Nuanced. - 170. John Rustad: Are the BC Conservatives Ready to Govern?

Episode Date: September 10, 2024

Aaron speaks with BC Conservative Leader John Rustad on climate change, his interview with Jordan Peterson, whether he would fire Bonnie Henry and his solutions for housing, taxes, and immigration. John Rustad critiques the current NDP government's spending, healthcare failures, and drug policies.Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Do you feel that you are covered fairly in the media? We've got a government, quite frankly, that has gone on an unbelievable spending experience. These guys are completely incompetent, but that's to be expected. NDP math is always that way. Almost exactly two years ago, Kevin Falcon removed you from the Liberal Caucus. Can you reflect on that period? Because obviously a lot has transpired since then. It's like anything.

Once you introduce a tax, it's almost impossible to get rid of. And governments are always desperate for money. When something isn't working, bring it to an end, get rid of it. You've been involved in government for many years. Do you have any regrets, things you would have done differently, had you known what you know now that just stands out? I'm not worried about what has gone on so much in the past. I'm worried about making sure that we do everything we can

to build that future for people in British Columbia. Do you believe in man-made climate change? David Eby believes very strongly that he can solve the weather problems by taxing you hire. He can stop there being wildfires by taxing. Would you fire Bonnie Henry? Today's episode is made possible in part by support from Enbridge, fueling quality of life in British Columbia for over 65 years. John, it is an honor to sit down with you today.

I'm very grateful that you were able to find the time to come out and meet with us today. I'm wondering if you could perhaps first start by introducing yourself. Sure. Well, first of all, thank you very much for having me on today. I think it's a great honor for me as well to be able to be here. So I'm John Rustad. I'm the MLA for Natchako Lakes, and I am the leader of the Conservative Party of British Columbia.

Would you mind first just telling us a little bit about your background and who you are? Well, I guess that depends on how far back you want to go. Let's go to the beginning. I've spent most of my life, you know, pre-politics in the forest sector in one aspect or another. I've done everything from tree planting to timber supply analysis, from fighting fires to watershed analysis and development plans. So I've done a lot in terms of engagement in forestry, including working as a dangerous snag faller,

doing a whole bunch of various things in my time before politics. I ran my own company for a number of years, Western Geographic Information Systems, where I had an office in Houston, BC, in an office in Prince George. But ultimately in the year 2000, and I sat down with my wife and I was so unhappy with where the province was going

that I said, what do you think about moving to Calgary? You know, it would be 15% right on the bottom line in terms of profitability for the work I was doing. We had a long talk about it, and ultimately my whole family was in Prince George or parents were in Prince George. I've got a Wadlet license and I was involved in some other deals at the time.

And so I thought, okay, I don't want to have to be chased out of the province. So that left me two options, either live with it or get involved and try to change it. And so politics was never an ambition of mine, but I decided, okay, so if somebody's got to step up to the plate and try to make some changes, so I decided I would get involved in politics. So I became a school trustee in 2002 and discovered I actually enjoy politics, which was strange for me because I had a huge phobia of public speaking

and that whole side of things. and then I ran for provincial politics in 2005, and I've been representing my area since then since 2005. First writing was called Prince George Almanica, and then in 2009 that changed as my writing shifted further west, and I now represent the riding on the Chaco Lakes. During that time of being in provincial politics, I also was a minister for Aboriginal relations and reconciliation

for just over four years, and I had a very short stint as minister of four. forest lands and natural resource operations. Interesting. Would you mind walking us through your record? Because I think it's interesting that all of the major party leaders do have a record being in government. And I'm wondering if you could reflect on that. Sure. Well, being in government is quite a different experience. It's nothing quite like it. You know, you have your ministry. You have the various things you're doing as well as you're on

committees. You're doing the work through there. And then, of course, sitting around the cabinet table making decisions. And I'll never forget the, the, decision we made around site sea, for example. And one of the comments I made, because I was the Minister for Aboriginal Relations and reconciliation at the time, was the fact that, you know, this project will forever change the landscape, will ever for change for the nations impacted their opportunity for hunting and fishing, their traditional way in that area. However, you know, you have to weigh these things out based on what is in the best interest

of all British Columbians. And so even though there were those issues, we had to weigh out the fact that, it's the right thing to do, you know, for us as a province now. Balloon budget, you know, there's lots we can talk about associated with that. But the other thing that's really unique is, you know, when you get these opportunities, people say, oh, what do you, what was your, you know, what are you proud about? Or what's the thing that really sticks out in your mind in terms of the work that you do as a minister? And I thought about it and I thought, you know, there are so many things.

I mean, I signed 435 agreements with First Nations and there's so many of those things that were important. but the one that really stuck out in my mind was an agreement that was signed with one of the chiefs associated with the natural gas pipelines out to the west coast and the chief was in tears signing the agreement and i thought oh my gosh what have we done like this isn't right and the chief said no no you don't understand the week before five people five youth had attempted suicide and one unfortunately had tragically died and he looked at this from a perspective of how this was making a difference for people and building that future, building that hope. And I think, you know, that really stuck to me. It really was an emotional sort of attachment for me in terms of what a difference that these agreements can actually make. Fantastic. August 18th, 2022, almost exactly two years ago, Kevin Falcon removed you from the Liberal Caucus. Can you reflect on that period? Because obviously, a lot has transpired since then. Can you reflect on that time? Sure. So what led up to that? After Kevin had won the leadership

race and he asked me to carry on with being the critic for forest lands and natural resource operations. So I was going through doing that work, but there was an issue that came up federally called the Farm Emissions Reduction Strategy, which talked about reducing or eliminating the use of nitrogen-based fertilizer, as well as, excuse the expression, but stopping cows from farting and belching because somehow that was changing the weather. And this would have had a very significant impact on my riding because 35% of the economic my activity in my riding is agriculture, particularly cow-calf operations.

So I tried to have a conversation within the existing party I was in, the BC Liberals at the time. Now, of course, the College United Party. And that was in April, and then in May I tried again. June, I tried again. It's supposed to be a planning session in July, and that got canceled. And so I started thinking about this. I thought, okay, well, I better start actually putting some information out there and trying to generate a conversation. So I did a retweet of a Patrick Moore tweet, which questioned the role.

CO2 and talked a little bit about the Great Barrier Reef. From that, that was on a Sunday, and I didn't really think anything about it, right? So on the Wednesday, I was actually taking the day off because the next day was my birthday. And my phone lit up, and I was like, okay, they can wait, right? It's a day off. I'm not going to worry about it. So that night, of course, I went through messages, and Kevin Falkin was obviously upset. He was mad that, you know, I hadn't been in touch with them, and I get it.

Nobody likes to be put off when there's an issue they need to deal with. So I sent him a note and said, when would you like to talk? We made arrangements for the next day. So when I talked to him the next day, which was my birthday, actually, and I explained the situation to him, and he said, look, you ought to take down this tweet, and I'd even forgotten about the tweet. I said, what tweet? And oh, yes, it was the retweet that he was worried about.

And he said, I said, look, here's the situation. This is a negative impact for my writing. I need to be able to speak out on behalf of my constituents. And he said, you're not allowed to do that. He said, you have to follow our party position. And our caucus, you know, we had never had a discussion under Kevin Falkin, but he said our caucus is committed to being leaders and fighting climate change and being leaders, you know, both provincially and internationally,

and you're not allowed to come out and say anything different. And I said, well, I'm sorry, but I was elected to represent my constituents. That is the job I need to do. He said, okay, well, then you have a choice. He said, and he hung up on me. And half an hour later is kicked out a caucus. Wow. And so that was the process.

And so I thought, well, you know, interesting thing to do on my birthday, I suppose. That's wild. But that was what happened. And then after that, I started thinking about it. And I thought, okay, well, I've got a number of options, obviously. I don't need to be doing this. I could just retire. But I started thinking about it.

And it got back to the same reason why I got involved in politics in the first place, which is I wasn't happy with where things are going. the NDPs that are destroying this province. And I thought Falcon and the BC United could not win. They can't win this election. And if they can't win this election, we've got a divided group. We're going to be in real trouble even going into a 2028 election. So somebody needs to do something about it.

And so I had a long talk with my wife and I said, you know, look, I can retire. This option's up to you. I've been in politics a long time. What would you like me to do? And she said, I want you to go after leadership. I want you to carry on with the work that you started. And so I said, well, you know what it means? It means I'm not going to be home a lot.

It's a lot of work, it's a lot of stress. And she said, I fully support you 100%. You need to be doing this. So I said, okay. So then in the fall of 2022, sitting as an independent, I actually explored various options. I actually even connected with the old social credit party. And I thought, you know, should this be the vehicle that we do in British Columbia?

And the people that were in charge of that old party were even farther left than the BC liberals were, and they weren't willing to open it up for membership. So I thought, okay, that's not going anywhere. And that's when I took a serious look at the Conservative Party of British Columbia. And ultimately, I made the decision to join them in February of 2023. The leader stepped down in late February, creating the opportunity for a leadership race. And I took over the leadership of the party at the end of March of 2023. Okay. I want to go a little bit back. Was it at all difficult? You'd served with the BC Liberals for a very long time. And I'm just wondering, was there any hurt feelings, frustration, or negativity towards the fact that, like, one day, all of a sudden, you're not a part of this party that you'd served with for quite a long period of time?

Yeah, I'd be a member of the party for over 22 years and obviously served with them, including cabinet positions, for over 18 years. And I mean, I was ticked, right? I was annoyed about getting kicked out. But at the same time, you know, it's like, well, he's doing what he needs to do. I don't harbor any hard feelings or anything like that about the old party. It is what it is. Matter of fact, in many ways, now when I, today, when I look back at what's happened to that party, I actually feel pretty bad for them. I mean, many of these people I spent many years working together with,

and, you know, some of them I still consider friends, even though, you know, they attack me on a regular basis. But, you know, I look at it, and I think, you know, it was, a proud institution that was a coalition government, a coalition party that has completely fallen apart and it's too bad. But at the same time, you know, people are looking for change. They're looking for something different. I've had Daryl Plekisson, who I believe you know, and he's had a similar experience with the BC Liberal Party. And one of the things that stood out to me in my conversations with him was that there's this kind of challenge between having party positions, but allowing people to

have independent voices who are trying to represent their local community and that community's experience might be different than what the party's objective is. How do you as a leader try and balance those interests? You know, it's interesting. Most leaders are threatened by differing opinions or by differing views coming forward. And so, for example, if you go to any writing in this province in this next election. And you listen to one of the NDP candidates, whether it's one of their one of their MLA is running for re-election or one of the new candidates, they'll all be saying the same thing. There'll be no variation. There'll be no differences. And if you listen to the BC United candidates, it'll be the same thing. There'll be no variation. They'll all be saying

the same thing. Both those parties believe that they want to elect people that represent the party to the riding. And they don't allow free votes in the legislature. They don't allow people to speak up against their position where I just think that's wrong. That's not what democracy should be. And so one of the things I will be doing on day one of this election is asking all of our candidates to take a pledge, that their number one priority will always be their writing, speaking on behalf of the writing, and voting on behalf of their writing. And the reason for that is we have 93 different regions around this province. It is not possible that all of them would

have the same priorities and the same issues. Now obviously we need to come together to work together to get things done. But that's what leadership is about working through those differences, working and but allowing people to be able to have that voice, to represent their writing. And some of those things, you know,

are going to be big issues that are be controversial provincially and I fully expect that, you know, there'll be free votes. There may be people who vote against what we are proposing to do. But that's okay. it's okay to have those looks now if there's too many that's obviously a problem because you can get it done but uh you know the hope is that we can we can work through and do that and do that in an open way yeah the critics of that kind of approach um have commented like kevin falcon

it said you have people who have wild views and not clamping down on it might have people go well that's a controversial party when it might just be one person having a personal perspective How do you kind of balance that when it does feel like there's a push on you and your party that like, oh, you might have some people with extreme views. How do you kind of balance that and make sure? You know, I find it interesting and the NDP like to use that language a lot. And basically, if their perspective is anybody that doesn't agree with them is an extreme view. So I don't mind that. Okay.

When you look at a government that, you know, has created a crisis in housing and a crisis in affordability, a crisis in health care that, you know, believes that, you know, and we should have free drugs and decriminalization as a way to be able to improve society when it's absolutely destroying lives and families, and they call us, you know, radical. Okay, wait a second here. Let's have a look at the results of what's actually going on. My perspective, though, is it's okay to have different perspectives. It's okay to have people from different walks of life. Like, you look at the Conservative Party today in British Columbia.

We have three indigenous candidates. We've got three black ladies running for us. We have more diversification than I think any party has ever had from right across the whole spectrum. And we've got lots of young people. We've got lots of people with experience. I'm actually really proud of the group that we've put together. And yeah, there's going to be some differing views, and that's okay. Rob Shaw from the Orca wrote that there is an effort to oust you from the BC Conservative ranks.

Can you comment on this? That's Rob Shaw is somewhat misleading in his statement there. We actually did some research in this. And so what's happened is somebody sent out a letter to some of our members talking about, you know, fired John Rustad. And I laughed when I looked at it and I thought, yeah, okay, right. Sir, I'm sure this is coming from members. First of all, it's pretty expensive to send out a mail out to different houses.

So it's not just going to be a random person doing this. So we actually did some digging. We looked into the website. We looked into the background. And what we discovered is a contractor who is doing work for another political party. that is involved in sending this information out. Right. And so we're collecting all that information,

including the breach to our membership list, and we'll be turning that over to the appropriate authorities because that's illegal. Wow. Okay. Do you feel that you are covered fairly in the media? Oh, my. The media should just love me and say everything.

That's great, right? I mean, look, the reality is the media's got a tough job to do, and many of the media, you know, have a biased, and I get that, right, in terms of things. I think, quite frankly, that I've been more than fairly covered, you know, certainly over the last six months, eight months a year in terms of it, and some of the media has turned negative against us now, and that's to be expected.

So I don't have any bone to pick with the media. There was one time where I'd actually call them out, because David E.B. printed an outright lie about our party, saying that we were going to cut spending on health care. I mean, it was just an outright lie. they've come on radio and said that we're going to bring back bridge tolls like where's that from that's just another outright lie by these by the nDP government and there was a media outlet well that's one media outlet in particular that just carte blanche printed it and and use that use that line and i'm like how could you do that that's an outright lie there's no evidence to suggest that all you're doing is supporting a lie from the nDP and so i called them out on it and they weren't happy about me calling them out on it but you know i I'm going to do that. I learned a long time ago, though, that you don't pick a fight with people that buy ink by the gallon, right?

They're going to have their opinion. They're going to say what they're going to say, and that's fine. We're just going to fight. We're going to get our message out. We're going to keep talking about the things that are important. I'm not going to pick a fight with the media. However, when it's something blatant like that that perpetuates a lie, yeah, I'm going to call them out on it. One other interesting aspect that recently happened is you got to speak with Jordan Peterson.

And I'm super impressed that. seems like an honor. I've listened to him. He influenced me starting this show. I think that he's a really good influence for people who want to pull up their bootstraps and get to work and start to make a difference in their community. You can disagree with some of his perspectives, but I think it's important that we hear from voices, and I believe he's a true intellectual. That's a good example. What was that experience like? There's no question. He is one of the top intellectuals in the country. Controversial. He's taken some controversial positions. Some people really dislike him. People really love them.

And anybody that puts themselves out there is going to have that kind of a reaction. Because you can't be, you know, the middle of the road trying to get everybody to like you and do what he's doing. So it was quite unique. I've actually made him twice now. That was the first time, of course, doing an interview with him. And I thought, you know, he's a really interesting individual. I would love to spend some more time actually talking to him about a wide range of things because he's a deep thinker. He loves to challenge you.

And, you know, he's obviously also, you've got a perspective in terms of where society is going as well. So I'm actually really looking forward to that interview coming out. I think it'll be very interesting. People will really enjoy it when they see it. Hopefully that will be out for too long. Yes, I'm very excited for that. Affordability is, of course, a topic constantly in the news. How will you approach housing in this regard?

Affordability and housing obviously are very much tied together. And look, I mean, inflation, for just food, for example, just in the last couple of years, has gone up like 23%. I mean, as your wage has gone up by 23%, no. And so that means that's a direct hit to people's bottom line. And today, close to half the people in this province are just, are literally struggling to put food on the table and make their ends meet. And so affordability is a huge, huge issue. Government is not going to solve the problem by taxing you more. more money. They can't solve the problem by saying, we're going to offer you help by taking

money from you. There was an old, I don't, you're too young to probably remember a fellow named Paul Harvey. Paul Harvey was a broadcaster back in the 80s and 90s, and he had us this segment that he'd call and now the rest of the story. One of the lines he used in there that I thought was quite interesting was government giving you help is like giving yourself a blood transfusion from your right arm to your left arm. Only when government does it, they manage to spill half of it. And so this is the challenge. So what we need to do with government, we actually need to be looking at significant tax reductions and tax relief for people to be able to help with affordability. It's one of the reasons why we want to get rid of the carbon tax.

And I say this line many, many times, which is, you know, David Eby believes very strongly that he can solve the weather problems by taxing you higher. He can stop there being wildfires by taxing you more. He can stop there being floods by taxing you more. And I'm sorry, taxing people into poverty will not change the weather. How do you respond to the fact that you were a part of the BC Liberals that introduced the carbon tax? Well, carbon tax originally was supposed to be revenue neutral. And at the time, I bought into it for that purpose. But also, I looked at it from perspective of if we're going to be going down a road to carbon pricing,

it has the potential to mean significant investments in things like forestry and better forest management. And I thought this could be very beneficial for my riding. Of course, it's now just become a cash cow. It stopped being revenue neutral. Actually, I think it was stopped being never neutral when Kevin Falkin was finance minister. However, you know, I'm going to look back at it, I think, no, that was actually not the right thing to do. It's like anything. Once you introduce a tax, it's almost impossible to get rid of.

And governments are always desperate for money, so they will always be looking at a way to be able to, enhance and use taxes. So at the time, you know, I thought, okay, I can see how I can make this work, but certainly the end result has not turned out the way I hoped it would. And so when something isn't working, bring it to an end, get rid of it. It doesn't make any sense. How do you bring down taxes while managing the budget? An $8 billion deficit?

I mean, look, we've got a government, quite frankly, that has gone on an unbelievable spending spree. Even their own ministers could not explain where they were spending money. because they were just shoveling it out of the back of a truck so fast. I mean, it's that crazy what this government has done. These guys are completely incompetent. But that's to be expected. NDP math is always that way. They can never figure out, you know, exactly how to do things.

They just shovel it out the door and hope for results. So, yeah, there's going to have to be, you know, some significant look at how we address some of that GDP spending. The biggest thing we need to be doing is actually getting our economy going. And so we should talk about, you know, those sort of things in terms of how we do that, because we need to be able to generate revenue, but we can't do that with taxation. We need to be able to do it through economic activity and through growth.

So part of what we need to do, of course, is working towards reducing that deficit, but we also need to be doing significant tax relief. If we can't go to people and say, we're going to continue to tax you into poverty so that we can address that misspending, we're going to have to make some tough decisions, but that has to come from a place of how do we help people with their day-to-day lives, how do we make sure that the person that's struggling put food on the table, we can make their life

just a little bit easier by doing that relief. And another big piece of affordability as well is wages. Wages have to actually go up in this province. Interesting. When David E.B. was on the podcast, one of the questions I had for him was that the government's credit rating has significantly gone down since they've been in power.

And I asked him, how do you respond to this? This is obviously not good. And his response was basically, we're investing in infrastructure. And infrastructure investments are good investments that are going to benefit our community and our province over the long term. So it's worth getting a reduced credit rating score if it means these benefits, these jobs, and these investments into our province into the future. How do you respond to that? Well, I think that's just a pure line of BS and polyspin. Because the reality is it's not just infrastructure spending.

It's massive credit card spending. They are spending a tremendous amount on their operating budget, not just on the account. budget. And that means what the difference there is, most people don't distinguish the difference between it. If I'm building a new hospital, that is an investment in the future, that is a capital investment. If I'm paying for, you know, the largest number of spin doctors in my advertising in my premier's budget, that is operating. That's the credit card. And what he's doing is he's bringing up that bill on the credit card side, spending on all these government services that, quite frankly, are not helping people and are creating huge problems. That's where the biggest

problem is. Yes, of course, we've got to spend on capital, on infrastructure. We need the new hospitals. We need to expand Highway 1, right, in terms of the three-leaning or even four-leaning. There's many things that have to get done, and that means we're going to have to take on some debt. but the key is to get the other spending under control within government and also to look at generating those additional revenues. Like if you're spending money that is going to help generate revenue, generate new revenue, generate resource revenue, generate investment revenue, generate whether it's tech investment, whatever that may be,

that's not a bad thing as long as it's not a subsidy. But if you're spending money, you know, just because, you know, you want to put out lots of spin like this government is doing. Yeah, you know what? I think our tax dollars could be spent better. BC United Leader Kevin Falcon has proposed addressing income tax and doing huge tax cuts. What's your response to that? We do need to do some tax relief.

There's no question in my mind. But when I look at a leader that says, I'm going to cut $5 billion out of income taxes, and I'm going to cut $3 billion out of gas taxes, and I'm going to balance the budget, which is an $8 billion, and I suspect it would. closer to $10 billion by March, you know, target by, and I'm going to do this in four years. So he's going to be cutting $18 billion out of the budget. The budget is $85 billion. That's a 20 to 25% reduction.

85% of the spending on our budget is health care, education, and social programs. So exactly, where is that money going to come from? And so, I mean, he's being completely unrealistic, and I get it, right? I mean, he's a party that's in fourth place. They're trying to figure out how to be relevant. We're going to be making sure that, you know, from our perspective, we're going to have some very targeted tax relief that's going to be very meaningful for people on their affordability and their day-to-day lives. Interesting. Going back to housing, how do we address this crisis?

Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting. David Eby's approach is saying that the private sector has no role in housing. Well, wait a second here. Government does not have the money to deal with housing. I mean, he's completely unrealistic and it's just his socialistic perspective that he thinks government should be running everything. you know and he's an authoritarian boot i mean two generations ago we would have called that a communist but you know most people don't think about that terms anymore but it's it is it's he's a hardcore socialist he wants government to have their fingers in anything and everything that's happening my perspective is we have become so restrictive and so problematic that investors

people that whether it's mom pop that want to build an extra unit or whether it is you know developer that wants to put in you know a thousand units of housing they are not not looking at working in British Columbia. They're looking at leaving British Columbia. Housing starts, for example, in this province, are in decline. They're not increasing, even though we have a massive shortage in terms of housing. So we need to be looking at how do we change that scenario, how do we drive the investment that's needed to create the housing? So there's a number of things we're going to do. First of all, we want to work with communities to look at changing the official community plans so that we do pre-zoning for

densification so that people when they're buying into neighborhood they know what that densification is going to be they know what they're buying into and when when somebody wants to come by and build multiple family units or maybe apartments and rental units that zoning is already in place for it and so you don't have to go through years of rezoning process you can go through a few months to get your permits and move forward as a government we have to come to the table with money for water and sewer those are the two critical things for doing any kind of development and so we're going to make sure that we come to the table and help with that so we need to reduce that permitting time that that structure that's in place we need to come to the

money to come to the table with money for water and sewer we actually need to look at our building code there are many things in our building code that just adding cost to new housing that are not adding value to a house and so we want to make sure that we have good quality livable affordable homes being built not homes that are built based on ideology so there's some changes that are needed there's changes within our government structure as well that need to be looked at including how we make sure bc hydro can be more responsive to being to hookup i mean when you're doing a project you can't be waiting a year and a half for bc hydra to deliver power you've got to be able to have these things happen in a timely way so there's a lot of things that need to be done but i think

the biggest problem is when i go to developers and i say how do we build more housing we need to double housing starts in the problems how do we do that they look at me and say we don't have the people we don't have the people to actually build that many homes and so we need to be looking at immigration as well and so I actually think as a province we need to take control of our own immigration just like Quebec does instead of those decisions being made 3,000 miles away

let's make them here in British Columbia and let's also look at the skill sets that immigrants have coming in let's look at how we pre-qualify those people from their institutions that they get the training from or their experience so when they come in they can start working a rate-of-way the province and let's get people in that we need to fill these positions i mean we need everything from truck drivers to teachers from doctors to carpenters i mean everything in between and so let's

make sure as we're looking at immigration that we're fitting those needs so that we can deal with the fact that we need to be able to bring more people in to build housing in this province to help deal with this critical shortages that we have there's one other component sorry for going on a bit of a Excuse me, a bit of a long rant on this. But a lot of our rental stock in British Columbia was built in the 60s and 70s. And there was a federal program that was in place at the time that helped with the rapid depreciation of capital, which allowed investment, allowed to get back to a profit much faster and really encourage that kind of investment. These are the types of programs we're going to be looking at again so that we can spark that investment in rental housing.

Because at the end of the day, right now we've got like, what, a 0.1% vacancy rate, if that. And when you have more demand than you have supply, that's going to mean significantly higher rents over time. So we need to build out a lot of rental stock so that we can get a balance back in the market. And that'll help to stabilize or maybe even bring down rental prices. Going back just a little bit to your comments about controlling our own immigration and what that process might look like, do you think that that's a controversial position for BC to start to manage its own immigration processes? Of course it is. But it's the right thing to do. That's why I say as the Conservative Party, it's not about being conservative or liberal or NDP or Green for that matter.

It's just doing what's right, fighting for the average everyday person. And that's what we need to be focused on, just to bring back that common sense change to British Columbia so that we are control of our own destiny and our own future. And there's other things we need to be working on a national schedule. scale as well. It's easier for British Columbia to trade with the United States than it is with other provinces. And that's wrong. We have no sense of who we are as a country.

And so actually I want British Columbia to take the lead in creating a Canada-wide free trade agreement. Let's start figuring out how we actually work as a country and how we can actually support each other in trade of goods and open up our borders like we do, quite frankly, with the United States and other jurisdictions. It would help with the cross-border trade or across-the-country trade. and help to actually get a better sense for people that we are this great country because we are the best country in the world.

And so British Columbia, I think, can take a lead in terms of creating that opportunity. I agree with you. On the housing front, I'd like to ask you about BC housing. I am a counselor with my community, Chihuahawatha First Nation. We've applied to the Indigenous Housing Fund through BC Housing, and we're hoping to hear back in September of this year.

And so one of the pieces that I see is a huge benefit for First Nation communities is this massive investment in indigenous housing. It's technically a federal responsibility, but the investments have never really come to fruition. CMHC provides funding, but it's very minimal, and then it's on the mortgagee to try and manage that. And these homes were never built to code.

They're not required to be built to code because they're on reserve. And so the quality when I joined in September 2022 was horrible. Like nobody had ever invested in maintaining these homes, There was never big investments in making sure they were built to any high quality of standard. And there's been a big change with this indigenous housing fund, like looking at some of the images of what we're going to be able to potentially build is going to be beautiful units for our members and it's going to be allowed them to return to their community. But then there's also going to be investments in the operations and maintenance of the units

so that they can actually have a high quality of life over the future. We know the indigenous communities represent a huge population of homeless individuals in British Columbia. And I'm wondering what your thoughts are on the Indigenous Housing Fund and how BCF, BC housing operates. So I'm fully in support of the idea of working with indigenous communities to actually create housing and make sure that that could be done. So it's something that needs to be done. We started doing a little bit of that when I was the minister way back in 2016 in BC. And so yeah, I'd love to see us be able to do that. When it comes to BC housing, though, I've got some real hard questions that need to be answered.

So, for example, there were, we talked about this during question period, during the last question period of the spring session, there were three hotels in Prince George, which were purchased by a couple of individuals, and then flipped to BC housing for massive profits. And one of them, for example, was bought for $700,000, and a year and a half later was sold to BC housing for over $3 million. And then BC Housing had to shut it down to do renovating it. and B.C. Housing was already renting the hotel for housing. What happened there? How did that happen? So I've got some real questions about B.C. housing and how B.C. housing is working in British Columbia, and we're going to be doing some significant investigation into that. But, you know, clearly we need to have that mechanism for being able to drive some investment, whether it's for seniors housing, whether it's for housing on reserve, whether it's other sort of opportunities in British Columbia. But at the end of the day, I also think, you know, like I say, David Eby's a perspective is that government needs to be building housing. Government needs to be doing this.

And I think, you know, government has proven time and time again that's not very efficient about doing things. For example, look at the housing project, I think it's in Kitsilano area, where a tout of this is building these affordable houses. You know, 395 square feet putting on rent for $2,700 a month. That's not affordable. and it's certainly not a family home. So what is actually is BC housing done? Why is that so expensive? Another project that was built up in the interior

turned out to be about $1.1 million per unit. Well, that's not affordable. So clearly there's something going on with BC housing that doesn't make a lot of sense. So we need to make sure that the tax dollars that we are spending on housing is spent the most efficiently as possible to get the best value we can

while solving those issues. And like I say, work with, First Nations makes a lot of sense. Matter of fact, I was actually talking with some hereditary chiefs up in the interior about the idea of returning some land from the province back to the First Nations, using that for some housing, but also putting in some services to deal with people who are addicted or who might want to return to the First Nation to receive treatment in a cultural way and reconnecting with their culture and their families. And so that's a great idea to be able to do things like that. And those are types of things that we want to

do. Having a federal partner would be nice, obviously, and quite frankly, I can tell you as the previous minister for that file, the federal government does not step up to the plate at the same financial level as it does in other provinces. And so we're going to be going after them for additional resources, certainly for those types of projects. There's two prongs to having, I think, a healthy economy. One is reducing taxes so that people have more money in their pockets so they can actually go out and spend and invest and do things in their communities, the other piece is growing the economy. That's usually the best strategy. What are your thoughts on how we encourage entrepreneurship and how we increase businesses in our region? Well, the first thing we have to do

is simply, you know, get stuff done. I like to use a different word, but I'll try not to use that word on television. But we just need to get things done in this province. And what I mean by that is If you go across the border of the United States, it can be three months to build a warehouse. You try to do that here. You're two to three years to do that in British Columbia. You can't afford that kind of timely delays in those kind of bureaucratic processes. So we need to clean that up significantly in British Columbia. We need to get to a place where we're a single project, a single permit.

It's a big piece of how you can get investment in BC and have people have confidence. to be able to spend the dollars here. And all of that, of course, is from one perspective. We need good-paying jobs in this province. So, for example, there are 17 mines in British Columbia that are permitted or about to be permitted. We need the minerals, obviously, you know, if we're going to expand out what we need to do for electrification.

And so 17 new mines, that represents a $38 billion investment. We'll generate between 20 and 30,000 jobs at an average wage and benefit of $138,000 a year. and we'll add close to $800 billion to British Columbia's GDP over the life of those mines. Let's just get these things going. Like enough of the studies and critical mineral strategies and all the rest of this kind of garbage that just basically adds bureaucratic process and cost. Let's just get these projects out the door and happening.

The same goes with our natural gas. We need to be doing more to export natural gas in this province. And I know some people say that's controversial, we shouldn't be doing that. There's a billion people in the world today without electricity. There's probably somewhere between 4 and 600 million people in the world that have just enough electricity to run a refrigerator. That's it. And their governments want a quality of life for their people.

We have the resources. We should be exporting those resources because it's obviously a cleaner fuel than many of the other sources that are being used. And let's take advantage of it and let's reinvest those dollars in providing a quality of life that we want to see for people in British Columbia. So we're going to make significant changes to make sure that there's opportunities for being able to do that in British Columbia as well. Healthcare, we have staff shortages, we have an aging population, and increased cancer rates. What do we do?

You know, this is a massive crisis. And I remember back in 2006, Gordon Campbell said the issue of dementia alone will likely bankrupt the health care system. and I thought about that and I thought okay so what did we do to fix that well we didn't that was the problem we put more spending in we did some adjustments we tried to make sure that we curbed you know spending on it doctor shortages for example where's the root of the doctor shortages well that actually comes back from the 1990s when the indip government decided their way to curb health spending was to reduce the number of doctors that we had and so a lot of the younger doctors that we had and so a lot of the younger doctors left the system, which then meant as the doctors that we had started aging out, we didn't

have that next generation of doctors in place. So that drove the doctor shortage that we have today. Nursing shortage, that was a decision that was made in 2012. When we reallocated our resources in universities to focus on the immediate needs we had, we reduced the number of nurses that were being trained. Well, now we have a shortage in nurses. So these unintended consequences for what at the time seemed like good policy, but have created the problems that we have today.

And so there's a whole bunch of things that need to be done. But I think the most important piece is to recognize that the system we have is failing and that it is in a crisis and we need to change the model. You can't solve the problem just spending more and expecting a different result. We actually have to look at models around the world that are much more successful than us. We are the second highest per capita spending on health care, yet we are some of the lowest outcomes in many of the measures on health care. And so let's look at the models that are successful.

The models, for example, in Europe, whether it's in the Scandinavian countries or even Australia, Switzerland, these types of models are universal health care like we have today. They're single payer, government pays for everything, but they buy services from both government and non-government agencies. And by doing that, you shift the system from funding the system to funding pay. And so the government then purchased services based on the needs for patients, whether it's from government or non-governed agencies. You put in place guarantees in terms of wait time, particularly for things like cancer, so that if we cannot deliver those services in BC, and we should do everything we can to make sure we can't redo that.

But if we can't be able to deliver those services, then we'll purchase that space that's needed, whether it's in another province or even in another country, to make sure that we're meeting the needs of patients. We're putting patients at the center of health care. And so it's a shift in terms of how we do things, but it allows us to better utilize professionals. It allows us to better have a better balance. It allows us to make sure the system is very responsive to the patient as opposed to the system itself.

Two other quick things. I'll just mention on that. Government actually argued in court. They essentially argued that the system was more important than patient suffering. And that to me is completely wrong. the whole health care system should be focused on patients and dealing with that. Today we have almost as many people dying,

waiting on a, or on a waiting list for diagnostic services and surgery as we do that are dying from the opioid crisis. And yet nobody's even talking about that. And to me, that's completely unacceptable. It is the symptom of a system that has failed. What case is that? Or like where were they arguing that? That was a case that the province that was in September, I think August, September of 2022 in court.

That's what the province had essentially argued. The worst part about it is the judge agreed with the province. Anyway, that's something we need to fix and change, of course. But, you know, if you've got a surgeon that is more incapable of doing 20, 30, or maybe 40 hours of surgery a week, and the system's only giving them eight hours a week, that's it. And so you look at that and you think, wait a second, how is it that that is what the system is? And so this doctor will go in, and I'm talking particularly about somebody who was the top vascular surgeon in BC working out of Vancouver generally since retired. He would go in to start a shift for 8 o'clock in the morning.

There would often be delays, sometimes as late as 9 or even 9.30. He would be working through a schedule of the course of the day, and at 1.30 in the afternoon, an administrator would come in and say, you're going to be done by 4, right? that's all the time you have available you have to be done by four and so he would then wrap up the surgery he was working on and look at the next surgery and say now if there are any complications can I get this done by four

and if the answer is no that was the end of his day because it's all about the system not the patient so these are the types of things that have to change within our healthcare and there's other components as well as part of this for example Germany has twice the population of Canada

yet Canada has 10 times as many administrators as Germany. Close to 40% of our nurses today are administrators. There's just so much bureaucracy that's being built up in our healthcare system. We need to clean that up so that we can be far more efficient and, once again, focused on making sure that we deliver for patients. Can you talk about your plan for guaranteed wait times? Sure.

Well, the guaranteed wait times, as I mentioned, the key is having the money following the patient, purchasing the services where needed to be able to make sure that we can meet those wait times that are recommended, particularly for critical things like cancer. You know, I had a couple people now that have talked to me about their cancer experience. And, you know, one, a person who had very aggressive cancer, needed surgery immediately, was told they'd have to wait two months, which is unacceptable. You've got another situation where, you know, somebody was diagnosed with cancer,

and the process just kept getting delayed, going through. The cancer kept growing and expanding and got to the place where they said, oh, I'm sorry now, it's terminal, there's nothing we can do for you. That's just tragic. Like, that should never be happening in our system. And when I talk to families about that,

I just, you know, when you're in government, how do you apologize to them for a system that has failed them? And it's not the doctor's fault. It's not the nurse's fault. It's not the health care professional's fault. It's the system that is failing them, and that's why the system needs to change. Would you fire Bonnie Henry? Yes.

Well, sorry, I don't know if we need to fire her, but we would terminate her contract in whatever form that would be. I look at, like, Bonnie Henry did the best you could during COVID. When you look back at it, you can really question a lot of decisions she made. It could seem to be driven more by ideology than it did by science. But I'm not a doctor. I'm not a scientist. I just, you know, I can't question that myself. When you compare the results compared to some other jurisdictions,

okay, maybe our results weren't as good as what we're led to believe. But I looked at it particularly from the perspective of not hiring back our healthcare workers. Every other jurisdiction in North America hired back our health care workers. As far as I know, every other jurisdiction in the world, and yet we didn't. And I asked Bonnie Henry why we weren't doing it. And what she essentially told me was if health care workers are not prepared to, take a vaccine, then they should probably be thinking about working in a different field. In other words, it was ideologically driven. It was not driven based on health. It was not

driven based on risks. Every other jurisdiction did this. We didn't. To me, that's somebody who's actually causing harm to our system. And that should be the first order of a doctor. You know, do no harm. That there's harm being done to our system. And I still look, I also look Dr. Boni Henry, who went out to Ottawa and made the argument on behalf of David E.B. and his government that we should be expanding safe supply, that safe supply should be available, you know, in stores, that we should be doubling down on decriminalization. I mean, these have been utter failures in our society. Experts are telling me we have the highest level of addicts per capita anywhere in North America.

And it's a particularly acute, of course, with indigenous populations. And I look at that and I think this is not the direction we should be going and if this is what she believes we should be doing then I think she needs to find work elsewhere. What would you do differently to address the drug crisis? Well, first thing we do is end decriminalization and safe supply. It has been an utter failure.

Decriminalization, you know, so if you have a bunch of cars that are coming and going from a house and the police suspect that house is a drug dealer, decriminalization means the police can't stop one of those cars and seize the drugs and use the drugs, and use it as evidence because it's decriminalized. Decriminalization means that if you have somebody who is in your doorstep smoking a crack, the police can't do anything about it because it is decriminalized.

I can't walk down the street drinking a beer, but I can walk down the street smoking a crack pipe. That's not right. And so we have taken the tools away from police to be able to first crack down on the drug dealers, but also to be able to have a civil society because it's decriminalized if you go to hospital

and the person that's sharing a room with you pulls out a fentanyl pipe and starts smoking fentanyl there's nothing they can do because it's decriminalized but that's ended now right? No it hasn't the TBDB has tried to end it

it's still got to deal with it on the federal side but this is the problem right in terms of it there wasn't this recognition that that was a problem to begin with. So that needs to come to an end. And safe supply, you get people that go in and get these drugs, they take it out and they give it to a dealer to get the harder drugs that they want. Well, the dealer then takes those drugs and they find other markets for it,

and they're finding their way into our schools. They're creating the next generation of addicts. They're even being sold outside of our borders. So these things have been utter failures. But what the key is, we need to get a focus on treatment and recovery to be able to get people back, you know, on some path to be able to have, you know, be able to be productive in a society and be able to live a better quality of life. So we have to have everything from doctor-prescribed treatment to short-term treatment and recovery to long-term recovery because there are some people that, you know, getting off the addiction can be relatively easy, but you also have to help them with the life skills, get them out of the circle that they're in,

get them an opportunity to be able to move on into a different type of life. We actually also need to be looking, quite frankly, at mandatory treatment. If you have somebody who, for example, is OD'd and is brought back to life, clearly they are at they are from a mental health perspective not capable of making a decision that's in their best interest so from that perspective i think we should be able to put them into treatment and try to give them some sort of quality of life and i actually think we also need to look at long-term care and what i mean by that is doctors are telling me the drugs on the streets today within two to three years can cause permanent brain damage there are people today who will never be able to recover and i don't i think it's inhumane to say that we should allow them to live on streets, that we should allow them to live in the filth and squalor that is what's going on in many streets across the province, in many communities. I actually think we should be looking at it from respect of, let's be humane, let's do everything we can to provide them with at least some quality of life.

How do you manage that? There's a few pieces I'm thinking of, one is First Nations people who have experienced mandatory processes previously, but then also say you do this, say we start to allow people to go into treatment centers and require them to do so or force them to in some ways in prisons and stuff like that. And then you start to hear rumblings that some people do not want this or they're not being treated well or respectfully. And the inhumane issue arises again. Yes. How do you process when you've got, because from speaking to Julian Summers who does a lot of research, he's a clinical psychologist, he talked about how the

BC NDP from his perspective committed the money. They had the plan. And then he came forward and said, well, you've got some problems here. Safe supply hasn't been proven to be very effective. This is an issue. And they took away his work. They took away his research and they said, we're not talking about that anymore. We've got the plan. We're going to move forward.

We're moving in this direction. Come hell or high water. Don't bother with your issues or your concerns are wanting to do research on whether or not our plan works. We're going full speed ahead. How do you make sure this doesn't get away from you and people start to pay the consequence because these are incredibly vulnerable individuals who might not be able to argue for themselves? And you're absolutely right. That's why if we're going to do mandatory treatment, it is going to be very rare because it's only those situations that I just described.

And for example, the other situation I would look at for mandatory care is as a parent, if your child is addicted, let's say you've got an 11-year-old girl and she's fighting with an addiction and she doesn't want to go into treatment. As a parent, you're going to do everything you can to try to help your child to be able to have a quality of life. And so I think as a parent, you should be able to send your child into care. I was talking with some people in those one family, a 14-year-old and 11-year-old kid, both of them addicted, both of them, you know, in serious trouble with their lives. They took out a second mortgage and spent $20,000 per child to send them south of the border into treatment.

And the good news is they're back, they're clean, the first one's off now into university, the second one is graduating from high school, and they're clean and they're going about their lives. And as a parent, wouldn't you want to do that, for your child, but you can't do that in British Columbia. And so I think we need to be able to have that kind of an opportunity. But we're not talking about mandatory treatment for everybody.

Obviously, you know, that doesn't work. But where you have those unique situations, you know, I think we need to be able to have some of that option available. But you're right, we have to be, we have to safeguard against it. We can't be used it as an excuse to basically incarcerate or to institutionalize people who are fighting addiction. We need to be able to give them different paths. And everybody's individual, everybody's different.

Their story, the reason they became addicted, the reason they have these challenges all come from a different place. And so we need to be able to customize how we treat people based on who they are and where they are. I think places like, for example, safe injection sites, and we should actually try to turn those into recovery intake sites. We should find a way to be able to connect people to services. There's a housing project in Victoria that was, you know, to house people who were addicted, you know, people that were very difficult to home house.

And they built a special room for smoking fentanyl and another room for smoking crack and another room for doing other drugs. And these people would then come out into the common area and they'd still be smoking. And the staff there thought, well, this is endangering me. I don't want to be exposed to this. So they went to work safe. And work safe solution is, well, because it's decriminalized, you'll have to wear a gas mask. We can't stop them from doing this.

And so the same people that are in this facility, one of the ladies put up a sign on the wall that said, you know, look, if you'd like to explore treatment, here's how we can connect your treatment, here's some numbers. One of the ministry staff came and took it down and said you're not allowed to do that because that might offend somebody. And the person that put it up was suspended for a day.

We need to be doing everything we can to connect people to recovery, not just give people more drugs and keep them high. And the real tragic story is, I've heard one story of an individual who, you know, came to the conclusion, look, I need help. I need to get into recovery. And the answer was, well, we'll have space for you in six months. That's unacceptable. And that's what we have created under David Eby and there's a process that they've done in this province.

As you described, you were the Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation. It's been said that you are pledging to repeal BC's law upholding the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Could you explain that? Sure. So the DRIPA legislation, which is the Declaration of Rights of Indigenous People legislation, it's helping to create, I guess you could call it, reconciliation from a government to a government. But what it is doing is it's creating tremendous amounts of friction from a people to a people. And reconciliation needs to be between people, not just between governments.

And so DRIPA has actually got in the way. And so I'll give you some examples. When we had the big wildfires that went through the merit area, there's millions of cubic meters of wood that has been damaged or destroyed. That wood needs to be harvested. It needs to be replanted. there needs, sites need to be rehabilitated, yet they can't get permits because the First Nations are arguing back and forth about whose wood it is and how that should work. And so instead of doing the right thing, DRIPA has created actually barriers for doing the right thing.

And then you've got people now they're unemployed and the people are saying, oh my God, how come we can't get this wood? It's their fault. That's not right. That is now creating friction. And we should never be in a situation where we're doing that as a society. At the same time, over in Alberta, they have the wildfires. Three weeks later, they're getting permits, they're going in, they're harvesting, they're getting it planted, they're doing the rehabilitation work.

This is the problem that's being created. And so I don't want to create that friction in our society. So I will repeal DRIPA. We'll keep using the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People as a guiding principle for how we work with First Nations, but it's not going to be locked in in terms of legislation. And what I want to move towards is what I want to move towards is what I'm I call economic reconciliation with First Nations. I want to look at how we return land to

First Nations strategically to create economic opportunities, to get First Nations engaged in building out their future so we can move First Nations from managing poverty to managing prosperity, but not by taking from one people to give to another, but by adding to our economy, adding to the opportunities so that both indigenous and non-Indigenous can prosper together. That's the only way we can bring about true reconciliation. And I think, you know, particularly about the words of Dr. Joseph Gosnell, who since passed, and he was the chief architect of the Nishka Treaty, the first modern-day treaty in BC. And he said it's long past time that, you know, First Nations not only catch up, but if possible,

surpass economically, because First Nations being held back for so long. And I think about that, and I think that is what government should be trying to do. Everywhere where we have done this in BC, we have seen suicide rates. drop. We've seen violence drop. We've seen drug use drop. We've seen First Nations enter and you'll go into a much healthier environment and much more successful for their people in terms of people getting jobs, people buying homes, people being able to look after their kids. So that is where I want to be focused on is creating that success for the people on the ground. Is there any way going back to the DRIPA legislation that you could just remove the pieces that could have led to that specific

issue, but uphold the law as a whole? Not really, because the way it's written and the expectations that are in there, I think, are just going to, or would be too hard to try to tinker with. And so that's why I look at, and I think if something is not working, if it's creating problems, then we just need to say that didn't work. Let's remove it and let's go in a direction that can create, you know, true opportunity and prosperity, I think, for indigenous and non-Indigenous alike. Okay. I'm super pro economic development, particularly for my community. I know that it's a way that we protect ourselves from different government interests and the goals of a new government changes and then the funding starts to dry up on this and we have to go over here to try and find how we utilize it. So I do agree with the sentiment. The challenge I think I see with that approach is First Nation communities and many people don't know this. So many of the loudest critics of DRIPO or other legislation are frustrated and also don't understand.

understand what's going on because First Nations are like a municipality in that we have to manage our community members and offer social services that are often applied through through grants and we have to go through that process but we're responsible for education housing so many other social services for our members and so that there needs to be some form of funding still flowing through because if we pull from economic development and then try and dedicate it back to these basic social services, while municipalities already get many of those social services funded, whether it's through their tax

base, which First Nations often can't get access to, particularly rural ones. And so I'm just curious as to how we make sure we balance that in a way that First Nations, if they don't have good economic opportunities, if they are in the middle of nowhere, they might not have the same opportunities and so they may be disadvantaged just purely

based on their relocation, which is what we've kind of seen over the past 50 years. And so I look at it this way, and I get that. I mean, there obviously needs to be the core funding that's in support of first nations. I don't, that doesn't, that should not change in terms of working with first nations. But I also look at it from perspective of each nation has different opportunities and advantages. Some may be, for example, Heisla, which would happen to be perfectly located,

to look for associated with LNG. And, however, there's other nations that might have opportunities, whether it's mining. Some will have opportunities with forestry. But those are all resource-based. You've got obviously lots of nations like your nation, which are down here in the valley. some may be able to be involved in ag culture some may be involved in land development some may be involved industrial development and so that's why i mean when you look at returning land to first nations as part of how you deal with title because that's an important piece that we need to deal with which we can't

ignore our you know our canadian constitution so those are the opportunities that we need to look at in terms of working with the nation saying what are those opportunities what can we help create by working with First Nations to help realize the vision that they would like to have for their nation and their people. And for some, some that might be tourism, there are a wide range of things that could be done. And you're right, for some, maybe they don't have any of those opportunities. And so the question becomes, okay, what about energy generation? What about other types of potential? And maybe it gets down to maybe we just have to create a fund that gives them opportunity to be able to invest in businesses and build out those opportunities.

as well. So there's a wide range of things that we can look at. It's not just going to be locked into one type of thing. And it's, and, you know, for example, a hector of land on the southern tip of Vancouver Island might create enormous economic opportunities. But you might look at a band, for example, like Pakla, which is way up in the middle of northern BC, that you might look at and say, maybe it's going to have to be a very large area that gets involved in to generate, you know, economic opportunity, or maybe there's some other types of thing that you need to explore. And so we need to be able to be flexible in terms of how we do that, but the principle still remains one that I think should be, we should strive to try to achieve.

And there's a few examples, right? The Declaration Act funding, and then there's like the BC Gaming Funds that I'm able to access, and then it gives me the freedom to go look for what opportunities I think the nation needs, rather than chasing kind of grants, which I think is important. You're from Prince George. I'm just wondering your thoughts on the highway of tier. So when I was minister for Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, I actually put together a gathering of family of missing and murdered indigenous women. And it was a large gathering. It was a two-day gathering in Prince George.

And I spent the entire time talking to the family members. One after one, they all came in. They told me the stories. They told me what led to their daughter or sister or brother who went missing. and it was very moving in terms of it. There's so much work that needs to be done. A biggest part of it is there's often a lot of challenges with on reserve, as you're probably aware of. And the problem is nobody's willing to speak up. And so when it gets, you know, when these things happen in silence,

it allows it to just perpetuate and grow. It's one of the reasons why I wear the moose hide pins. much is because we need to find a way to support and honor women and girls. We need to find a way for men to help, you know, talk to one another about honoring and supporting and ending violence against women and girls. And that is not something that can come down as the province and say, this is how we're going to solve it. And it's not something you can have with the police, but it's a conversation that we need

to be able to support at the community level. So we actually, coming out of that gathering, what we did in Prince George, we actually started a process, working on a process, to support communities, both local as well as regional, to have these conversations in the community, to try to bring about an opportunity for healing and to get this out in the open and make it okay to talk about. Make it okay for it to bring it out because that's the only way we can bring these problems to an end. And so we started that work and unfortunately when the NDP came in, they moved on. They decided not to pursue it. So it's too bad, but that's certainly one of the things that I look at. And so, I mean, obviously,

that's connected with the highway of tears and what's going on through there. So there's lots of work that needs to be done, you know, at multiple levels. But I think the key there is we need to find ways to be able to support the indigenous communities to be able to address some of the internal issues. We need to be there to work with them. And particularly, we need to listen to those families and those stories because it's very, very powerful. three more very brief questions one give you a brief answers if i can sorry no worries uh Shannon waters from the narwhal reports that you would walk away from the province's commitment to protect 30% of its land base by 2030 is this true true perfect short answer okay i mean sorry i'll i'll expand on

that so the goal from this is that this is part of this 2030 agenda from the from the world economic forum and and that side of things uh i just think it's ridiculous I mean, we have more area protected in British Columbia than any other jurisdiction in Canada, if not the world, already. But 30% is not just the mountain tops and swamps and lakes. 30% what they're talking about is they want 30% of every ecosystem. So that's 30% of our farmland. That's 30% of our range land.

That's 30% of our forest land. That's 30% of everything that we have as a province. And so you look at it and I think, as a province, we're already only producing or only procuring 34% of the food we consume from British Columbia. We should be doing everything we can to double food production, not reduce it, not create more restrictions and problems. How do you still protect biodiversity, though?

So biodiversity is interesting. So, for example, a lot of biodiversity is talked about in terms of our forest landscape. There's obviously much other biodiversity associated with the other landscapes that we have as well. But we have about 60 million hectares of forested landscape, of which two-thirds, is already protected. Two-thirds is already will never see industrial forest activity. So that's a huge piece already that is helping with biodiversity. With the rest of our forest landscape, what we need to do is we need to say, look, the force products we produce are necessary. They are the most environmentally sensed, or environmentally...

Consciously done? Well, the most environmentally valued products that we could ever think about having, right? These products are right. They're good for the environment. They're good for us as a society as opposed to using anything else. So how do we make sure we do that sustainably? And I think, you know, we have been doing that well in most areas. There has been some problems, obviously, with it.

So we need to have an area that, you know, is dedicated towards making sure that we have forest values, both values available. But then we also have to have an area that is dedicated toward meeting some of those biodiversity values that are not already captured as part of our protected areas or the area. that we'll never see industrial activity. And then forest values might be a secondary value that can come out of that. So it's an approach that we're going to take in terms of how we work on our forest, a, create some stability, but B, make sure that we're trying to meet things like biodiversity.

But this idea of protecting 30%, like I say, it's an agenda that comes from outside our borders. It makes no sense for British Columbia, and I'm not interested in following somebody else's agenda. I want to do what's right for people in British Columbia. Do you believe in man-made climate change? There's no question our climate is changing. Absolutely no question whatsoever. I get accused all the time of being climate. Now, look, climate is changing.

And man is contributing to that change. There's no question. The issue is, what do you do about it? And taxing people in poverty is not the answer. My perspective is that we need to be able to adapt. And that's part of what I talk about with agriculture. It's why we actually have to expand how we manage our water as well. Investing in water and storage.

in research and the relationship between aquifers and surface and subsurface water, there's so much that needs to be done on those fronts, as well as making sure our infrastructure is more resilient to our changing climate and what could happen. So that's the approach that I believe we should be taken in British Columbia. You've been involved in government for many years. Do you have any regrets, things you would have done differently had you known what you know now that just stands out? I do feel like the challenge with politics is so often, like you're not able to own your mistakes or you're not able to kind of adjust and look back in a different way. Do you have any

regrets? The interesting thing is there are things I have been involved in that have gone forward because I was part of government, but there was nothing I could do to change it because that's the way the government process works, right? So for example, when we brought in the Clean Energy Act, I think it was 2008, there was a section in there that banned the use of nuclear power in British Columbia. I thought that was very short-sighted. That's something. quite frankly, that we need to have a conversation about where is our future power going to come from? We need to be able to have an open and honest

conversation with people in the province. And so, you know, I look at it and I think, you know, so those are mistakes, but, you know, it is what was done at the time, it was what was needed to be done at the time. Like I talked about the carbon tax earlier, I think that was a mistake. I get the reason and the rationale for it, but clearly the damage that has

been done since then. Like, for example, by 2030, if the carbon tax carries on the way David E.B. wants it to, the average family of four will have paid close to $27,000 in carbon tax. Like, how is that affordable? That's just not affordable, right? We can't be taxing people into poverty to, you know, try to change the weather. So I look at those sort of things.

I mean, there's many other things, too, I look at, you know, stuff that's gone on in education and other things where, in hindsight, you know, training for nurses, you know, in hindsight, obviously they haven't turned out well, so it would be great if you could wind back the clock. But it's not so much about, you know, I often say, people say, the pendulum swung too far in one direction, we have to swing it back. People forget that you're also moving forward in time. So it's not an issue of bringing it back, because you'll never bring it back to what was. It's an issue of mapping out where you're going to take it to in the future,

because it goes back and forth, but it also goes forward in time. That's a good point. And that is what we need to be trying to do. So I'm not worried about, you know, what has gone on so much in the past. I'm worried about making sure that we do everything we can to build that future for people in British Columbia. How can people follow you and the BC Conservative Party? Well, conservative BC.ca is our website. Obviously, we're very active on Twitter and other social media. So people can sign up there. They can sign up to become a member, obviously, if they want,

or they can sign up to receive emails, that side of things. And obviously, you know, we're less than 60 days, or what is it, 57 days out to the election. So there will be lots of information and stuff that'll be going out to the public as we enter into this final phase of, you know, this election year that we're in. It's going to be a fascinating time. You know, I'll just maybe close with saying one thing about the Conservative Party. We're actually the oldest party in British Columbia's history. It was founded in 1903, and we governed for many years, but we haven't formed a government since 1927, and we haven't elected anybody since the 1970s.

So this is a party that's been in the wilderness for a very long time. But I think, you know, people are looking for that change. They're looking and saying we can't solve the problems of today with the same level of thinking that created them. They're looking for change, and that's what we are offering for people in British Columbia. It has been a pleasure speaking with you today. I, again, appreciate you for coming out. I thought this was a very thoughtful conversation. I wish you the best of luck in the upcoming election, but please continue to take care of yourself because I know it's a long road.

Thank you very much. Actually, I do need to take a little downtime. It has been quite a road. But as the old saying goes about politics, you know, you don't lose elections. out of time. And so we're putting in every effort we can to make sure we connect with people around the province so that they know who we are and what we stand for. Well, I think processes like this ensure the democratic process continues because we're able to get to know you a little bit better. So I appreciate you for that. Thank you. I'm a huge fan, by the way, of direct

democracy. And we need to be doing some more of that. One of the, I've closed with one more thing, of course. You know, there's huge things we need to do to help get the deficit down and try to get back towards a balanced budget. And that's going to take years, unfortunately, as a we grow at the economy. But one of the pieces I actually want to put in is to a piece of legislation that says there can be no increased taxes or new taxes except being done by referendum. Let's put the power back into the hands of people. That's something Alberta has, correct?

I don't think they have. Oh, actually, come to think of it. So I actually moved that forward as a motion last winter in the legislature. and then Alberta actually adopted it as part of their election platform after we had introduced it in B.C. So, yeah. Very admirable. Thank you again for making the time. I wish you the best of luck as you proceed. Thank you.

Thanks very much for having me on. Today's episode is made possible in part by support from Enbridge, fueling quality of life in British Columbia for over 65 years. Thank you. I don't know. Thank you.