Okanagan residents working to oust controversial MLA
Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream MLA Tara Armstrong has been the centre of numerous controversies since she was elected a year ago, and now some of her constituents have announced they will be trying to kick her out of office.
Advocacy Canada’s founder and president and one of Armstrong’s constituents, Wilbur Turner, said lots of people have asked him to lead the effort to recall the OneBC MLA.
“I am considering it,” he said. “It’s really important that we get involved in democracy in a way that when a politician is really being harmful, that we all stand up and do something about it and don’t just talk about it.”
There have been 30 recall petitions approved in B.C. since the Recall and Initiative Act came into effect back in 1995, but none have been successful.
A recall petition can’t be started until 18 months after a general election, or after April 20, 2026. The petition has to be started by a voter in the MLA’s electoral district, like Turner. The petition also has to collect signatures from 40 per cent of the district’s eligible voters.
There were 26,000 votes cast in the riding of Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream in the provincial election that brought Armstrong into office so any recall petition would need more than 13,000 signatures from eligible voters in the district.
An online petition won’t cut it, but an online petition demanding a byelection has more than 1,200 signatures. A similar petition demanding the Vancouver-Quilchena OneBC MLA Dallas Brodie resign has 1,400 signatures.
Turner said he thinks that there’s enough negative sentiment towards Armstrong that a recall petition could be successful.
“Based on the sentiment, people that I’ve talked to in the riding, there’s really a lot of people disgusted with her and her politics,” he said. “I think there’s a good chance that it could happen, as long as there are the right people involved in organizing it.”
Armstrong has tried to undermine Indigenous rights, pushed an anti-vaccine rhetoric, attacked transgender youth and stepped down from the BC Conservatives to start the new OneBC political party which earned her a significant pay raise.
Armstrong tabled a bill against transgender healthcare and education for youth, which failed to get a first reading.
Brodie tabled a bill that would ban Indigenous land acknowledgements that also failed to get a first reading.
“It’s (Armstrong’s) focus on punching down minorities. It seems to be all about Indigenous sovereignty… you know, land acknowledgements, about teaching kids in schools our history, our accurate history. It’s about denying the lived experience of survivors of residential schools.
“It’s about the gender affirming care ban bill, which is actually the most horrific bill that’s ever been presented in Canada against trans people.”
Turner has criticized Armstrong extensively online and he said she has singled him out, as well as other critics like the people who pushed back against a OneBC event in Penticton.
“She doesn’t want to hear from people who question her,” he said, adding it’s just grievance politics and trying to use that to consolidate power and get votes.
Rachelle Chartrand is another one of Armstrong’s constituents and she wrote an open letter asking Armstrong to step down from office earlier this week.
Chartrand said that while she disagrees with Armstrong’s politics, her issue with the MLA is the fact that she ran on the BC Conservative platform and is now pushing an entirely different set of ideas.
“I felt that at this point in the province’s journey, we needed some serious fiscal responsibility. And so I voted Conservative, which, our candidate here in the riding was Tara Armstrong,” she told iNFOnews.ca.
“I was concerned with her activity on social media. And then when they created their own party and created a platform, some of which was in direct conflict with the BC Conservative platform, I just thought that was undemocratic.”
Chartrand said she was so disturbed by Armstrong leaving the BC Conservative Party and putting out divisive rhetoric that she got involved in politics and decided to work with another small, unrepresented political party, Centre BC.
“The BC Conservatives said they were going to honour UNDRIP (United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) and work towards truth and reconciliation … These guys want to ban it. They want to repeal it. So that’s a complete contrast.”
Both Turner and Chartrand said that since Armstrong didn’t attend public forums during the election and declined most interviews, voters didn’t know she held the beliefs she is now pushing in the Legislative Assembly.
Armstrong wouldn’t agree to an interview, but OneBC chief of staff Tim Thielmann sent iNFOnews.ca a written statement attributed to her.
“I am fighting for the values that conservatives voted for — the very values that John Rustad and his party have abandoned.”
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