recall campaign against vancouver-quilchena mla dallas brodie fails
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mla dallas brodie leaves the chamber at the legislature in victoria, on monday, may 25, 2026.
chad hipolito
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postmedia
another recall attempt of a b.c. politician, another fail.
elections b.c. announced monday that a petition to recall vancouver-quilchena mla dallas brodie failed to collect enough signatures, gathering only about a quarter of what was needed.
the recall and initiative act requires a minimum of 40 per cent of voters in an mla’s district to sign the petition calling for a recall. in this case, that number would have been 15,232, and organizers of the recall campaign only mustered 3,663 signatures.
the petition was launched on may 14 and organizers had 60 days to reach their goal.
organizers from the “grassroots coalition” who rallied 118 registered canvassers still hailed the effort for sending a message and gaining the highest signature total in a recall in the past decade.
“in a riding where voter turnout in the 2024 provincial election was just 58.45 per cent, collecting signatures from 40 per cent of eligible voters was always going to be a significant challenge,” the recall brodie campaign said in a statement.
however, residents “shared a wide range of concerns with canvassers, including anger and disappointment with brodie’s conduct, concerns about representation in the riding, and a desire for more respectful and accountable leadership.”
dorothy cumming speaks at a rally calling for the recall of dallas brodie as mla for the riding of vancouver-quilchena on may 21, 2026.
nick procaylo
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the campaign was launched after brodie made disparaging comments about the testimony of indian residential school survivors, which led to her being ousted from the b.c. conservative caucus in march 2025.
residents also said local concerns such as schools and safety had taken a back seat to brodie’s attempt to build a new party brand called onebc.
“i wish my elected representative was someone else,” said campaign proponent dorothy cumming, a retired nurse and a resident of vancouver-quilchena, in the statement. “someone who had even five per cent of the dedication to working with and for the constituents of this riding that i’ve seen from the canvassing and organizing team behind this recall.”
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the organizers pledged to continue work on how recalls work in the province, including updating the act to be more in line with the election act, and to turn their attention to the next provincial election.
at that time brodie was kicked out of the conservative party, former party leader john rustad said: “as a result of (brodie’s) decision to publicly mock and belittle testimony from former residential school students, including by mimicking individuals recounting stories of abuses — including child sex abuse, mla brodie is not welcome to return to our conservative party of b.c. caucus.
“horrible things happened to vulnerable children at residential schools — including pedophiles preying on children; at kamloops indian residential school, gerald mathieu moran was charged and convicted by canadian courts with several dozen sex crimes he committed against children while working there.
“in a recent podcast appearance, dallas brodie uses a mocking, childlike voice to belittle testimony from former residential school students, saying things like ‘my grandmother’s truth’ and ‘my truth, your truth’ in a childlike ‘whining’ voice.”
wyatt claypool, brodie’s director of communications, said on monday that brodie’s podcast comments were a “quip” and comprised four seconds out of a much longer podcast.
“the full podcast where she made the ‘my truth’ quip was regarding postmodern activists who reject objective truth in favour of subjective truth,” claypool said.
“the b.c. conservatives used a four-second out of context clip of her saying the ‘my truth’ thing and then made up the context that she had mocked victims of abuse, which she did not.
“dallas brodie and onebc reject the accusation that dallas was mocking anyone except for postmodern activists who had been attacking her.”
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this was the 31st recall petition since the act came into effect in 1995, and none has succeeded, though then parksville-qualicum mla paul reitsma resigned during the verification process after constituents surpassed the signature threshold.
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