VANCOUVER — Former British Columbia Liberal trade minister Teresa Wat has resigned from the B.C. Conservative caucus and will sit as an Independent, escalating a month-long dispute over accusations made during Kerry-Lynne Findlay’s leadership campaign that the veteran Richmond MLA “is CCP” and had “sold many memberships to CCP Chinese in Richmond.”
Meanwhile, in a day of extraordinary tumult for the far western Canadian province well known for wild politics, leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay fired caucus operations director Apollo Chung as a separate controversy involving purported audio recordings erupted around the party.
The two developments intensified an extraordinary collapse inside British Columbia’s Official Opposition. Wat and MLA Brennan Day became the fourth and fifth members to leave the Conservative caucus in 12 days, reducing a party that won 44 seats in the 2024 election to 33.
Findlay announced Wednesday that she had directed her chief of staff to terminate a senior official effective immediately. She gave no reason for the dismissal. The announcement followed the circulation on social media of purported audio recordings attributed to Apollo Chung, according to The Canadian Press.
Earlier Wednesday, Langley-Abbotsford MLA Harman Bhangu said he was “disappointed and disturbed” by audio released that day and condemned the idea that a Conservative employee would misuse members’ donations.
Western Standard reported that the recording captured a staff member discussing ways to monetize his time in office. The Bureau has not authenticated the recording, confirmed the speaker’s identity or established that it played any role in Chung’s dismissal.
The dismissed party executive Apollo Chung, meanwhile, arrived in Findlay’s caucus office with a political history spanning several parties and provinces.
As recently as 2021, he worked as a constituency assistant to Brenda Bailey, the New Democrat who is now British Columbia’s finance minister. He was later listed under the name Paul Chung as executive director of the Republican Party of Alberta, which advocates Alberta’s separation from Canada, and served as financial officer for some of its candidates.
In early 2025, Chung reportedly contributed $5,000 to the party, the maximum permitted under Alberta’s rules. The Toronto Star reported this month that the Republican Party of Alberta collected nearly $190,000 from fewer than 50 donors during the first half of 2025, with more than half contributing the maximum.
The Toronto Star’s investigation identified Chung as a longtime B.C. political operative who had worked for three of the province’s parties in recent years. The Star found that at least four donations appeared to have been made by people living in British Columbia, and two of the apparent donors had previously worked for the B.C. NDP.
“Before that, Chung worked in Toronto municipal politics,” The Star reported. “His name surfaced in a 2016 audit of a union representing Toronto city workers, which flagged that the local had paid Chung and two companies he apparently controlled more than $300,000 for call centre activities and tech support work.”
An official House of Commons record from 2005 identifies a man named Apollo Chung and a woman named Christine Li appearing together before the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration on behalf of the Chinese Canadian National Council.
Li, a national executive of the council, introduced Chung as her colleague. She argued against revoking the citizenship of people who had entered Canada under false identities during the head tax and exclusion era, telling the committee that those immigrants had used false papers because the law of the day left them no other route.
A later blog post by Li describes her work on a redress campaign alongside community leaders, lawyers and journalists, and carries a photograph dated June 21, 2006 whose caption names Apollo Chung and Li aboard the Redress Express with journalist Simon Lee, and Kristyn Wong-Tam, now a New Democrat member of the Ontario legislature.
A man named Apollo Chung’s connection to Kristyn Wong-Tam extends beyond their earlier involvement in Chinese Canadian redress advocacy.
In April 2013, Toronto Sun columnist Sue-Ann Levy reported that Chung, operating through a British Columbia company, had performed extensive work for Wong-Tam’s successful 2010 Toronto council campaign and for that of Adam Vaughan, then a Toronto councillor and later a Liberal member of Parliament in Justin Trudeau’s government. The work included setting up telephone lines and websites, Levy reported, and in Wong-Tam’s case producing robocalls.
Levy also reported that CUPE Local 416 official David Hewitt provided union-subsidized administrative support to Wong-Tam’s campaign, and that she had seen him working from Wong-Tam’s campaign office.
Later in 2013, Toronto councillors Giorgio Mammoliti and Mark Grimes formally sought a city staff report into Chung’s involvement with Local 416 and sitting councillors’ offices.
A subsequent Toronto Star report on a CUPE-commissioned forensic audit said Local 416 paid Chung and two companies he apparently controlled $328,690 for call-centre and technical-support work between 2011 and 2013. The audit did not allege that Chung committed wrongdoing. For its story this month, the Star sent Chung questions by personal email, work email and letter. He did not respond.
The Star reported that Chung had previously been affiliated with the Chinese Canadian National Council, which suggested at the time that he might be living in Vancouver.
The turmoil surrounding Wat and Chung came amid a wider exodus from Findlay’s caucus.
Peter Milobar quit on August 14, Ian Paton on August 24 and Rosalyn Bird on August 25. Day followed Wat out of the caucus Wednesday, citing Findlay’s “judgment, conduct, and ethical standards” and the associates she had chosen.
A day before Wat and Day announced their departures, Findlay was asked whether more members would follow.
“There may even be others that leave our caucus,” she said. “I don’t know.”
Chung’s dismissal unfolded as Wat announced her own break with Findlay over a controversy that had been building since late July.
Wat said she could no longer remain in a caucus led by someone who had made “serious and unfounded accusations” that called her allegiance to Canada into question and then failed to correct the public record.
“I cannot continue to sit in a caucus led by someone who has questioned my loyalty without evidence and, when given the opportunity to correct the record, has failed to do so,” Wat said.
“It is unfortunate that MLA Teresa Wat has decided to take this extraordinary measure,” Findlay said Wednesday. “It is a betrayal of the hardworking volunteers, campaign workers and voters who helped get her elected as a CPBC MLA in the 2024 election.”
The dispute traces back to an anonymous X account called The Findlay Files, which last month published what it described as a screenshot from an internal group used by Findlay’s leadership campaign.
Postmedia reported that it obtained a screen recording of the chat thread and that a source said the message was sent from Findlay’s personal cellphone number, which the news organization independently verified as belonging to her.