirming care for transgender people. Also, it has proposed banning land acknowledgements by public institutions and employees.
Asked about the two parties, pollster Shachi Kurl says there was a moment when CentreBC had a chance to captivate voters looking for a new option, but the moment has passed.
“The way things happened in this campaign really left CentreBC standing there with their hands in their pockets, so to speak,” said Ms. Kurl, the president of the Angus Reid Institute.
Ms. Kurl said a shortage of candidates is a challenge for both CentreBC and OneBC.
Political scientist Hamish Telford said he would be surprised if either party elected any candidates. However, he said they could cause what’s known as the spoiler effect, affecting election outcomes by taking votes in close ridings.
The University of the Fraser Valley professor said he expects OneBC could take votes from BC Conservatives, while CentreBC could do the same for some Conservatives and New Democrats.