In a year, Karin Kirkpatrick has gone from political retirement to registered leader of a brand-new provincial party.
This week, CentreBC was listed as a registered political party, with Kirkpatrick listed as its leader.
“My team and I are pleased to see Elections BC has officially listed CentreBC as a registered political party here in British Columbia,” said Kirkpatrick, former West Vancouver-Capilano MLA with BC United (formerly BC Liberals).
“This is the culmination of a lot of hard work from dedicated volunteers and political organizers across the province. I look forward to saying more when we introduce CentreBC to British Columbians later this month,” she said in a statement.
Over the course of her recent rollercoaster ride in politics, Kirkpatrick has said multiple times that the folding of her former political party has left voters without a centrist option in B.C., and that she had been in talks with peers to provide that missing choice.
After being elected as a BC Liberal MLA in 2020, Kirkpatrick announced her retirement from politics in February 2024, stating that she wouldn’t be on the fall ballot that year to prioritize her health and family.
But she put her energy into backing the newly minted BC United Party, and gave her riding to Caroline Elliott, a political commentator and longtime BC Liberal insider.
However, when it was revealed last September that Elliott and BC United Leader Kevin Falcon had brokered a deal for their candidates to team up with the BC Conservatives, Kirkpatrick said she was blindsided by the decision – which included no feedback from BC United members.
Support for provincial and federal conservatives waning, Kirkpatrick says
Since then, Kirkpatrick has called for Falcon to resign, so that members and donors could move forward and funds could be raised to pay off party debts as high as $1 million. Falcon has been silent for months.
In an interview in February, Kirkpatrick said that support for conservatives in Canada is waning, at both the provincial and federal level.
“And you’ll see, even in these last few days with Trump, that a lot of people are starting to step away from that right-side populist movement, and they’re looking again for something in the centre that is credible, that is balanced, and I believe we’ve got … the framing of the building to build on,” she said at the time.
That framing includes thousands of people who have donated to the BC United or Liberal party, Kirkpatrick said.
CentreBC is set to officially launch April 10.
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