There was no hiding the smile on BC Conservative Leader John Rustad’s face as he worked his way through a jammed community hall in mid-Vancouver Island on Saturday, his music booming and the crowd roaring.

“I am so pumped,” said Rustad, as the final notes of “Uprising” by Muse echoed through the Cobble Hill Farmers Institute Main Hall. “People are so interested in change. They’ve had enough of what’s going on in this province.”

Rustad looked, and sounded like, a politician on a roll. He was fresh off defeating the rival BC United party, and absorbing the centre-right vote. More than a few orphaned United faces were spotted in the 200-plus crowd, kicking the tires of the lone surviving centre-right party.

He hit all the usual high notes in his speech — scrapping the carbon tax, SOGI, short-term rental restrictions, Dr. Bonnie Henry, decriminalization, safe supply and more.

But what was just as interesting was the careful course Rustad charted on questions about more sensitive issues, despite the boisterous crowd urging him to do otherwise.

One woman took to the microphone calling herself “an NDP defector” who was tired of “daughters who are having their breasts amputated........

© BIV