Around Town: Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Iranians converting, Mental Health . . .

Kerry-Lynne Findlay met with a supportive crowd at Surrey Pentecostal Assembly March 31. Photo: Judi Vankevich

A receptive group of pastors and church leaders met with Conservative Party of BC leadership contender Kerry-Lynne Findlay March 31 at Surrey Pentecostal Assembly.

The former Conservative Party of Canada MP for South Surrey-White Rock is an active member of All Saints Community Church in Crescent Beach.

Her pastor, Peter Klenner, introduced her by saying, “She has a quality that I admire . . . she cares about people and she has integrity.”

The gathering was political; Findlay wants to win and she wants to make sure their party remains conservative, not move back to the BC Liberal/United roots of some party members.

But she began by speaking at some length about her own life, what has formed her and what she believes.

• Warrior background

She comes from a Highland Scots background (“One thing the Highlanders were and are is warriors.”).

She said she feels close to her great-grandmother who signed her marriage certificate with an X: “I think, what would she think of today, that she has a great-great-granddaughter who’s a lawyer and a King’s Counsel, a Member of Parliament and all these things that women back then would not even dream of.”

Findlay comes from a working class family on Vancouver Island, but she excelled at school, entering UBC at just 16, completing law school and beginning work as a lawyer at 23 in downtown Vancouver. She became President of the Bar Association and was named Queen’s Counsel (now King’s Counsel) after 20 years in the profession.

Along the way, she was widowed at 34 when her husband died of a heart attack, leaving her with two young children. She remarried, to Brent Chapman, who was elected as a Conservative MLA in 2024. She is now a mother of four, and grandmother of nine. She (and her children) realize the sacrifice she is making by remaining so active in the political realm.

She was always committed to community service during her time as a lawyer, and that is what led her into the political realm.

Findlay was in Parliament for four-and-a-half years as MP for Delta-Richmond East during Stephen Harper’s majority government, serving as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice, Associate Minister of National Defence and Minister of National Revenue.

Of the latter role she recalled:

I apologize a lot in my life for being a lawyer, for being a politician.

We were just talking about the National Prayer Breakfast [both Prime Minister Mark Carney and Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre attended the 60th annual National Prayer Breakfast March 24] and I had the honour two years in a row to read scripture on behalf of the Conservative Party.

The fellow who was running it then said, “I never thought that we would have a tax collector reading scripture.”

After losing her seat in 2015, Findlay was returned as MP for South Surrey-White Rock in 2019, serving in opposition until she lost again in the 2025 election.

• Fight and unite – and pray

Kerry-Lynne Findlay spoke personally about her life and faith, but also about her political views and goals.

She explained why she is keen to win this leadership race:

We’re at a unique time in history – in our country and in our province – where we need to fight. We need to unite and fight because I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say we’re in a contest of good and evil.

We are at a time when there’s great polarization in our society. I don’t know what I’m going to talk about today. I pray and then I say, “Put the words in my mouth, God.” . . .

I am running for the leader of the Conservative Party of BC. Why am I doing that? Because, first of all, we need to change the government of this province. And we, the Conservative Party of BC, at least for now, is the only vehicle through which that might happen. . . .

I have faith that it’s possible because I believe God wouldn’t have asked me to embark on this journey in his name if he didn’t know how I’d get there. I don’t know how I’m going to get there, honestly.

She wants younger generations to grow up with the kind of security she experienced growing up in our community:

My mother was a stay-at-home mom. There were six children to raise and my dad worked with his hands. We were working class people. We weren’t given anything. And we understood, in those days, in this country, that we were free to pursue whatever our talents could bring us; that hard work would be rewarded.

We had, relatively speaking, compared to today, safe streets. You could take your dog out for a walk at night, not worry about that. Last night, when I’d been on the road for three days up in the Okanagan and when we were driving back . . . I read, 30 shots fired at 151 and 60th. We never even hardly read about things like this.

But today it’s quite different. It doesn’t have to be this way but that’s the way it is.

• Political views

Findlay for BC: Keep it Conservative. That is the bold statement when you land on her campaign website, and she spelled out some elements of that vision during her extensive talk and the following question period.

For example:

• Criminal Justice system: “My job [as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice] was to shepherd through an omnibus bill on justice reform called the Safe Streets and Communities Act. It was targeting violent repeat offenders. Wouldn’t that be nice to have that now? So much crime is done by people who have already done crime.”
• Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act: “This bill that’s gone through parliament is a direct attack on faith. If you can’t see it that way, then I don’t know when you will ever see what is truth and what is not. There are absolutes in life. Not everything you can put in relative terms. And scripture has been blessed. That’s what we believe when we read it, think on it, absorb it, rely on it. And there are other religions who believe the same of their scripture. If you cannot speak to your scripture, to your fundamental documents, this is an attack on all faith.”
• On Barry Neufeld (who was in the audience): “We should not hear or see that someone like Barry Neufeld would be handed a life-ruining penalty for just speaking basic truths. And that’s what’s happened. He’s being martyred in that sense.”
• Health care: “Our health care system is sad and dangerous. Access is a huge issue. The doctors that are there, the nurses that are there . . . they’re as good as any in the world, probably. But it’s the access part. And it is having the facilities and having the equipment.”
• Bureaucracy: “I don’t know anyone who would say – even though now we have over 40 percent more bureaucrats in Victoria than we did when this NDP started this government – “Look how much better the delivery of our government services is.”
• Cowichan decision: “With this Cowichan decision that everyone’s talking about based out of Richmond – it isn’t a Richmond decision, it’s a BC decision. It’s the BC Supreme Court; that means it has effect everywhere until it’s changed. . . . The judge very clearly said in her decision – neither the federal government nor the provincial government made any argument before this court on the supremacy of our land title system, so I cannot take that into account, I have no evidence or argument before me. In other words, they abandoned the field.”
• Schools / SOGI: “I would repeal SOGI [Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity educational resources] because I believe it’s confusing our children and it’s harming our children.”
• Fiscal sanity: “The last budget I call the ‘no hope’ budget because they’ve overspent. They spent in the wrong areas. We’ve got $183 billion and climbing in debt. We have a deficit of $13.3 billion. And then they say, you know, we have an answer. The answer is you get to pay more tax. . . . In the federal government when I was Minister of Revenue, I administered all the taxes of this nation. We had enough money to run a whole country. So, don’t tell me that we can’t figure out how to run a province in this country.”
• 

  Pastors and leaders prayed with Kerry-Lynne Findlay after she spoke.

  Food banks: “We have 200,000 British Columbians a month going to food banks. And that is only the food banks that are in the food bank system. We have lots of churches and gurdwaras and other places where they’re feeding people as well. . . . That’s unacceptable.”

• Natural resources / pipeline: “Our natural resources are God-given resources. I didn’t put copper in the ground. He did. It’s there for us to use and give us prosperity. And we can do it in environmentally friendly and sustainable ways. But we cannot leave it where people invest all kinds of money and they wait years and years and years for some sort of approval to take the next step. . . . We need that pipeline, that Canadian pipeline.”

She concluded by returning to the theme of fighting to protect what she and her supporters hold dear:

At the end of the day, a core value of most conservatives is faith, family and freedom. This is not just a slogan. All of those things have great meaning in and of themselves. But if we want to see freedom continue in this country – if we want to be glorious and free, if we want to have free speech, freedom of association, freedom of worship, if we want to know that we live in a free country – we are going to have to fight for it.

Findlay encouraged those in the room to get their networks involved, noting that the winning candidate will have to show strength in all areas of the province. She had just returned from several days in the Okanagan, and was setting out early the next morning for two days in Merritt, Kamloops, Williams Lake, Quesnel and Mackenzie.

Iranians converting

A National Post article recognized something that many locals have commented on over the past few years – that many Iranian people are converting to Christianity.

Unfortunately, however, while recognizing the dramatic nature of church growth in Iran itself, and the number of converts in Canada, they highlight the suggestion that many are converting simply to gain access to Canada.

Here is a portion of the March 26 article:

In 2025, there were just over 7,100 asylum claims in Canada from Iranian nationals, the third largest number of claims by country of alleged persecution after India and Haiti.

Approximately half – 3,456 – were accepted, according to figures from the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, while 11,448 Iranian asylum claims are still pending. It is unknown how many of those were claims related to religious conversion. . . .

The conversion route to asylum and immigration fraud has been well publicized in the United Kingdom, where a 2024 public inquiry by the Home Secretary held Church of England officials to account for alleged complicity in fraud and collusion with people smugglers.

Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, refuted claims that the church was a “conveyor belt for asylum seeker fake conversions.”

Former Canadian Border Services officers and community leaders say it is happening here too. While there are undoubtedly many sincere seekers amid the converted, the coveted baptismal certificate has become a commodity for many seeking refuge from Iran, be they dissidents, economic migrants or, as some contend, vehicles for IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] members to enter the country.

The article interviewed the minister of one church:

At Saint Christopher’s Anglican Church in West Vancouver, about 20 per cent of the 80-year-old parish is Farsi speaking. Rector Jonathan Pinkney, who had baptismal and book of common prayer liturgy translated into Farsi via a grant from the diocese, told the National Post that those who convert to Christianity are sincere, and that only a handful of the approximately 20 new parishioners who have joined in the past four years were seeking asylum.

He told the Post Diocesan authorities are “aware of the situation” around bogus conversions but have “asked us to exercise caution while remaining open hearted.”

Pinkney employs an approach centred around “community building.” He preaches the gospel of integration. To that end, he ensures connection by having new Iranian parishioners assigned positions in the choir, kitchen and various other committees alongside established parishioners.

He also contends that fear of persecution is legitimate, and that his Iranian parishioners have expressed “genuine concern” about returning to their homeland.

Many local churches have received genuine Iranian converts in recent years, some in large numbers. Several Iranian churches have also been formed (Emmanuel Church in North Vancouver, for example), along with the House of Omeed.

Mental Health in Our City

A gathering next Saturday (April 11) will serve both to equip local churches and Christians – and to introduce BCG Counselling Group and their new home to the broader community:

Mental Health in Our City is a one-day conference hosted by BCG Counselling Group in partnership with First Baptist Church, as we celebrate the grand opening of the new BCG Counselling Centre in Downtown Vancouver.

This special day will offer thoughtful and supportive sessions on mental health recovery, grief, emotional wellbeing, faith and mental health, building resilience in kids and navigating separation and divorce.

Whether you are seeking support, walking alongside others or simply wanting to learn, we welcome you to be part of a meaningful day of learning, healing and community as we open our doors and our hearts to serve Vancouver in a deeper way.

Following opening remarks by Cameron Keller (Executive Director of BCG Counselling Group) on ‘Mental Health Recovery,’ there will be several workshops:

• JY Zhang: Grief / Lament in the Human Condition (Mandarin)
• Christine Lee: Emotions 101
• David Lee: Faith and Mental Health
• Lois Jones: Building Resilience in Our Kids
• Koby Hale: Separation and Divorce – Prevention and Pathway

The conference will run from 9 am – 4 pm; go here to register (before April 8).

Some will remember earlier versions of BCG Counselling Group, which has now been serving the community for nearly 50 years:

The story of our team began with a vision of a young psychologist and pastor, Paddy Ducklow. He founded the BCG Counselling Group in 1978 as an inter-church ministry of the then Burnaby Christian Fellowship.

Go here for more background.

Events are listed below, but there is also an Events page and a Jobs page on the Church for Vancouver site.