Á'a:líya Warbus is the latest MLA to leave the Conservative Party of B.C., but her decision may come as little surprise to the party’s conservative base.

The Chilliwack-Cultus Lake MLA announced Monday that she is leaving the Conservative caucus to sit as an Independent, becoming the seventh MLA to walk away from party leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay since Aug. 14.

“I am disappointed to announce I am leaving the Conservative caucus to sit as an independent,” Warbus wrote in an Aug. 31 statement citing a “critical breakdown in communication” within the party.

Warbus added that caucus members are learning about hirings, firings, critic appointments and leadership positions through social media and other channels before being informed by leadership.

Please see my statement below. pic.twitter.com/p97hor7SG4

— Á'a:líya Warbus (@a_warbus) August 31, 2026

“This mounting instability is not what anyone would expect from the next Premier of our Province,” she said.

Warbus added that although her “support for common sense policies has not changed,” her faith in Findlay’s “ability to lead this party to victory has.”

Warbus previously served as Official Opposition House Leader under former Conservative leader John Rustad. Findlay later shuffled her out of that role, which is now held by Prince George-North Cariboo MLA Sheldon Clare.

But while Warbus framed her departure as a loss of confidence in Findlay, many members of the party’s conservative base may be wondering what took her so long to leave.

She is another departing MLA many grassroots Conservatives see as more left-leaning than the political movement that propelled the party to Official Opposition status in 2024.

Of the seven MLAs who have exited the party in recent weeks, five were former B.C. Liberal MLAs or, in Brennan Day’s case, previously ran for the B.C. Liberals but failed to win a seat.

Critics first began pointing to signs that Warbus was not closely aligned with their conservatism shortly after she was elected.

At a time of heightened public concern over property rights and continued public access to land, Warbus has taken an ideological position on issues connected to the reconciliation industry on multiple occasions.

During a previous interview, Warbus, who was born Theresa Point, has admitted she preferred that people use the harder-to-pronounce Á'a:líya Warbus because she feels it is “decolonizing one tongue at a time” when they say it.

During another interview about whether residential schools offered students anything beneficial, Warbus brought up European inventor Thomas Edison’s introduction of the light bulb to Indigenous people as something her people had not asked for.

Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Pride advocacy group has also described Warbus as a longtime activist.

She was visibly outraged by her then-Conservative colleague Dallas Brodie, who now leads OneBC, after Brodie publicly stated that no bodies had been discovered at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.

Brodie, who was serving as the party’s attorney general critic, also defended a criminal defence lawyer’s resolution calling on the Law Society of B.C. to stop teaching its members that children’s bodies had been found.

It was around that time last year that Brodie and MLAs Tara Armstrong and Jordan Kealy left the B.C. Conservative caucus, alleging that it had become toxic and infiltrated by “woke Liberal bullies.”

If that allegation was accurate, the latest exodus raises an obvious question: how many of those so-called Liberal bullies have now left the party and how many still remain?

Warbus is the seventh MLA to leave the Conservative Party in less than a month and the 14th since the 2024 election, leaving just 30 of the 44 elected Conservative members inside the caucus.

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