Falcon says BC United will restore prosperity to NEBC
Having cut his political teeth in Gordon Campbell’s BC Liberal government of the early 2000s, BC United leader Kevin Falcon agrees with Campbell’s monetary philosophy of living within your means, something the current government doesn’t do.
“We have to run our government the way families have to run their family budgets. That means you can’t just keep spending more than you take in. We have to be responsible, they’re taxpayer dollars they’re not government dollars,” Falcon said.
“Our position is very simple; we have to stop doing stupid things.”
One of these things is the NDPs forced unionization of capital projects. This method of procuring companies to build infrastructure projects has resulted in many going way over budget and falling behind schedule.
“When they build major infrastructure, whether it’s hospitals or bridges they, in many cases, are requiring that that be under their so-called, misnamed, Community Benefit Agreements, which we call Community Rip-off Agreements because it says the only people allowed to bid are the people who will join their designated 19 trade sector unions,” he said.
“That’s not appropriate.”
By putting projects out to tender in the usual way, and not requiring bidders to join one of these unions, Falcon says they will be able to “harvest literally billions of dollars of savings.”
With the bulk of provincial revenues coming in from outside the Lower Mainland, supporting industries in resource-rich sectors of British Columbia, like northeastern BC is a priority for Falcon. Getting rid of the NDPs CleanBC policy, removing the gas tax, as well as carbon tax on home heating are things, he says the people of BC need to make ends meet.
CleanBC, or CostBC as Falcon calls it, is disastrous for families in British Columbia. The NDPs own numbers show that it will cost the provincial economy $23 billion, reduce the GDP by 10 percent, cause a loss of approximately 200,000 jobs and an average reduction of $11,000 in families’ annual income.
“That is crazy.”
Falcon believes that LNG projects can be the savior of both the provincial economy and the climate.
“We have to recognize, as we do at BC United, we’re all in on LNG. We not only support the current project that’s in place that the NDP opposed, but we want Phase 2 to go ahead immediately,” he said.
Canada and British Columbia alone cannot solve the global environmental crisis, Falcon says. “We have to be part of the solution, and LNG is a big part of that solution.”
“We can actually get way bigger reductions in emissions globally by exporting our product that we have lots of.”
It’s not just the CleanBC policy that’s causing the problem, Falcon says, but a government that has what he calls “permit paralysis.”
“We’ve got a government that is afraid to make decisions, because they might offend somebody,” he said.
“We cannot have a situation that does not benefit First Nations, doesn’t benefit the community or industry. We have to have a government that is still prepared to make decisions, because we have to think about the collective interests of the province.”
Falcon says that BC United will make sure the decisions are made, with the input of First Nations, because decisions need to be made, in order for communities and industry to thrive in the province.
“Capital makes their decisions well in advance of when they actually start doing the actual drilling work. And if they get the sense that they’re not going to get an answer out of government, they’ll take their dollars and spend it elsewhere, probably Alberta. That’s not good for the Peace. So, we will make sure that permits get processed.”
Another thing that’s not good for the Peace, or any part of BC, is the lack of doctors and nurses.
When Falcon was first elected in 2001, he said the previous NDP government hadn’t added a single training space for doctors in the previous ten years.
“There was 128 – I still remember the numbers,” he said. “What we did in our first year in government was more than double that to 288 training spaces. And then we opened up training throughout the province. At the UNBC in Prince George, at UBC Okanagan, and UVic in Victoria to make sure we distribute the training of doctors.”
In the last seven years, Falcon says, there have been very few spaces added for doctors to be trained.
“Worse than that, we have a whole bunch of international medical graduates that are mostly Canadian kids who were trained abroad, who want to come back and be doctors and practice in BC. And the NDP government and their rules and regulations are not letting them in.”
The same applies to immigrants and refugees. Many of these people who come to Canada and BC, seeking a better life can’t use their skills and education because of the red tape.
“It’s tragic because we’re not taking advantage of the training and education that they have. It depends on which country that they’re from, because we have to make sure the standards are equivalent to ours, but that’s not a hard thing to do,” Falcon said.
Nurses too, are feeling the pressure. They’re being overworked because of the shortage of nurses, and are getting stressed out, he said.
“We can’t keep asking nurses to do more and more overtime because we’re burning them out. Or they’re leaving the profession, they’re going and becoming contract nurses. That’s not helpful either.”
BC needs to make sure the colleges and universities are pumping out the new nurses that are needed, and foreign-trained nurses need to be available to help ease the burden.
“We just have to start treating this healthcare crisis like the crisis it is. Then we’ll start to get different results.”
The only thing that has grown under the current NDP government, according to BC United, is the province’s financial troubles, and its’ bureaucracy, which has increased by 36 percent in the last seven years.
“We think there should be a freeze on hiring, we’ve got to hold things in place and make sure that we’re being responsible stewards of the public money.”
Reducing government spending, cutting harmful taxes, cancelling destructive policies, and encouraging investment in BC’s economy by allowing projects such as LNG and the Taylor Bridge rebuild to go ahead are all part of Falcon’s plan to bring prosperity back to British Columbia should they win the 2024 election.