Conversations with Candidates: Dan Davies
The Broken Typewriter invited local candidates to discuss topics of interest to voters in Peace River North. In alphabetical order, we begin with Dan Davies, incumbent MLA and Independent candidate.
A life-long resident of the Peace, Dan Davies’ devotion to the region and its people has been a life-long commitment. In addition to his career as a teacher, and positions with various local non-profit organizations, he has served as the region’s MLA since 2017, following 12 years on Fort St. John city council.
Until end of August, Davies saw his political career continuing with as the BC United MLA candidate. Having the rug pulled out from under him, like all BC United members, he had to regroup and rethink his future. That future lies as an independent candidate.
As you’re no longer beholden to any party or compelled to uphold any party policies, if you’re elected how do you think your independence will help you represent the people of Peace River North?
“Independent today is not what it was years ago, the political climate has changed,” Davies said. “Not just the climate, but the confines of how independents are treated even in the BC Legislature have changed.”
Davies says that as an opposition MLA for seven years, he’s very familiar with how the partisan political system works. As a member of an opposition party, he says he was lucky to be able to ask one question of the government per session, usually on a theme directed by the caucus.
“Granted, I could make it localized, if it was a healthcare issue, I could always talk about the Fort St. John Hospital within that question that was themed and directed. Good, bad or indifferent, that’s just the way the system was.
“Now, by precedence and by change that’s happened in the BC legislature, I get a question every two weeks, and a follow up. So that’s now 14 in a year, from one or two. A 700% increase, just in the ability to now directly ask questions of the government, directly on behalf of Peace River North.”
What it amounts to is constituent-directed voting, it’s direct democracy, he said.
“Because I can now listen, take in what’s best in the region and vote accordingly. Ask questions accordingly, to what are the big issues,” Davies said.
Take John Rustad for example, Davies said. He was an independent MLA for a time, before becoming the leader of the Conservative Party of BC.
“He did a lot of stuff, because the system was different.”
People have said that if you’re an independent MLA you’ll never be the Minister of anything – does that matter to you?
That’s not necessarily the case, Davies said. At the time of our conversation, media sources and pollsters were showing a statistical tie between the NDP and the BC Conservatives.
“If you are in a statistical tie, there’s going to be discussions after the election, especially if you get two or three of us independents there.
“It could play out in a couple of different ways – and don’t worry, I’m not going to the NDP – but if John Rustad should approach us and there’s a conversation, that puts us – by us I mean Peace River North – in a really good bargaining position.
“Because John’s going to be looking at “what do I need to get across the line?”, and that’s where you have that balance of power that you keep hearing about.”
The privilege of an MLA in the legislature is attached to the MLA, not the party.
Davies says that anyone in the legislature can be appointed as a minister, they don’t have to be in the governing party. “So, you can have an independent, as negotiated in an agreement, as a minister, that was part of the arrangement to support.”
“Every single MLA that walks into that building is afforded the same privilege as every other MLA.”
Your former party had a lot of ideas about how to improve the economy, healthcare and justice system in BC. Are any of those policies still ones that you think will benefit Peace River North, and improve our quality of life?
“Absolutely.”
Although this is much more of a local campaign for Davies, rather than a provincial campaign, some of the provincial themes are also regional themes, like healthcare.
“Healthcare is still an issue up here. I’ve done healthcare rallies up here, I’ve written I don’t know how many letters, how many meetings I’ve had with the government and with Northern Health,” he said.
Crime and disorder, decriminalization of illicit drugs, and homelessness are both provincial and local issues. The mental health issue, with nowhere for people to get real treatment is a bigger problem, said Davies.
“I just met with Dr. Kane from Prince George – she’s a psychiatric doctor – working with her to create a northern mental health hospital. British Columbia is the only jurisdiction that doesn’t have a mental health hospital. Every other province in Canada does, and Alberta has two. To have our own, and we need a big one too for the province, but we certainly need one in the North.”
What do you think is needed for BC as a whole, to get the province back on track, as a place that companies want to invest in, where people want to live, work and raise their families?
“There’s a ton of things that we need. We’ve become very uncompetitive in the realm of oil and gas, forestry, mining, you name it.”
Companies have moved their operations to Alberta because of the tax policies, and the amount red tape strangling business and industry in the province.
“We have a government right now that has hired 150,000 public sector employees, that’s just red tape,” he said.
“They’re not hiring doctors and nurses and teachers, it’s administration, it’s management where you just create layers of bureaucracy. The government needs to get out of the way and let businesses flourish. Obviously, the government plays a role in certain pieces, but when it’s actually derailing industry, derailing small business, that’s a problem.”
Davies believes that we need to look at what communities offer professionals to encourage them to come to the North.
“They’re looking at Fort St. John, what does it offer? Reliable hospital? Not so much lately. The maternity ward’s been closed often, the emergency’s closed often. They look at the amenities our community and the region offers.
“Our community has grown, so we need to be looking at amenities that are keeping up with population growth, as well as keeping in mind that we need to attract not only the professional, but the family. If you’re not going to attract the family, you’re not going to keep the individual doctor or engineer or nurse or whatever.”
Davies says he’s a huge proponent of education, and points to the nursing program as an example of a successful local education program.
“That’s something that we need to be supporting, is getting nurses into nursing. Especially training local. If you train them locally, they’re likely to stay. That’s why I’m a big proponent of getting these programs done locally.”
Getting the railway to Fort Nelson upgraded is another thing that’s needed to both encourage development in the area and support existing industry.
“I believe the economic viability for Fort Nelson one of the big things is having a railway that works,” Davies said. “It works now, but there’s lots of upgrades that are required to shave off the time it takes to get a train up there and back – it takes two days to get up there right now, that’s too long.”
On First Nations, Reconciliation and the Economy - how would you like to see the frictions created by NDP policies addressed, to improve the process to benefit all British Columbians, both indigenous and non-indigenous?
Davies says he’s talked with many First Nations communities in the region, and they want what’s best for their people – economic growth and to protect their culture.
“Reconciliation is a two-way street; I think it’s a journey that will be much more successful if we’re all walking forward and being open and honest about the conversation.”
There needs to be transparency, he said.
“Unfortunately, though what we’ve seen is the NDP has created these divisive angles of how they’re moving forward. Deals that are very secretive. In many cases even the First Nations aren’t seeing what’s happening, so it’s not even a First Nations vs non-First Nations, it’s actually divisiveness between First Nations communities.
“We’ve seen that locally, Doig and Halfway are right now suing Blueberry, because of how the Blueberry decision was handled.”
Nothing can supersede Section 35 of the Constitution, and that’s where he believes DRIPA comes in, to be a guiding document.
“But the NDP have taken it into some weird area, as they usually do, which has made it impossible to work with it. For everybody. It has created a lot of angst among First Nations communities as well as non-First Nations.”
If the Independent candidates like yourself do get elected, you’ve said they could hold the balance of power – how could this benefit the people of Peace River North?
“If it’s a tie, or even if it’s a close amount, it puts us in a very good negotiating position,” Davies said.
“The important thing to get out there, to put to rest this whole “you’re splitting the vote”, because there is no split up here. The NDP, through time, have only gotten eight or ten percent up here. This is a race on the right.”
“Do you want experienced conservative leadership, who’s got a lifetime of building relations, a lifetime of committing to this region in the non-profit sector, leading kids, making leaders the list goes on and on,” he asked. “Or someone else, who’s relatively new to the region.”
Do you think referendums could be a valuable tool for government to gauge public opinion for major policy and tax changes, or prior to deviating from promises made during the campaign?
“I believe referendum questions are good on certain things. Huge shifts in policy that will impact all British Columbians,” he said.
“I think that is my role, as an MLA to make sure that, and again that’s the strength of an independent, I can actually bring my voice, representing people of this region directly into the legislature,” Davies said. “We have seen them in the past – there was a referendum on the HST, that was a major tax-shift policy.”
As for when politicians don’t keep their promises, Davies says we have an electoral system to deal with that.
“If you don’t like them, you vote them out. Or you’ve got recall legislation. If you don’t like an individual – that is a piece of our democracy that people can exercise, I think it’s important. Those are options that are open to citizens in British Columbia.”
Davies was the target of an ultimately unsuccessful recall petition in January 2023. Among the issues listed in the petition, was a lack of communication with constituents.
What have you learned from the recall petition experience and how do you plan to better communicate with your constituents in the future?
“I know that there were some issues around communication, those have been improved. I’ve taken those very seriously,” he said.
He went on to say that he’s taken steps to improve communication with constituents and noted that there were a lot of people who told him they didn’t know what he was doing. Among the measures to better communicate with residents is an electronic newsletter, which goes out to anyone who wants to sign up for it.
“I certainly did take those criticisms to heart. I’m always open to new ideas and to hear how I’m doing. It’s just the reality of dealing with constituents, dealing with people.
“I’m certainly sorry that some people may not have got a response back, there were some issues that we’ve rectified, and fixed those, and it won’t happen again. I’ll do better.”
What do you think of your chances in this election?
“I trust the voter. I’m hearing from everybody; we need a choice. Right now, I am that choice.”