The independent Penticton-Summerland MLA said her membership with the BC Conservative Party has been cancelled.

Amelia Boultbee, who left the right-wing party last fall, can now no longer vote in the BC Conservative leadership race, according to her social media post.

Boultbee said party leadership made the decision on May 7, cancelling her membership due to her vote on a BC NDP bill at the legislature.

iNFOnews.ca has reached out to the party for comment, but Conservative MLAs have already criticized her as having an “orange epiphany” and being a member of “the BC NDP farm team” after the vote on changes to the province’s freedom of information laws.

Boultbee said she only voted in favour of the bill so it could be scrutinized in committee, while the BC Conservatives wanted to pause it for six months, criticizing the bill as further stifling British Columbians’ access to government information.

“I’ll take them seriously when they can run a clean leadership campaign, have a leader, can identify themselves and vet candidates,” Boultbee said in a social media post, May 8.

She also said the party specifically cancelled her membership because of a bylaw that would prevent her from publicly supporting another political party.

She said cancelling a “moderate conservative’s” membership while leadership candidate Yuri Fulmer promises to form a coalition with the far-right OneBC is “a clear choice.”

During debate on the bill in the house earlier this week, she not only voiced support for moving the bill to a committee, but also criticized BC Conservatives for unfairly targeting women.

According to her, Kelowna-Mission MLA Gavin Dew and interim opposition leader Trevor Halford would “never speak about men” the way they did about a BC NDP cabinet minister.

Dew defended himself by saying the individual cabinet minister, nor their gender, makes no difference. He said he was merely criticizing the bill as “half-baked.”

The cancellation of Boultbee’s BC Conservative membership comes months after she had already been representing Penticton-Summerland as an independent MLA. Her departure was widely covered with fiery comments lobbed between herself and then-party leader John Rustad in the aftermath.

— With files from The Canadian Press.