This Liberal Candidate Claims She Supports ‘Workers’. Labour Leaders Call Her Track Record ‘Disingenuous’.

According to her campaign materials, Liberal candidate Stephanie McLean might sound like a Liberal candidate who could appeal to working-class voters in the Vancouver Island riding of Esquimalt–Saanich–Sooke.

But McLean’s allegiances can be difficult to peg down. After leaving the Alberta NDP, McLean became a donor supporting Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives in 2023 and decided only a month ago she would now be running for the Liberals in BC.

Some members of BC’s labour movement also say McLean, who has represented employers in labour disputes, has a questionable history representing the interests of workers in BC given her past ties to a union that has been ostracized by the province’s labour movement as well as influential “anti-union” figures in the province.