Former rodeo rider Doerkson seeks to buck-off Eby in B.C. election
Published 5:22 pm Thursday, September 24, 2026
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When interim B.C. Conservative Leader Lorne Doerkson was a bareback rodeo rider in the 1990s, he once took a spill bad enough to knock him out, burst his eardrum, dislocate his shoulder and break his collarbone.
Riding a horse named Kung Fu, which he described as a “huge” animal, Doerkson’s hand suddenly slipped out of his rigging, and he began to fall backwards.
“It bucked just as my hand let go of the rigging,” he said.
He landed hard on his shoulder, and the other riders gathered around to protect him from the horse, eventually dragging him back out behind the arena.
“I had some bizarre inclination, apparently, that I had to drive,” Doerkson said in a Thursday interview. “I had to go somewhere, and nobody was watching me, so I drove, and I ended up at the hospital.”
He went to one hospital, then somehow got himself discharged. Still not right the next morning, he drove himself to a second hospital.
This is where he spun this tale into a political message: B.C. once had a working health-care system.
“The point of that story is that I went to two hospitals within 12 hours, and both of them were open,” he said.
In recent years, Doerkson could be found in the B.C. legislature, clean of mud, injury-free and berobed as he handled his duties as assistant deputy speaker of the house. (He also spent nearly two decades working for Black Press-owned newspapers, up to 2011.)
Now that he has been elevated to leader of the B.C. Conservative Party after Kerry-Lynne Findlay’s resignation, he is facing off against NDP Leader David Eby to be the next premier.
First elected in 2020, Doerkson has gained a reputation around the parliament building as a “nice guy,” something even Eby acknowledges.
This persona has so far proven to be a tough target for Eby. Especially considering Doerkson doesn’t have a major online presence or engage much on social media, in stark contrast to many in his party.
“It doesn’t strike me that Lorne has a lot of friends who are deeply online,” former Conservative Party executive director Angelo Isidorou said, calling him a “salt-of-the-earth kind of guy.”
Lacking an easy angle to take a shot at Doerkson’s personal record, Eby attacked him on Thursday for sticking with Findlay throughout her tumultuous tenure and for failing to stand up against his colleagues’ more controversial comments, arguing this makes him a weak candidate to deal with the threat posed by U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
“He didn’t stand up to the mega conservatives in his own caucus; how could he possibly stand up to Trump?” Eby said.
A reluctant leader
So who is Lorne Doerkson and what does he actually stand for? And as such a quiet, steady hand in the legislature, how did he suddenly become leader of the Official Opposition?
Awkwardly, the call came on Sunday (Sept.20) while he was on a 20-hour journey home from a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association conference in South Africa.
Stuck on a four-hour layover in Amsterdam, his phone rang, and he was asked if he would be willing to step into the leadership role in place of Findlay, should she resign.
He had been asked to be interim leader before, after former leader John Rustad stepped aside. At that time, Doerkson was ensconced in his assistant deputy speaker role and declined.
This time, with a snap election looming, he said yes.
Then he promptly got on a 12-hour flight to Vancouver, still unsure whether Findlay would stay or go.
“I honestly didn’t know until I got off the plane, and my phone just absolutely blew up with texts and phone calls and everything else saying you’re the new leader,” he said.
Once on British Columbian soil, Doerkson immediately set to work bringing the MLAs who left under Findlay — a full third of the caucus — back into the fold. Several had joined CentreBC just days earlier, and negotiations on unification began in earnest.
Peter Milobar, CentreBC’s leader since Friday, led these talks with Doerkson in Vancouver.
Milobar said there were some details to work out, but the two parties agreed on the fundamentals, that they needed a deal to avoid splitting the vote, which would hand the election easily to the NDP.
After coming to terms with this, Milobar told the others who had joined CentreBC that he was going back to the Tories, and it was up to them if they wanted to join him.
This included Elenore Sturko, the only one of the group who left the Conservative Party before Findlay took over.
“It was a very civil and respectful conversation, an emotional conversation, I’m not going to lie,” she said.
The MLAs each went their separate ways to mull it over and speak with their families.
Sturko decided to stay with CentreBC, and was elevated to party leader.
She did not want to work alongside Conservative caucus members who failed to condemn Trump and his tariffs, and who continue to focus on gender identity issues in school instead of things like test scores and overcrowding.
“Even though they have said that they’re different now, it’s really the same people,” she said.
The other six decided to join Milobar and return to the Conservatives. Milobar phoned Mike Bernier, the former CentreBC leader whom he took over from three days before, along with party president Mike Wignall.
Both were disappointed, yet unsurprised, he said.
Doerkson’s goal now is to put Findlay’s scandal-plagued and chaotic term as party leader in the rearview. He acknowledges there is “damage done,” but calls her time as party leader “ancient history” after the realignment.
“We’re in a totally different situation than we were a week ago,” he said. “And I think you could ask out of just about any one of our caucus members, and I think they would agree.”
Platform remains much the same
But on policy, Doerkson has hit many of the same notes as his predecessors.
Repealing the Declaration on the Rights of indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) is his number one priority.
DRIPA is meant to enshrine Indigenous sovereignty in all B.C. laws, but has resulted in at least 20 legal challenges as First Nations seek to use it to invalidate existing laws and regulations. Doerkson wants to repeal DRIPA and instead engage with First Nations directly to form partnerships.
“It’s frustrating for the public to go forward on this path,” he said. “Honestly, it’s broken.”
This will be tricky because many First Nations leaders are vehemently opposed to any changes to DRIPA at all, and unrest could follow. Doerkson couldn’t articulate what he would do if that opposition grew into protests and blockades.
Similarly, on reducing the growing budget deficit, he stuck to the standard Conservative lines about boosting economic productivity through deregulation, while steering clear of talk of spending cuts.
Doerkson argues that the “simplest of things” are holding back the economy, such as the regulatory hoops companies must go through to harvest burnt wood after a wildfire.
He said he wants a balanced budget “immediately,” even though he acknowledges that he doesn’t know what that path back to balance would look like without seeing the government’s complete books.
Whatever the government’s full financial picture looks like, it is hard to grasp how he could realistically wipe out a $13.8 billion deficit without massive spending cuts.
On one major issue, Doerkson is trying to change gears from his predecessors: Trump and his tariffs.
In the past, some Conservative Party MLAs have been reluctant to take strong stances on Trump and trade, and several met with Trump officials.
Doerkson is taking a firmer stance as he seeks to neutralize Eby’s line of attack that a Conservative-led government would cozy up to Trump.
“Donald Trump is a bully,” Doerkson said, committing to keeping American alcohol off B.C. Liquor store shelves unless the U.S. gives something in return.
While Doerkson is interim party leader now, appointed rather than elected by the membership, the party board committed to amending the rules if his party defeats the NDP on Oct. 24. If the Conservative Party wins, Doerkson will be premier.
As the first polls trickle in of a Doerkson-led Conservatives versus the NDP, it is starting to appear that Eby’s party might be in trouble.
A Liason Strategies survey released the day of the election call suggests the NDP are up by five points, but an Angus Reid poll released Thursday flips that, with the Conservative Party up by eight.
“I certainly feel pretty positive about the direction we’re going,” Doerkson said.