The Ben Mulroney Show - From Interim Leader to Premier Hopeful: Lorne Doerkson Shares His Vision for B.C.

Episode Date: October 16, 2026

On today's episode of "The Ben Mulroney Show," Ben welcomes Lorne Doerksen, who hopes to become B.C.'s next premier. Lorne has served as the interim leader of the Conservative Party of British Columbia and leader of the Opposition since 2026. He has represented the electoral district of Cariboo-Chilcotin since 2020.    https://x.com/LDoerkson https://x.com/Conservative_BC If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠   Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Standard messaging and data rates may apply. Put yourself in the following scenario. You are a member of a political party, which is going through turmoil. And the leader steps down. You offer yourself up as a common, steady hand on the rudder until the party can sort itself out and find someone to lead the party into the next election. And then the premier of your province decides two days later, no, that election's happening now. You then find yourself not just the interim leader, but the guy

who's going to do the leading. And you have led the party thus far in a fairly impressive election campaign within a breath of becoming the premier of that province. Doesn't happen and every day. So I absolutely want to speak with the man I'm talking about. Please welcome to the show, the leader of the BC Conservative Party, Lauren Dirkson. Lauren, thank you so much for joining us here on the Ben Mulroney show. Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. Glad to be here, Ben. And yes, your definition is pretty close to the absolute facts of what has happened over the last little while. I want the listeners of the show to get to know you because I'm looking at the polls. And, I mean, it's a double-edged sword.

There are still a great many British Columbians who are trying to make sense of this, this new formulation of the BC Conservative Party under Lauren Dirkson, but also who Lauren Dirkson is. And that's, there are advantages to that. There's room to grow. But there's also, you know, some people fear what they don't know. So let's spend a couple of minutes getting to know Lauren Dersen. Who was he before he became the interim leader of the British Columbia Conservatives?

Well, he was a very dedicated MLA and certainly a family kind of guy. You know, my focus has always been to serve my communities and I've enjoyed doing that. Certainly I've enjoyed it for the last six years or so. I sat obviously in a number of roles in our past caucus, the caucus chair, deputy whip, but certainly some of my more proud moments were sitting as assistant deputy speaker of the legislature. So it's been an opportunity to kind of work across both sides of the legislature. and that's kind of a quick background on myself. Take me through those very important 48 hours when you're named the interim leader until

the moment that the writ dropped. And you were, I don't know what, we'll talk about what happened after, after, but what about those two days? Yeah. So, I mean, obviously there was some conversation. I had anticipated my colleagues nominating me for this role, which they have in the past. And frankly, in the past, it wasn't a good time. We were in the middle of the session.

I was sitting as the assistant deputy speaker. So it just didn't feel like the right time to sort of, you know, pull from that spot. And it would have created a bit of a challenge inside the legislature itself. So this time was different. Obviously, you know, we had seen obviously the leader stepped down and without a lot of notice. and that sort of last 12 to 24 hours really was just a conversation of people asking if I would allow my name to stand. And in that particular moment, I agreed on the way back from a trip to South Africa. And as an outside observer, the only explanation that I can offer up to explain sort of the BC Conservatives before Lauren Dirkson and the BC Conservatives since,

the writ dropped, explaining away how at one point it looked like a party in shambles with rats leaving a sinking ship. I apologize for the crass imagery, but that's what it looked like, to a well-oiled, well-seasoned, well-disciplined political machine. And it feels like it happened overnight. That leadership starts at the top. So what did you say to the troops that got them to fall in line and start behaving in a way that increasing numbers of British Columbians are saying, yeah, we would trust these guys with the keys to the legislature. Yeah, when I landed in Vancouver, I was leader of the party. And that was a bit of a surprise to myself as well, Ben.

But the reality was that I knew that the task at hand really was bringing everybody back together and unifying that had to be the first steps. that took a few days, but frankly, the team that's built here is amazing, and everybody is really focused on the one thing, and that one thing, of course, is changing government in British Columbia. The SNAP election, of course, did not help because we were starting kind of at ground zero, as you might expect, and so it was great to get the MLAs back, but, you know, there was obviously a challenge of finding 45 or 50 candidates, you know, to join us in our, our, steps forward. And of course, just building the team that is here now. And trust me, when I say

this, they're just an amazing group of people and very focused. But that all happened virtually overnight. It literally was four or five days. Your first promise on the campaign was no new taxes, full stop. Why did you start there? Well, because British Columbians are taxed unbelievably in this province. We've seen, you know, 40 new taxes. taxes during David E.B.'s time here. But more importantly, I mean, recently, there was a PSTA expansion to things like wolf or, you know, people that might be, you know, knitting and doing that type of thing, but also to services like security, which frankly, a lot of businesses right now are having to, you know, pay for directly to protect themselves from street disorder

that is out of hand because of the government. And so things like that, things like accounting, You know, it just seems to me that the entire plan, of course, in British Columbia under David Eby, is to tax the residents. And that's not a solution to our problems, which are pretty real. So not only did you promise no new taxes, but you've also committed to a significant decrease in the income tax, which I think would amount to about $1,000 per British Columbian. If I look to an antecedent in Alberta where they did something similar, it absolutely did leave a hole in the public finances. Now, they say the Alberta advantage takes care of that. And you were hammered on that last night in the debate.

Explain to me sort of your long-term reasoning for reducing that income tax, knowing that it's not going to help your ability to pay down. some pretty big bills. Yeah, of course. And the focus here, of course, is to try to get our economy supercharged and get it kickstarted because, you know, we've got an economy that's in peril in British Columbia.

We've got a faltering forest industry that should not be. We've got opportunities in LNG, but we need to get things going. And so as much as that's, you know, an expense on the ledger, there's also a goodly amount of GDP that will be obviously created

by dropping two, two and a half billion dollars into our economy. And what I'm really looking for is that sort of kickstart. And that can happen as early as the second quarter of next year if British Columbians, you know, place their faith in us. So that's certainly one thing. But, you know, ultimately, British Columbians are looking for some relief. I mean, I'm certain that that's their biggest focus right now. And so I can appreciate that there is some cost to doing that.

but this is an amazing opportunity to, you know, get a little bit of a kickstart on our economy. But we want to focus, Ben, very much so on getting industrial sectors going in this province. You know, we've offered a bit of a break as well, a temporary one, of course, pushing back on some new threats from south of the border, of course, with respect to our beer, wine and spirits industry, which is a $3.6 billion industry in this province. You know, there's an opportunity to have, you know, BC-made products, you know, that might grow another revenue stream, but also LNG, and other types of industry that we can certainly contemplate in British Columbia. So I really see all of our focus going into doing exactly that. And these are industries that should be generating billions of dollars for this province, and currently they're not. There is an old adage in politics that when you're the frontrunner, don't give your opponents anything to.

punch at. And that works up until a point. So right now you haven't presented a fully costed platform. And that's a good idea up until people start asking, why not? And I think we're probably getting to that point soon. And so we're going to take a quick break. But when we come back more with the leader of the BC Conservatives, Lauren Dirkson. And I'm going to ask him a few, I think, honest but hard questions about where the money is going to go if he is lucky enough to become the leader of the party. So thank you very much. Don't go anywhere. This is the Ben Mulroney show. I want to apologize to Lauren Dirkson's team because they gave me 10 minutes with him, but I was so excited to talk to him that in my head, I planned for two segments. And Lauren was generous enough to say he was going to stick around. And so if his team is listening, thank you very much. Lauren, I don't want to waste any of your time. And I really do appreciate you helping me out here because I would have had egg on my face.

left right and center, everyone around the country can agree that that health care is in a bad place and needs some fixing. And you have promised that you're not going to touch the health care budget.

It's sitting around 30 billion a year north of that, in fact. And you said that in your own riding, you've got an ER that's been closed 39 times this year alone. You promised a $50 million emergency fund. So that's about two days of the BC's health budget. What changes with a 50

million dollar injection of funds. Well, certainly it gives us an opportunity to bolster some support, bringing in support from outside of those communities like mine in 100 Mile House, and it gives an opportunity to do that. But Ben, what's really important to note here is that there's an opportunity to work within this budget. I mean, think about the Massey Tunnel project. I don't know if you're familiar with that here, but, you know, we're talking about

something that should have been a bridge, you know, probably three, four years ago, completed, done for a third the cost. Now we're seeing, you know, obviously information that wasn't shared with British Columbiaans of budget time, that that potentially is now as much as eight and a half or nine billion dollars. And we've heard rumors that it might be higher. Look, there is a very serious mismanagement problem in this province with respect to red tape, bureaucracy, craziness, just so much expenditures. We want to bolster our front lines. We want to support our frontline workers of course, we want to provide security for nurses so that they feel safe at work. And there's a reason to do that because we're looking all over the world for nurses and doctors.

And there are nurses currently sitting five blocks away from the hospital that won't work there because they don't feel safe in their workplace, right? So there are things that can be done simply within the budget constraints that we have there. And I can't say this enough. You know, we've got a forest industry that was generating, you know, certainly twice or three times what it was over the past years. It's been, you know, obviously reduced to a point now where we make almost as much selling cigarettes at gas stations, you know, compared to our forest industry.

It's shocking to me the situation that's developed in this province. So I think that there is definitely an opportunity to work within the confines of what we've got there now. We've said that we will fully fund healthcare. Of course, we're committed to doing that. and it will be a priority for Dirksen government going forth. Real quick, when can the voters of British Columbia expect a fully costed BC conservative platform? I'm going to say that within, I am trying to get that ready to go before we go to advance polls,

which is, of course, on Saturday. So we're working on that now. We're close. But the other thing to be very clear on, Ben, I don't want to introduce anything in this budget that I can't do. We've seen that from, you know, past budgets from David Eby. And it's frustrating to think that we had things that have been offered and never did materialize. And frankly, you know, I'm not going to take any budgeting guidelines from David Eby. The reality is he started with a $7 billion budget.

It's now $14 billion. And he pulled out things like, you know, food supports and all those types of things that he had budgeted to do and then never completed it. So might as well tack on top of that $14 billion budget, all the promises that he never kept. I want to make these promises and I intend to keep them. Let's talk public safety. I mean, it's a problem around the country. And, you know, there's certain indicators that suggest that our streets, whether they be in Vancouver or Toronto, are safer. But the metrics and the feelings that people have are that there are certain parts and places that they won't go anymore.

And they're not living in the cities they once remembered. What does your government do right out of the gate to? to tackle public safety in a different way that shows you mean business? Well, we're very committed to, again, bolstering frontline supports here. And we have committed to a very large expansion of police, but also support staff. And so what I mean by that is that you've got police members, whether they be city or RCMP,

that are obviously spending a good amount of time in the office when we need them actually out doing the work of community policing, etc. And so we're very committed again to bolstering that front line. There's going to be a cost there, but think about the cost that we save downline or downstream of what's happening with respect to street disorder. Whether that's vandalism, whether it's hospitalizations, random stranger attacks, all those things have an extremely large cost downstream of this problem. So I think that that's another thing that has been forgotten in this equation. I know I commonly say there's two sides to every ledger. got a cost and you've got obviously an income side.

But if we can limit the costs elsewhere, we can fund things like this. And I think this is what has been sadly missed in our province because the damage is unbelievable. Well, Tristan Hopper in the National Post, I spoke with him just a little bit earlier, was speaking about the sort of the super criminals in every community and how a very few small group of select apex criminals are committing the vast majority of the crimes, but they just keep getting let. out on bail or their sentences are so short that they're not in for any amount of time that does anything but allows people to clean up the mess they made just in time for them come back and mess it up again.

Well, and I'm not sure what the conversation was with Trisham, but I will say this. We are talking about individuals that have committed hundreds of crimes against us. And so this has got to stop in British Columbia. It is completely out of control. and it is unexplainable, honestly, to our residents who are extremely frustrated. I can tell you that just very recently there was an attack on a police officer in my community that obviously led to that person being incarcerated, but they were let out within six hours by a justice. So Tristan, so it was circling around the point that in a lot of cases, it is justices that simply do not believe in incarceration.

And to me, that's a fundamental flaw in how we've been picking the wrong people to sit on the bench. We will be advocating fiercely for exactly that, particularly when it comes to any kind of random street violence or any of those attacks against our residents. We are going to be absolutely focused on changing that measure for sure because it just cannot go on. We've had too many examples of individuals that have been injured. I mean, frankly, we were making a press conference, had a press conference just the other day. And the night before, you know, a woman was pushed into traffic, you know, somebody visiting our city, right? So the notion that this can just go on the way it is right now is unacceptable to British Columbians. And we're going to definitely focus on changing it.

One of the most delicate points that I'm sure you need to address that can be very tricky, depending on the words you use, is the British Columbian government. relationship with First Nations. It has been fraught with issues and from the outside, it's actually looked a little dysfunctional to say the least. I'm somebody who wants true and honest and measurable reconciliation and I want everybody in this country to feel like they have a stake in it. How do you help make that happen? Well, me too. I am absolutely committed to that, But I will say this, your assessment is entirely correct. It is dysfunctional.

DRIPA is not very old legislation. I mean, it was brought to this legislature in 2019. I would say that it has not solved our problems on the landscape. And frankly, you know, legislation to push two teams together and make them work together is not, you know, in my mind, that's not the best outcome for anybody. We have to genuinely want to work together. And there's an opportunity for partnerships that are. could be very fruitful for First Nations, for British Columbians, and I think that there's a better path forward

with just simple respect and conversation. And I've talked to a number of First Nations that don't feel this legislation to solve problems for them either. And in fact, in some cases, you talk to different communities or different nations, that actually feel like we're further apart than we ever have been. And here we have this piece of legislation that is meant to bring us together.

It's not. It's divided us worse than ever. Mr. Dirkson, my last question, people in British Columbia are about to go to the advance polls. What do you want them to know about you? What's the, if there's one thing you want to leave, you want to leave the listeners of the Ben Mulroney show in British Columbia with before they head to the polls, what is it? I guess the message that I would give to people is that I am very focused and very committed to making British Columbia a better place. I firmly believe that there are definite better paths forward for our province with respect to our economy, with respect to industry, with respect to our environment, tourism, First Nations, you name it.

I just feel like there is so many better ways that we could be moving forward. And we've been stalled. And I really feel that we've been stalled for certainly the entire time that I've been at the legislature, which is about five or six years. But certainly for this last decade, it's been very challenging. and I am absolutely committed to changing the dial on a number of those topics. I have been speaking with Lauren Dirkson. He is currently the BC Conservative Party's leader.

In a couple of weeks, he may be the premier of British Columbia. And if that, when that comes to pass, people already know what I'm hoping for here. I hope you'll come back to the Ben-Milini show, sir. Oh, I'd love to. Absolutely. Hey, good luck, sir. Thank you very much. And again, to your team, thank you very much. I wasn't trying to pull a fast one there. I really do appreciate you.

Thank you, Ben. We're not worried about that. We're happy to be here. Thank you so much. Hi, it's Alan Cross. Here to announce two more legs of my national speaking tour. November will be busy with stops in Halifax, Sydney, and Truro, Nova Scotia. Then it's Waterloo, Hamilton, St. Catharines, London,

Oshawa, Montreal, Ottawa, and Kingston. In addition to the regular free-willing audience Q&A, I'm going to conduct a live performance of my podcast, uncharted crime and mayhem in the music industry. Music and the mob. It's something that we created just for this tour. Tickets at my website, A Journal of Musical Things.com,

under the heading speaking gigs at the top. But hurry, because some dates are already sold out. Crime and Mayhem and the music industry on the road this fall. Hope to see you soon.