B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad speaks to reporters following the throne speech at the legislature in Victoria, on Feb. 18.CHAD HIPOLITO/The Canadian Press
B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad says salaries should be raised for politicians in his province to attract talented candidates who would otherwise make more money in other pursuits.
“I’ll put it in very crude terms: You pay peanuts, you get monkeys,” he said Thursday in an interview at the conservative Canada Strong and Free Network conference.
In the 2024 provincial election, Mr. Rustad took his party from just eight seats to Official Opposition status. The NDP has a bare majority in the B.C. legislature.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Rustad made the point about compensation in a fireside chat before delegates at the Canada Strong conference. He said politics loses out on candidates by not providing competitive salaries. He called recruiting good candidates “a hard sell.”
“You need to get some of those young, entrepreneurial people who are in their midlife, in their prime earning years, that will decide they want to make a difference in politics,” Mr. Rustad said in the interview with The Globe and Mail.
“But to do that, they have to give up their prime earning years, so how do you compensate, how do you get those people to come and do this?”
A former BC Liberal cabinet minister, first elected as a member of the legislature in 2005, the 61-year-old Mr. Rustad said he is near the end of his political career. “It doesn’t really make a difference for me. I’m thinking of it from the perspective of attracting people in their 30s, maybe into their 40s, making sure that we get good people coming forward.”
As of last April, B.C. legislature members earn basic compensation of $119,532.72, with additional funds for varied responsibilities. Cabinet ministers earn an additional $59,766.37. The post of premier comes with an additional $107,579.45. As Opposition Leader, Mr. Rustad’s salary includes a $59,766.37 top-up.
Mr. Rustad said federal politicians are better compensated. An MP earns an annual salary of $209,800.
He said politicians should not make decisions about their wages, but that the issue should be left to independent panels.
Asked about how some politicians prefer to avoid the topic of compensation, Mr. Rustad said, “At the end of the day, we have to talk about these things.”
Eight years after he was elected as a BC Liberal, Mr. Rustad was appointed aboriginal relations minister in 2013 under former premier Christy Clark, leader of the free-enterprise party whose members included a mix of federal Liberals and Conservatives.
In 2022, then-BC Liberal leader Kevin Falcon removed Mr. Rustad from caucus in a dispute over Mr. Rustad’s views on climate change. After sitting as an Independent, Mr. Rustad joined the BC Conservative Party, which had received 2 per cent of the vote in the 2020 election.
The BC Liberals, who governed the province from 2001 to 2017, changed their name to BC United in 2023. Ahead of the 2024 election last October, they ended their campaign as support shifted to the provincial Conservatives.
Mr. Falcon directed his supporters to back Mr. Rustad.
In remarks to conference delegates on Thursday, Mr. Rustad said his party has to balance its appeal to younger and older voters because they react differently to the prospect of change. “We have to make sure that change is not a scary thing,” he said.
“We didn’t quite strike that tone in the last provincial election, but it’s certainly something that is top of mind going forward for us.”
He also called on conservatives to try to influence educational policy: “The left is controlling our education system. They’re indoctrinating our kids.”
He said conservatives must fight back. “We have to start focusing on getting people elected at school boards. We have to get people elected at cities. We have to get people elected in regional districts.”