477. Stopping the Socialist Trainwreck in British Columbia | John Rustad
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Hello everybody. I have the privilege today of speaking with John Rustad. He's a Conservative MLA, member of the Legislative Assembly in a province called British Columbia in Canada. Very resource-rich province and one that's on the coast. It holds a crucial position with regards to the transportation of Canadian resources all around the world.

So, he's a member of the Legislative Assembly, the provincial government, in a riding called, a constituency called, N'Chako Lakes. But he's also the leader of the Conservative Party in British Columbia. Now, British Columbia is an interesting province because it has a pretty pronounced left-right dichotomy in its political history. And the left-wingers, in the guise of the New Democratic Party, have had control over British Columbia for the last seven years.

And that hasn't been good, to put it bluntly, for all the reasons that are associated with everything that's transpiring everywhere in the West on the culture war front. So now we talked about John's past. He's an interesting candidate because...

He has a history. He's an entrepreneur. He started his own business, which was very successful. Then he transitioned into the political domain, serving as a member of the Legislative Assembly and also as a cabinet member. And so he's the rare politician who has the administrative, managerial, entrepreneurial and political background to actually be a credible leader. He thinks he's got enough people around him.

that are competent to put together an effective government. And so that could all happen. And so we talked about, well, we talked about the culture wars. We talked about the forestry and energy and another resource situation in British Columbia. We talked about the state of relations with the indigenous people. And he was very successful there.

as the Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation in dealing with the First Nations, so that's also a big deal in British Columbia in particular. And we talk more broadly about the culture war in general that's tearing the West apart, as most of you watching and listening know. This election in British Columbia, it's another crucial election, as is the federal election in Canada.

a year from this October. So we're hoping that the province flips, and I had a good chance to talk to John today about his vision and to assess his competence, which is something you'll be able to do as a consequence of watching this video. Well, Mr. Ustad, thank you very much for joining me here in Fairview, Alberta, live.

from Fairview, Alberta. Well, it'll be pre-recorded actually, but it's live at the moment. There's an election coming up in British Columbia. So I guess we should start probably because we'll also have an international audience. Maybe you could start by just describing British Columbia and letting everybody know where it is, and then we'll focus in on this election.

Well, British Columbia, of course, is on the west coast of Canada, sometimes referred to as the left coast politically. But obviously, it's a major port. It's a major gateway for all of Canada to be able to access the world. Many goods actually move from Asia through British Columbia and down into the United States. It's a province that is very rich with resources. It's got a tremendous amount to be able to offer.

including everything from oil and gas to mining, forestry. It's got a very good high-tech sector. It's a very interesting province, actually, but it's

Many people look at it and think, you know, that unfortunately it's hopelessly managed because of the politics that it's been mired in for many years. Yeah, well, and British Columbia has always had a sort of strange provincial political scene because it would, of all the provinces in Canada, it's the one that flips to the most radical left and to the most conservative. It flips back and forth. And so that's very interesting. And

You also brought up the issue of resources, and this is something that we might want to delve into right off the bat. I mean, it tends to be a left-wing trope that the poor should be well-served and also that the environment should be well-served. The problem is, or a problem is, is that those two desires are

now run into conflict with one another. And my sense is that the left, the radical left, is pretty willing to sacrifice the poor to the planet, ineffectively too, because this has happened in Germany, where the Greens have taken control, and Germany is de-industrializing, and Germany actually pollutes more per kilowatt of energy produced now under the Green regimes than it did before under more pure capitalism. The point I'm making here is

This is relevant for the international audience that might be watching this, is that British Columbia is very resource rich. And as you pointed out, it's a very important port. And Canada has a lot of low cost raw materials, especially on the energy side, but not only on the energy side, that could be brought to people all around the world to alleviate their poverty issues.

And it's very counterproductive to make it more difficult for people to live, not least because they don't take a long-term view of the future then and aren't likely to be concerned in their own localities with environmental issues. So my sense is British Columbia and Canada could do a great job, especially on the energy side, of getting...

natural gas in particular, off to markets all around the world. And British Columbia controls that in a large degree. You're absolutely right. I mean, I think it was over the last, I don't know how many decades, 2.4 billion people have been lifted out of abject poverty because of affordable energy.

And obviously, you know, Canada has a tremendous amount of energy. British Columbia has a tremendous amount of gas. There's a billion people in the world today that do not have electricity. I think it's somewhere between 400 and 600 million people that only have enough electricity to run a refrigerator. I mean, and those countries want to be able to have a quality of life. We have the resources and the ability to be able to take the resources we have and export them.

And use that for the benefit of our own people to be able to improve our quality of life, but at the same time, you know, be a real global player in terms of helping these other countries. And so it's something that has always puzzled me in terms of why the left does not want to do this. You know, do they not care about the people in other parts of the world? Do they not care about the quality of life of the people in our own province?

by taking advantage of these resources, by providing that revenue to us and providing those resources to other countries. We're not only improving our quality of life, but we are playing our part in the globe, making sure that other people have that quality of life. And as you know,

As people have more energy, as people have that higher quality of life, they care more about the environment. They actually do more for the environment than they can otherwise. And so, you know, we can play a big role in that. But like I say, it's just our policies seem to be blocking us from being able to be a major player. Well, and the Chinese are building coal-fired plants like MAD. And Canada has plenty of coal. But we also have plenty of liquid natural gas, which is a good replacement for coal. I mean, it looks to me like coal.

countries that are industrializing, and they're doing that because they want to live longer, more productive, and more opportunity-rich lives, just like we did.

They go through a relatively predictable sequence in terms of energy development, and perhaps it starts with wood and peat and that sort of thing, biomass, which is very polluting and not very efficient and hard on the forests and terrible for indoor pollution. And they transition to coal, which is much better in all regards than ordinary biomass. And then let's say to natural gas and oil, and then potentially, if we also weren't completely stupid about that, to something approximating nuclear. And so...

The succession of improvement on the efficiency and cost front in the energy world seems clear. And it is a mystery that that isn't an accepted principle on the left. And it's really shocked me because one of the things I've seen over the last 10 years is every single time I've watched this in every Western country, when the left has the choice between

worshipping at the feet of the environment and in a stunningly counterproductive manner or serving the poor. They always serve the environment. And my sense is that that's a consequence of likely

an anti-human and Malthusian ethos that emerged in the 1960s with claims by Paul Ehrlich and others, biologists mostly, that the world was by necessity a place of finite resources, that we would be running short of everything by the year 2000, that the planet can't support more than a couple of hundred million people at anything approximating the standard of living we have in the West. And

That anti-human ethos seems to have dominated the thinking of the left, much to the terror and hardship of the poor. I've been following this guy online named Jasper Manshugo, and he's an African and a subsistence farmer, but he's quite literate when it comes to the use of social media. And he posts continually,

showing how much work he and his family have to do to scratch out a living without fossil fuels, trying to subsistence farm and to show that that's not the romantic dream of

what would you say, noble, savage living that seems to possess the idiot Rossellians of the left, but a terrible hardship for him and everyone around him. And he is trying to bring to public attention the fact that the world desperately needs, well, not least the fossil fuels that Canada can provide. And Alberta wants to do that, obviously. Alberta is the most

for everybody listening who don't know, Alberta is a very fossil fuel rich province, but it's landlocked. It's right next to British Columbia and Canada has had a hell of a time getting its act together with regards to the export of, well, natural gas in particular. Yeah, I know that there's no question in my mind, you know, those natural resources, those hydrocarbons could do a lot to lift up the people in many places around the world. But more importantly in that, you know, you mentioned farming in Africa and that side of things.

This seems to be bent by populations around the world, governments around the world, that they want to stop the use of nitrogen-based fertilizer. Nitrogen-based fertilizer, I'm sure you know Norman Borlaug, I think his name was, who received the Nobel Prize for his work on what was called the Green Revolution, right? The massive increase in agricultural productivity because of nitrogen-based fertilizer, artificial fertilizers, as well as water management and better land management projects.

And I just think of it, and now we want to go backwards. I mean, 40% of the world's food supply comes from using nitrogen-based fertilizer. So if you're going to stop using that, and of course you need hydrocarbons for that, you need natural gas for the feedstock, you're talking about significant amount of shortage of food. People starving. Which has already happened. And I'm sorry, I'm not up for that. No, no. That is not the way we should be as a world, right? We should actually be trying to do everything we can to improve global lives and to be able to provide those goods.

And I just look at British Columbia as well, and from an agriculture perspective, we only procure 34% of the food we consume from BC. Two thirds of the food that we need comes from outside our borders. Now we produce lots of cows, you know, calves and send them off for finishing. We produce lots of wine and these types of things for export. But the basics, we're not meeting the needs of our own population. And so if you've got these governments around the world that are talking about reducing food production, it leaves our population vulnerable.

And so this was actually the reason I was kicked out of my former political party, because I started looking at this saying, wait a second, this is not right. We as a government should be putting the priority of looking after our own people, making sure that we meet their basic needs. And similarly,

You know, we should take apart a role nationally, internationally, making sure that other people can look after themselves as well. It's just the right thing to do. And yet, you're right. The left seems to be hell-bent on this ideology that probably, yeah, like I say, probably rooted out of the 60s that just seems to be carrying forward. It's the most humanitarian policy possible, policies possible. It seems to me it's pretty straightforward. It's cheap energy.

and cheap food. If you have cheap energy and cheap food, you don't have poor people. And then the additional benefit, as we already pointed out, is that as soon as people aren't scrabbling around in the muck for their next meal,

they can start to take something approximating a multi-generational perspective. And that is what people do. I mean, part of the reason that we live so long is because as grandparents, we also help care for children. Like human beings are wired to take a longer view if they can. But if you're desperately poor, you default to what is necessary right now. And that's often agricultural practices and so forth that aren't

sustainable over the long run. And so, you know, I figured this out about 15 years ago that we could all have our cake and eat it too. If we used our energy resources wisely, if we knocked energy costs down, which should be a primary goal of politicians at every level of analysis, regardless of political party, if we knocked our energy costs down, we could eradicate poverty worldwide and we could feed everybody. And then everybody would start taking care of their environment locally.

It seems like an optimal, it's very, well, it borders on the alternative policies in my estimation border on genocidal. And I know already that the fact that energy costs have spiraled upwards is putting tremendous mortal pressure on the poorest people all around the world. You can see too in Canada, grocery prices have gone up so much that it's actually

It's actually hard to believe. It's 22 or 23% that they've gone up just in the last couple of years. And you look at it, but you're right about energy as well. And you look at what's going on in the world and you think, okay, so we're driving up their energy prices. And I think it was, I can't remember which country it was, the president of the country in Africa said, look, no country's ever been able to develop energy.

and to be able to meet its needs by going with wind and solar. They've had to use more dense energy, such as coal and then natural gas, and then obviously we need to get to nuclear. And I'll talk about nuclear in a minute because that's a very interesting situation for BC. But when I look at that, there's a clear correlation between affordable energy and quality of life. And in British Columbia right now, because of the carbon tax and prices going up and we've got the highest gas prices in the country,

People are struggling. I mean, there's a third of British Columbians that's looking at leaving the province. One in two youth are looking at leaving the province because they can't make a go of it. In a province that is so rich, that's got so much to offer, and yet...

This is what has happened from poor government policies, driving up the cost of the basics, food, energy, housing. And they're saying, wait a second here. I can't ever hope to buy a home. I can't raise a family. Why would I stay here? I'm going to go find another place to be able to build my life.

I mean, that's what British Columbia actually was founded on. It was people from other parts of the world that had those problems and said, let's go to British Columbia because I can build a life there. And it's now flipped. And so this is what needs to change. And fundamentally, it has to change at the political level in order for it to be able to change throughout society. Going online without ExpressVPN is like not paying attention to the safety demonstration on a flight.

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Well, and we could examine wind and solar for a moment too, because I've got nothing personally against wind or solar, although I think that the windmills are hideous and they devastate the landscapes that they're placed in. And that actually matters because

Well, one of our environmentalist contentions is that the beauty of nature is a value in and of itself, as well as something that's of obvious benefit to human beings. And windmill-littered landscapes are by no means beautiful. And I actually think that that's a problem, because ugly matters. But there's issues that are much more relevant than that. It's like...

Solar panels don't last very long. They're very susceptible to hailstorms, for example. They're very energy demanding in their production. They're often manufactured in China and often using slave labor, which doesn't strike me as a particularly positive benefit. They tend to work very badly at night. And wind power, of course, both wind and solar costs significantly.

spiral up towards the infinite as the supply decreases, right? So there's no solar at night. And my understanding of what that means is that even if we had a wind and solar grid, which we don't, that was reliable and plentiful, which we certainly don't and are nowhere near doing, we'd need a backup system anyways. And this is what's happened in Germany. And they took their bloody nuclear plants offline, and then they defaulted to coal.

And then they burn lignite, which is the most polluting form of coal. And now in Germany, they have much less electricity. It's much more unstable. They're much more dependent on foreign tyrants for their energy. And they pollute more while they're deindustrializing. Exactly. And they've also driven up the cost of the energy. Yeah, five times what it should be. The quality of life for the people in Germany is in decline.

And it's a straight correlation. High energy costs, lower quality of life. And so I, you know, I look at wind and solar has their place, but they're additives to our energy mix. They are not baseload. They can't be baseload. Not to mention, as I said, you really, where you get the value in energy, where you can drive down the cost is the higher density energy. Describe that for people, because people don't understand what that means. Well, you think about, you think about, you know, wood, for example, right? It's,

It's not very dense, has lots of energy in it, but it's not very dense. So the huge advancement was going to coal because it was a far smaller amount of product to produce the same amount of energy. Then you get to oil and natural gas, which is similar. Once again, you're using less product to get the same amount of energy. And the real genie, or what we

the best we have so far is when you look at nuclear, when you look at uranium, the amount of energy you can generate out of uranium is phenomenally better from a amount of material you need as opposed to the other products. And, you know, in British Columbia, it's interesting. I think the left doesn't support, you know, nuclear power. That's so insane. Which is crazy. So insane. But in British Columbia, it was actually a center-right party that actually banned nuclear power from being used in BC, which is weird. And it was because of politics. It's too many politicians...

Today, they chase where they think the vote is as opposed to standing on the principles, standing on the values that are needed to be able to create a good society and quality of life. And so that to me is where politics needs to go. And often that's not necessarily politics of the right or the left. It's just politics that is willing to actually stand up and say, no, these are the values that we stand for.

This is what we're going to go and say that we need to do for our society, and then ask people to support that. Make the case, as opposed to trying to, you know, pander to the various political positionings. Okay, so back to the nuclear issue. So, it is the case that the radicals on the left oppose nuclear, although, as you pointed out, the conservative types and the more classic liberals can also get entirely confused about this in a kind of stupid populist manner. But let's lay a few things out here. So,

Well, as you pointed out, nuclear energy is very energy dense, and that means you get more energy per unit of matter. Okay, why is that relevant? Well, it decreases transportation costs, for example, and that also reduces environmental load. And so it's much more effective to ship energy.

coal than wood, and it's much more efficient to ship natural gas than coal, right? So, and that also has its environmental benefit. Okay, and then you might say on the downside, on the nuclear side, you know, people are afraid of nuclear radiation, and they're afraid of what to do with the nuclear waste, but nuclear power has historically been very safe. You

More people die from solar power every year than from nuclear power. And the fundamental reason for that is because they fall off roofs when they're installing the panels. I mean, life's complicated, right? It's not something that you'd predict. No, you're absolutely right. But I look at it this way. So as a province in British Columbia, they've got this green agenda. And what they want to do is they want to go to using heat pumps instead of using natural gas.

And so you look at it and think, okay, well, that sounds good. Why wouldn't you do that? You know, heat pumps, other than the fact that they're very ineffective when it's cold, which is a real problem, which is the vast majority of British Columbia right in the winter. However, when you look at it and say, if every house in British Columbia required a heat pump and every business in

you know, in British Columbia required a heat pump, we would need to build the equivalent of six or seven more Site C dams. - Right. - And we're not gonna likely build another major dam in BC. So where's that power gonna come from? We're already net importers of electricity into British Columbia. I mean, we've got these vast amounts of hydroelectric power. You know, our grid is almost all green if you consider hydro power green.

But we don't have enough. And they want to put these restrictions on saying we need to use more of it, but there's no plan to build it out. And this is where we actually have to start having that conversation about nuclear. Whether it's small modular reactors or other types of nuclear technology, we're going to need that power in British Columbia. And so it's something that I think as a government, we need to go out and have an honest conversation with people about. Like, let's talk about what it means to...

And what the cost is for people and what that means for your quality of life and what the options are. And let's just be straight up with people and let them decide where they would like to go. So let's delve in one more way into the nuclear issue. So the...

fundamental shibboleth of the left with regards to the environment is carbon dioxide production. Now, personally, and I'm not going to push you on this to any degree, but personally, I'm very skeptical of the climate change, science, science. Science is a complicated business, and what the media reports is not necessarily science. I've been struck to the core, I would say, by the NASA reported findings that the planet has greened 20% since the year 2000, and that

One consequence of that is that crops are much more productive, like 13 to 15% more productive. And that is directly because of carbon dioxide increase. And so I truly believe that a dispassionate scientist who wasn't being affected by the hangover of the anti-human Malthusian agenda from the 1960s would look at the data and say, well,

While the planet's 20% greener and most of that greening occurred in semi-arid areas, so the deserts are actually shrinking. How the hell is that not a net good from the environmental side? Independent of that, if you do believe that carbon dioxide is the villain and you believe that independent...

independently of your anti-human, Malthusian, anti-industrialization, what, drive, there's too many people on the planet. Well, then you do everything you could to reduce carbon dioxide. Okay, and if you're not going to impoverish and starve people, then you're going to use nuclear.

But the left opposes nuclear. So what can you do but conclude that there's something other than even an anti-carbon dioxide agenda that's driving that system of ideas? It has to be something like

an anti-capitalist, anti-industrialization, anti-human population agenda, because nothing else accounts for the left's opposition to nuclear power. You know, I always like to joke, and I mean, this is a sad reality, but how is it that we've convinced carbon-based beings that carbon is a problem? Yeah.

Yeah, well, the carbon-based beings are the problem. Well, certainly the thinking. I don't necessarily mean the carbon-based beings are a problem. No, I meant that in terms of how the left is conceptualizing this. But I look at it from a perspective in British Columbia, like this is why we want to get rid of the carbon tax. I mean, taxing people into poverty in some vain attempt to change the weather is absolute lunacy.

It makes no sense whatsoever. So that sort of stuff has got to go. Not to mention, it drives up your energy costs, which means you're lowering your quality of life. And you're costing people, you know, their ability to build, put food on the table and pay their rent. It doesn't make any sense to be doing this. And so that's not an approach that we're going to be worried about in British Columbia should the Conservatives have a chance to win a government.

And it's just because we can't make a difference. Even if you think CO2 is the problem, many people still believe that, we can't make a difference one way or the other anyway. Even if we stop everything we did, we're a fraction of a percentage point. We're a rounding error. Everything the West does

with regards to the green agenda on atmospheric grounds is rendered 100% irrelevant by China and India. And the leftists say, well, we can be an example. It's like, I don't think we're posing much of an example to the Chinese. How many coal plants have they built in the last two years? It's like 600. It's some ridiculous number. But to me, I also look at it and think, okay, we're a small trading jurisdiction, British Columbia is, and Canada to an degree is as well. We depend very much on exporting our goods. So

So if we're driving up the cost of our goods, you know, the simple supply and demand, if you want to buy an apple and I've got an apple for sale for $3 and somebody else has an apple for sale for $2, you're going to go get the apple for $2, right? I mean, you're going to stretch your dollars as much as you can. And so if we're driving up the cost of our goods,

through carbon taxes and other policies in British Columbia, we can't compete on a global scale. And so we actually lose our market share. We actually create more problems in our society. We actually, once again, drive down our quality of life. Our GDP growth, you know, starts shrinking. Which it is. Which it is, right? I mean, as you know, right? I mean, it's a horrendous record in British Columbia and in Canada. Yeah, well, Canadians now, we have 60% of the GDP per capita that Americans have. 60%. Like, we're...

We're entering an era where we are, where the American, typical American is twice as rich as the typical Canadian. It's insane. And that doesn't factor in the fact that our housing costs are in Canada, where we have quite a lot of land.

Our housing costs are generally twice what they are in the US. So we're half as wealthy, approximately, and our real estate is twice as expensive. And for what? And then the other environmental conundrum that perplexes me about Canada is like, okay, well...

People around the world are going to get their energy somewhere, as we can see by the fact that China is building coal-fired plants at a rate that swamps anything possible. As is India. As is India, and of course they are. And of course Africa will do the same thing if the international neocolonialists don't stop them by refusing to lend them money and so forth, which they are. So the developing world is going to develop, and we have absolutely no right whatsoever to...

to put anything approximating a halt on that, because that really means that we're killing the world's poor people and depriving their children of any opportunity. We have no moral right to do that whatsoever. Okay, so then you might say, well, Canada should be an example, and we could set an example for green technology that the rest of the world could adopt. I mean, first of all, no, I don't think we can do that because we're not innovative enough to do that, and it's also very difficult. But also, the best rejoinder to that is, well, do you want

Europeans, the Japanese, do you want them dependent on the dictatorships that control the oil supply? Or Putin? And do you want them dependent for their energy on jurisdictions that, unlike Canada, are much more lax in their environmental regulations? I mean, one thing you can say about the Canadian fossil fuel industry is that it's

arguably the most attentive in the world to environmental considerations. Now, that doesn't make it perfect, but nothing's perfect. So, again, I don't understand the objection. It's like, why can't Canada play its proper role as provider of raw resources to the world? I have a theory around that. And I mean, certainly there's a lot of the left thinking that's in there. But I actually think, quite frankly, we're also being influenced by other countries' agendas.

I mean, obviously, look, if Canada is exporting its energy to around the world, then we're not selling cheap energy to the United States. And so there's a very specific agenda. You think about it, we sell our oil down to the United States at a $20 barrel discount, 15 to 20, sometimes more, sometimes less. Well, what do they do? They take that oil, find it, and ship it out to the East Coast.

And so they make money on the arbitrage on this. And so this doesn't make sense to me. And it's actually one of the reasons why I think, you know, should we have that opportunity to form government? I actually want to try to create a Canada-wide free trade agreement. It makes no sense to me that I could trade easier with the United States and Mexico than I can with other provinces. We have no sense of who we are as a country. We need to be able to create that sense as a country. So let's start talking about how we actually build trade across this country and have a sense of who we are.

Yeah, well, RPM famously announced that we really have no national identity in Canada, right? And I think that's more, what would you say, an indication of...

His sense of what constitutes Canada, his belief that seems to be quite prevalent in the West, is that there's no uniting ethos that defines us as a country. And I mean, it's a preposterous notion and it's unbelievably destructive. You know, I think about it. So 160 years ago, we had the thinking that brought this country together, right? The rail line tied in the country. We had the sense of who we were, you know, based on our identity, right?

If we were to take the 10 provinces and the three territories today and say, let's build this entity called Canada, what would we have to do to achieve that?

Well, obviously, trade would be a big part of it, but we'd also have to have a conversation about where the authorities and powers are, because there's obviously some overlaps and problems we have today. But we'd have to have that sense of what is it that would bind us? What is it that would keep us together? What is it that would benefit us? What's the benefit for Atlantic Canada and Western Canada and Central Canada to come together?

And this is a conversation we should actually not be afraid to have as Canadians, because this is the best country in the world. I mean, you've done a lot of traveling. I've done a little bit of traveling. I've seen places all around the world. This is the best place in the world. We have everything we could ever want in this country. We have all the opportunity and potential we ever want. I mean, we're hopelessly managed at all levels in government. But, you know, this is why I look at it and think,

I don't want to tear this country apart. Let's figure out how we actually strengthen this country because it can be such a great place. It can be the promise, quite frankly, that it used to be many, many decades ago. We still have all the building blocks to be able to do that. Well, part of the reason I wanted to talk to you, because the podcast has a relatively international audience, and so it's always hard to tell when drawing attention to something that's somewhat more local is useful and interesting to

to that broader audience. Although it is also quite peculiar and noteworthy that Canadian politics have become of international interest in the last 10 years. That's a real change, and there are real reasons for that. And I think that what's happening in Alberta and in British Columbia are particularly emblematic of why Canada has

has become centered in the international spotlight. And it's because those are the provinces where the war between the free market people who believe in private property and the kind of free trade that allows people to make choices and genuinely lifts them out of poverty, which we know beyond a shadow of a doubt, especially after the collapse of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and the fact that most

most countries, regardless of how ideologically warped they are, started getting a lot richer when they weren't outright communists. You really see this battle playing out in Canada, in Alberta, and in British Columbia. The battle between the utopian environment worshippers of the left and their de-industrialization strategy and people who believe more in an English common law tradition, private property, and the free exchange of goods and services. Freedom in a word, productive freedom. And

And so let's delve into the situation in British Columbia. Now, in British Columbia, the socialists, the New Democratic Party in Canada, have been in power. How long have they been in power now? They've been in power seven years. Seven years. Okay. And so in your estimation, what is the consequence of that? Well...

When you look at it, I mean, our quality of life has declined. We've lost almost two thirds of our forest sector. You know, people aren't investing in mining. Nobody wants to invest in this province. I think it was something like 70,000 people left the province last year. A third of British Columbians were looking at leaving. People can't buy a house anymore.

There is this huge problem with drugs and addiction, with their safe supply and decriminalization approach that they've taken, which has just devastated lives and families and communities. And in addition to that, the efforts they're doing with Indigenous populations, First Nations, is actually a direct assault now on private property rights. It's really quite something to see how this is changing in the province. And people are waking up and looking and thinking, wait a second,

What's really going on here? And I think that attributes a lot to why the Conservative Party in British Columbia has risen so rapidly. I mean, it's a party that's the oldest party in BC's history. It was first founded in 1903, but it hasn't formed a government since 1927. It hasn't elected anybody since the 1970s.

So this is a party that's been in the wilderness, but because we're coming with a very different approach talking about this, there is a huge appetite for change to move away from these ideologically driven governments that we have had into something that's more focused on just the average everyday person. So, okay, a couple of issues there. So there is this phenomenon known as the natural resource curse. So economists have studied economies all around the world and concluded that

polities that are rich in so-called natural resources are not more likely than other countries to be wealthy. And this is a very important finding because another accepted truism on the left is that wealth is a consequence, let's say, of natural resources. I don't really believe in the concept of natural resource at all. Air maybe is a natural resource. Other than that,

Fresh water? Fresh water is not a bloody natural resource. It takes a lot of work to provide a city with natural, with fresh water. And many people around the world don't have fresh water. And certainly fossil fuels and so forth are by no means natural resources because you have to discover them and you have to pump them and you have to refine them and you have to ship them. And then you might ask yourself, well, what is all that activity dependent on?

And my sense is that activity is dependent on, well, a complex social environment and one that's predicated on private property and

diligent work and trust. And so the only real natural resource is one of trust. And then the question becomes, how do you set up the kind of high trust society that enables people to utilize what's right in front of them productively? And this is the war that's going on in British Columbia. Now, you said that two thirds of the forest sector, for example, in British Columbia, this reminds me, I just did a podcast on Venezuela, right? 70% of

There's been a 70% decrease in GDP in Venezuela, and one third of the population, one quarter of the population, actually moved out of Venezuela, like vanished completely, right? And so that's a more extensive form of socialism. But you're seeing something that's the Canadian equivalent in British Columbia.

Two thirds of the forest sector. What's happened to the forest sector? Well, what's happened is you've had successive policies that have been brought in by the NDP that have driven up our costs so that we are now certainly by a long shot the highest cost producers.

Access to the fiber has been severely restricted because of these policies that have been put in place. And so you've got a combination of not being able to access the wood you need to run a facility and the cost is so high that you can't make a go of it. And so companies are just saying, we're out of here. We're closing our doors, we're leaving.

And it's just, it's wrong. We have, I mean, forest products is the most sustainable. It's the most environmentally friendly product we can be producing. We as a province in British Columbia have a tremendous landmass and a tremendous resource of forest opportunity.

But it's because of these ideologies and these cost-driven factors, you've got a government, quite frankly, that's more focused on the environmental movement than they are on families and workers and communities and actually providing these products that the world needs. Well, and it's, as we pointed out previously, too, it's a false environmentalism.

Because forests can be managed properly, and that can also reduce their fire risk, for example, if it's done well. And it hasn't been done well at all. And there's high fire risk that's blamed on climate change, but it's much more appropriate and responsible to blame it on mismanagement. And you said a third of British Columbians are thinking about leaving, and that's absolutely staggering because...

All the opportunity for British Columbia to be as rich as Norway, I would say, is it's right there in front of people if they're willing to take it. Exactly. And that's and that is, you know, where you got a government that is running massive deficits, that's that's born from the future, that has, you know, believes in everything should be run by the public service. That's, you know, has no problem trampling freedoms and no problem trampling, you know, democratic process.

and you have a cost structure that is going up and a quality of life that's dropping because you've got low GDP, people are just saying, okay, we're out of here. And this is a huge thing, but property rights, in my opinion, is a fundamental core for freedoms in a society. If your property rights are at risk,

You know, that really undermines just the core values that you have in a society. And we're seeing right now, for example, there are many properties along the oceanfront in certain areas that were sold based on having water access. That's how you got access to your property. And now the government's coming along and taking away that water access.

We've got a situation, for example, in Haida Gwaii, where there has been an agreement between the Haida people and the government to address title. And title needs to be addressed, and it's part of our constitution. But what they've done is they've actually identified title underneath private property rights. And so indigenous law will now apply...

to private properties. Indigenous law will now say what you can and can't do with the private property. And who decides what the Indigenous law is? The Indigenous government. Yeah, and then what does that mean? I have a lot of Native friends, and I just spent some time on Vancouver Island, and one of the things that we discussed in detail was banned corruption. There's no reason to assume whatsoever that the Indigenous governments that were set up under

what the Indian Act that produced a wealth of counterproductive and poverty-inducing policies have anything to do with Indigenous land title. And so that's another, what would you say, that's another nest of snakes that Canadians won't touch because they're afraid of being branded, let's say, racist. But I tell you, so I mean, I spent a lot of years as an minister associated with this file. And I signed 435 agreements with First Nations,

We did a lot of what I called economic reconciliation with First Nations, which is about getting them engaged economically. But what we're seeing here now, particularly in places like Haida Gwaii, so the private property rights now, you're still going to have the rights to your property, but you may not have the rights to be able to do certain things in your property, depending on what the laws will be. But more importantly now, with the Silcotin case, which was the first title case in Canada, which was the Silcotin people in the Caribou in British Columbia,

What that said is that Indigenous people have the rights to benefit from Crown land or from title land. And where those benefits are taken away by government or government actions, government needs to provide an accommodation. And so on Haida Gwaii, because of private property, clearly that would alienate that title land, take away the Indigenous right to be able to benefit from that property.

And so there's going to need to be a compensation required. And you think, hi, why? There's not that much. It's 2% of the property. It's not that big a deal. Think of what compensation would be for downtown Vancouver or downtown Victoria or any of the other communities in the province should title be found underneath those areas. I mean, it's also going to drive racial tension. Well, exactly. It's going to bankrupt the province. And these policies and stuff might be fine government to government, but it's creating friction from a people to people. And to me, that's not reconciliation.

And so these are big issues in British Columbia and they've been just idly or just carelessly tossed around by our current government.

Okay, let's turn a little bit to the Conservative Party more specifically. So as you said, it's the, you said it was the oldest political party in British Columbia, but hasn't been in power since the 1920s. So when did you, let's walk a little bit through your political history. Let's walk a little bit through your biography. So tell us, well, tell us to begin with about your political history. Let's start at the beginning and walk us through that.

It looks about how far back to go, but, you know, born and raised in Prince George, married, living just west of Prince George. What did your parents do? So my parents, my dad was in forestry and my mom was actually a stay-at-home mom and helped raise the kids, right? I had two older brothers through this. And so...

My dad and my mom instilled in me, you know, entrepreneurial nature. So all my life, that was sort of my goal and objective. So as I went through, you know, I ended up starting my own company. I had an office in Houston, B.C., an office in Prince George and a dozen people. And I was so upset with where politics was going in B.C. from the 90s when the NDP was in power again. I actually sat down with my wife and said, what do you think about moving to Calgary? I can take my company and do business.

the same business for the resource sector in Alberta as I was doing in British Columbia. And so I thought, okay, we'll wait this out. And ultimately we made the decision to stay in Prince George. And that left me with two options. Either I just live with it or I get involved and try to change it. And I'm not the kind of person. So it was called Western Geographic Information Systems. It was doing data analysis for the forest sector. A lot of things like forest development plans and timber supply analysis, those types of things.

So I decided, like I say, we decided to stay. And being that I'm not the kind of person that just lives with it, I decided to get involved and change it. Politics was never an ambition of mine. It wasn't a goal or objective. So I got involved in politics. In the 90s? Yeah. And so in the early 2000s, I got involved in politics and then decided, actually, you know, I kind of enjoy this. You know, I enjoy the fact that you can actually create some policies and make a difference and be able to help people.

And so I was first elected provincially. I was a school trustee for three years, and then I was first elected provincially in 2005.

re-elected ever since. So it's been almost 20 years now in provincial politics. And I served a term in the Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation. I served a very short time as Minister for Forest Lands and Natural Resource Operations. And that was when? That was 2013 to 2017. So let me ask you about your business again. One of the things that people who are listening need to understand is that if you're

imbued with an entrepreneurial spirit, which is actually rather rare, right? People like to think that everybody's a creator, everybody's creative, and that, you know, if you scratch deep enough into everyone's soul, you'll find someone who's entrepreneurial. And that's not true. It's actually quite rare. And it's associated with a personality trait known as openness to experience. So people tend to be temperamentally entrepreneurial, and they're more akin to creative people in general. Now,

Now, one of the things about being a creative entrepreneur is that if you're also conscientious and dedicated to your company's success, and if you're not, you're not going to succeed. You'll more or less do anything that's appropriate and effective to make your company work.

Because you're not going to throw all your resources into something like that and take those sorts of risks with your capital, with your time, and then with your employees without being bloody well committed to its success. And that does mean you'll move. Right. And so you see this happening in the United States is that the entrepreneurial types are flooding out of California. They're flooding out of the more socialist states because it's just too

too annoying and uncertain. And so, and it's very dangerous to get a flight like that because it's a small number of people, a small percentage of people who are entrepreneurial. And if you get rid of them, then you don't have anybody who wants to run businesses. So you said you were tempted in the 90s to move, but you went into the political realm instead. And what,

Tell me how your party affiliation has worked across the span of your engagement in the political world. So when I decided to go into politics, of course, I'm not disposed to the ideology of the left. I've always been more on the conservative side of politics, although I find it odd because sometimes the federal conservatives think I'm too liberal and the federal liberals think I'm too conservative. So who knows what all that means? But

So I looked for the party that most aligned with where I was, which was at the time the BC Liberal Party. The BC Liberal Party was born out of the old Social Credit Party when the Social Credit Party collapsed in 1991.

And so I joined that party, and like I said, I was elected and served all the way through up until 2022 with that party. And you served as a member of the Legislative Assembly. A member of the Legislative Assembly. And like I say, in a couple of cabinet positions as well. And 2022 was a very tough year for my family. My father passed in January. My father-in-law passed in February. And my mother passed in July, or in July 2020.

And so I was talking with Kim about just leaving politics. I mean, I don't need to be doing this. And so we kind of had this discussion. And then along came a paper out of the federal government called the Farm Emissions Reduction Strategy. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Right. That's a fun one. Which was this reduction of the nitrogen-based fertilizer and stopping cows from farting and belching because they think somehow, for some reason, that's going to change the weather, right? It's just nonsense. But it would have a very negative impact on my riding. And so I tried within the party to have a discussion about this, the party I was part of. And I kept getting shut down, shut down. So then— Why? Why?

Because the leader of the party, which is now the BC United Party, was saying, we need to be leaders in fighting climate change. We need to be up on the forefront and fighting

That was his whole motto in terms of what he wanted to do. And he wasn't willing to look at any evidence or have any discussions about anything that would have an impact on... Do you think that was a vote-getting strategy or a commitment? Of course it was. It was all about votes. It was a political party that was more about trying to chase where they thought they needed to be in the political spectrum as opposed to having any values. And so...

In December, I put out a, or I mean in August, I should say, I put out a retweet of a Patrick Moore tweet, which questioned some of the role of CO2 and talked about the Great Barrier Reef.

Didn't think. You mean the thriving Great Barrier Reef? Yes, that's the one that is, you know, doing better than it ever has on record at the moment. So I'd forgotten all about that. I didn't put this thing out there. So on Wednesday, my phone lights up and I was like, you know, all these phone calls coming. I was taking the day off because the next day was my birthday. This was August 2022? August, yes, that was August 17th, 2022. So I made arrangements to talk to the leader on August 18th, which just happened to be my birthday. And I called and I

I called him and he was angry. I get it. You know, nobody wants to be put off when there's an issue. You want to be able to deal with it right away. So I talked to him about it and I said, well, this is what the problem was and this is what I've been trying to do. And he said, look, you have a choice. You either have to pair to our party position on climate or you can't be part of our caucus. And I told him, I said, look, I was elected to represent my riding. I was elected to represent the people. And they're asking me and they want a voice that is going to be about helping them and

not hurting them. And he said, I'm sorry, you know, if that's the way you feel, that's fine. He hung up on me and half an hour later, I was kicked out of caucus. And so that then created a very interesting problem for me because once again, I was back at the same place I was in the year 2000, which was, I'm not happy with where things are going in the province.

There's no chance of a political change because the both parties were basically fighting for the same territory on the left side of the spectrum. And so what do I do? Do I leave the province? Do I retire and just leave the province? Or do I stay involved and actually try to change it? And so my wife actually said to me, no, you need to work on this. You need to stay involved. You've got my full support.

So I looked at it and thought, okay, so I spent some time that fall exploring some options and ultimately looked at the Conservative Party, which was just a very small party representing only about 3% of the people in BC at the time, and thought, you know what, it's time to resurrect it. It's time to actually try to do it. So I joined that in February of 2023.

and took on the leadership at the end of March of 2023. And, you know, we've gone from 3% in the polls to tied with the NDP, and some polls were actually ahead of the NDP right now going into the election. Okay, there's a few things I want to delve into there on the more personal side.

The first is, this is a terrible political conundrum that people should be aware of. In my experience, there is an awful lot of narcissistic exhibitionism in politics. And that's not a useful brush to tar all politicians with, but it's something worth focusing on. So you see this in entertainment, you see it in the media, and you see it in politics. And the reason for that is that

People who are temperamentally narcissistic, so they're extroverted and disagreeable. Those are the personality predictors. And it's even worse if they're unconscientious. You're starting to border on psychopathy at that point. That's not good because you want to be the center of attention. You don't give a damn about other people. That's low agreeableness. And you're completely unreliable with regards to your word. That's a bad combination. There's a disproportionate number of people like that in any domain where there's a lot of public attention.

Okay, so it's going to happen on the political front. Okay, so now, how do you get competent politicians? Well, this is a real problem because most competent people are already doing something, especially if they're, say, 40 and above. They've got a career that's usually well-established, that's quite productive. Or if they happen to be overachievers, they've got quite a little empire. You know, I have some friends who are hyper-successful, and I've talked to them about entering the political arena, and their comment often is,

I would be less effective in the political role than I am doing what I'm already doing, because they'd have to put all that on hold as well. And so what that means is that not only are there a disproportionate number of self-serving narcissists in the political realm, is that it's very difficult to get people who are actually competent playing the political game, because

It's difficult. It is very difficult. You have to have a very thick hide, too, to withstand the slings and arrows of your opponents and all the lies that come at you. Like, I don't think I can tolerate that, quite frankly. I don't think I have the Constitution for it.

In any case, you have this option because you had your own company, which you could expand more or less in accordance with your competence. But you decided repeatedly to stay in the political realm. You also said your wife supported you. And that's also very interesting because...

it would have been easier in some ways for her to just have you around and to have all that stress out of your life. So what is it about the relationship you have with your wife that has held you two together in the political realm? And why is she supporting you given the

personal costs, let's say, that might be associated with that? Well, I guess it goes back when we were married, which was in 1995. We've been married now 29 years, coming up on 30 years. Shortly after we got married, we talked about raising a family. And so unfortunately, my wife had cancer.

And she had cervical cancer, which was caught at an early stage. And so she was treated and she's now 24 years cancer-free, which is wonderful, right? I mean, the...

Today, in British Columbia, I have doctors telling me that it was fortunate back then because that may not have been the same outcome today. Yeah, that's for sure. So that's the healthcare stuff and we can get into that. Yes, definitely. And so my wife knew I wanted to have children. So yeah, she actually said to me at the time, shortly after in recovery, she said, you know, I release you from our marriage because I know you would like to have children.

And I told her, I said, no, we were married for better, for worse, for sickness and health, for richer, for poorer. So we're building this life together. And so we've been partners in everything that we have done throughout our life, whether it's going into business and these kinds of approaches. And so when it came to politics, she could see that there was an opportunity. But more importantly, she could see that there was a need in our society, which is why she pushed me so hard. She pushed me for years to go into leadership, and I never wanted to.

Because it wasn't a burning desire. But there's a job that needs to be done. And, you know, I'm willing to step up and do that job. And so that's so she, she, like I say, she was one who really pushed me to actually come in and do what I'm doing here today. So, so let's talk about your experiences in politics. So,

You weren't, this wasn't a burning desire, but you became an MLA, a member of the Legislative Assembly, a representative of your constituency. What did you learn as an MLA?

that you hadn't learned as a business person? How did that expand your conception of the world? You know, it's interesting that the most stress I've ever felt, and believe me, I've talked to crowds of tens of thousands, right? And public speaking, as you know, can be a terrifying experience for many people. The most stress I've ever felt actually was when I hired my first person out of Ontario.

Because that person, now I've uprooted them from their life, they're just out of school, they're coming over, and they're very reliant now on me providing them with work and providing them with their future. And I took that experience from the work side and a lot about that from politics. And so the most rewarding thing in politics is the same thing.

being able to find ways to be able to support people and help people. So for example, you know, a grandmother that's trying to adopt their grandchild, helping them through the system to be able to do that. Or, you know, two elderly parents that need to get a wheelchair for their 42-year-old daughter.

and needing help to help to get through these systems, all those sort of things. There's a certain amount of reward that comes with doing that. And so when I was the Minister for Aboriginal Relations Reconciliation, with all the agreements I signed, there was one time where one of the chiefs who signed the agreement was in tears. And I thought, oh my gosh, no, what have we done? This isn't good. And he said, no, no, you don't understand. Five children, five kids had attempted suicide the previous week, and tragically one had died.

And this was an agreement that could make a difference, that could actually give those children hope, give them an opportunity to be able to build a future.

There's a certain thing that's very rewarding in terms of being able to do those types of things for society. And so to me, that's what really drives what I'm doing is because in politics, it's unlike anything else. There's nothing else, no other experience like it, where you can actually make decisions that can improve people's quality of life, that can help people to be able to become whoever it is that they're going to be. And so there's a real appeal to that for me personally, and it's very gratifying.

Yeah, well, you know, I talked to this Navy, ex-Navy SEAL. I think it was an ex, I think it was a Navy SEAL. It's one of the American Special Forces, Jocko Willink. And Jocko's quite the bloody monster. He's about three feet thick and he's,

He makes Joe, Joe Rogan isn't very tall, but he's tough and built. And, you know, Jocko makes Joe look like a midget. He's a really tough guy. And he said that, you know, when he was a kid, he could have been a pretty bad guy. He wanted to be a soldier from the time he was three. And he's just wired that way physically and mentally. And then he went off to military training and he started mentoring other people. And he said that was so much more rewarding than anything else he ever did that nothing compared.

And it's very interesting, you know, because it's so easy, and this has to do with narcissism as well. It's so easy for people to feel that, you know, if they had resources at their disposal, that they could do anything they want. And, and, and...

and be, let's say, more sexually attractive, and to have the advantages that they assume would go along with unlimited power and resources. And the pathological part of that is that there isn't anything that is more meaningful in the deep sense than being of service to other people. And that's a deep paternal instinct, and it's a mark of paternal maturity that you find

gratification in that, right? It's a sacrificial gratification and is the basis for a competent society. You know, the lefties in particular, the postmodern types who insist that everything is about power, they just reveal their own narcissistic hand as far as I'm concerned in that philosophy, because everything isn't about power. If you think everything's about power, you haven't got anywhere near the core of what makes it

valuable to be a human being because you find all of that value in service to other people. Well, this is something I see more time and time again with the people on the left.

their ideology is more important than anything else. And so they will often sometimes be violent. They will take away rights of other people because they believe that the ends is justified. And so it's crazy when you look at what the negative impact will be for what they're actually doing, but they think it's for this greater good.

And it's an ideology that I struggle with, quite frankly. Just something that just doesn't come to me naturally. Yeah, well, and it would be all right as far as I was concerned if it was actually for the greater good, if that was actually at the bottom of it. But I don't think it is. I think that the easy moralizing that's part and parcel of the utopian ideology

strain of central planning thinking. It has very little to do with even the end. What it has to do with is the possibility that you can be identified in the moment with someone promoting a positive end, as someone promoting a positive end, and also with no sacrificial requirement on your part. If other people have to pay for your utopia, you don't have any skin in the game. And so we have these false solutions. See, this goes back to the environmental issue. It's like

The left, the worldwide green left, is willing to sacrifice the poor of the present for their hypothetical poor of the future. And that's...

That borders on evil or crosses the line as far as I'm concerned. And I often think about it just from perspective of people ask me, why am I doing this? And I explain this in terms of what I'm doing. But really, I'm planting my flag on a hill. I'm saying, this is it. This is the fight that is worth fighting. This is the battle that is worth taking on.

Because it's the society I want to live in, right? I don't want to live in that society that you've just described and that they're trying to build. I don't want to live in that.

Because in my opinion, if that's what it's going to be, I'm going to look at going elsewhere. I mean, why would I live there, right? It's not an enjoyable experience. It's not something that is fulfilling. Why would you want to live in that kind of misery? And so, to me, this is the fight that is worth taking on. Okay, so let's delve into the nitty-gritty. This is another reason I wanted to talk to you, too, because I'm always interested in talking to politicians who have done something that's of...

what, difficult to believe. The first politician I spoke with publicly, this was way before things blew up around me, was Preston Manning. And I was interested in, it was also the first time I ran into council culture.

It was so interesting because I'd run this little salon at the University of Toronto that was composed of graduate students and professors. And these were all friends of mine and colleagues and very, very smart people. It was really fun. We met about every week. And I'd invite people in and we'd have a discussion and the graduate students would join in. It was great fun. And then Preston Manning reached out to me because his nephew, I think, no, his son was in my class and liked it. And

suggested to his father that he make contact with me. So that happened. And so I invited him to come to this salon and not to discuss political issues. I wanted to ask him how in the world he managed to create a political party from scratch, because that's really hard. You know, like, what did you do

to bring people together so rapidly, because he rose from nowhere to become leader of the opposition, and then eventually rejoined forces with the Conservative Party. But it's a remarkable story. It happens now and then in the West. You're kind of doing it again in BC. So I wanted him to come and just say how he did it, you know, and a bunch of my professor friends wouldn't come.

This was like in 2014, 2013. I thought, what do you mean he won't come? It's like he was leader of the opposition because they thought he was far right, you know, which was absolutely preposterous. But in any case...

I actually didn't care about his politics at that point. It was like, well, you built a political party. How do you do that? That's hard. And it's psychologically interesting. Anyways, three or four of my friends didn't show up, which, well, like I said, that was the first time I ran into cancel culture. Now, you didn't start a political party from scratch, but you did more or less. Like you took something that had a history. And Preston had done, in some ways, the same thing. How exactly have you managed to bring the conservatives from...

essential obscurity up into the position where they're an actual contender for the throne in the next election. The elections win October 19th. Okay, so we're cutting close to the wire here. So what did you do? What's the nitty gritty of what you did and why do you think it was effective?

You know, there's no substitute for the formula of doing this. It's just hard work. And so the first time you go out and you talk to people, you have seven or 10 or 12 people that will come out. And

They like what they hear. And so they invite friends. Next time you come back, you've got 30 or 40 people. Next time you come back, you've got 70 or 80 people. And if you've hit it right, if you're, if you're hitting the tones that they want to hear, and if you're, what you're talking about is reflective in what they're looking for. And I also, you know, I'm a firm believer that politics is not so much about policy, although policy obviously is, it drives everything that, that results from politics. Um,

But if I talk to people and give a speech, more often than not, most people won't remember much of what I've said. They might latch on to a few little ideas or things that they've touched into. But what they get from it is a feeling. It's whether it is you're authentic or whether it is they're happy or whether it is they're angry or whatever that may be. And that often drives people far more

You know, they're trying to figure out if they can trust you or get something from you, let's say. Those might be the options. It's whether or not you align, whether or not they're comfortable. And you know, no one will ever be 100% aligned with everybody. But that has been a big piece of what we've been doing. And

And so right from day one of doing this, I hit the road. I just went out and lived out of a suitcase and went traveling everywhere around the province, connecting with people, talking to business people, talking to the average everyday person, and just slowly building up these groups of support.

And it's just, it's been this multiplier effect that's just been growing. And what it's tapped into really is that desire for change because there's people that are so upset with what is going on in society. I mean, when you've got these tent cities and these drug dens and all these things happening all over the place and crime is rampant and criminals are just getting a slap on the wrist and put back out on the street.

um, you know, and, and they don't like what's going on in the education system and the economy, you know, is sputtering and the inflation, all that people are just looking at thinking, this is nuts. We need change. And so, you know, we're tapping into that desire for change many ways. Um, that is in a way that people can look at and say, yes, that is the direction that we would like to go with. Okay. So we talked earlier with regards to the liberal party, because you said you have to hit the right tones, let's say. Okay. But

When we talked earlier about the Liberal Party, one of the things you pointed out was that and your unhappiness with the fact that the Liberal Party, in your estimation, was using the climate issue as a means of garnering votes and that that was inappropriate. So what's the difference in your estimation between attending to the people that you're speaking with and providing them with a message that they need and want to hear and not

playing a false populist game. Like how do you personally, how do you balance the necessity of having principles in your discussions, in your speeches and pandering to the crowd? And do you think you've walked that line successfully? How do you distinguish those things?

So what it has to come down to is just the principles of what you're trying to do. And so when you're talking to the crowd, you always have to talk from the perspective of what's in your heart, what is the belief, what are the things that you are standing for? What is it that you've planted your flag on and saying, this is who we are, this is what we're going to do? And there's many people initially that were very skeptical that

you know, weren't supportive. But as you start talking through the issues and showing the approach that you can take, more and more people open up to the idea and to what you're trying to do. So that's, I haven't had to compromise any of the sort of values or principles that I've been trying to promote right from the beginning. We've carried forward with those same principles all the way through. And I think that's the only way that people can judge you as to whether you're authentic or not.

is, you know, are you flip-flopping around on issues? Do you change? You know, are you putting your finger up in the air trying to figure out where to go? Or are you standing on your values and plowing forward? So one of the strangest things we've seen in recent years, and there are plenty of them, is this emergent confusion about just what constitutes a woman and a man. And we saw that played out pretty dramatically at the Olympics. And that's not over yet, because the boxer who won is going to sue Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling.

essentially for defamation and hate speech i know that your party has been involved in clarifying the distinction between men men and women with regards to say participation in sports and also for the protection of women's private spaces you have a little badge there made of moose hide i believe that's emblematic of that you want to explain that a little bit sure so um

This past spring, we introduced a piece of legislation, the first in Canada, that actually was called the Fairness for Women and Girls in Sports. And what it's designed to do is say that biological men cannot compete against women and girls in sports.

in British Columbia. And the intent of that is not to exclude anybody, but not to take the rights of one people to give to the rights of another people. And I think, quite frankly, it's important that the rights of everybody should be able to be protected. And particularly for women and girls, if they want to, for example, go after scholarships or whatever it is, and they want to be able to compete at high levels, they should be able to compete fairly. And the reason for actually bringing that in is because of...

So in my riding, First Nations started up a program called the Moose Hide Campaign. And it actually started from the fellow named Paul Assert, his daughter's now taken on Raven, and they've expanded it, gone right across the country. And we were actually, as minister, we actually gave them some seed money to get this program up and running and be able to expand.

But what it is, is about men talking to men about honoring and protecting women and girls and trying to end the violence against women and girls. And so, you know, I wear this frequently in reflection of that, but it's also, you know, part of the inspiration to be able to move forward and act like we did last spring. And the interesting part was the left wouldn't even allow it on the floor. They voted against it. They wouldn't even let it pass first reading. And first reading is usually just a formality.

and then it gets called for further debate. They wouldn't even let it get past first reading. They voted against it. So Lyra Sapir tweeted out yesterday some data in the US that seemed to indicate that about somewhere around 8,000 minor girls in the last five years have used insurance money to obtain double mastectomies on the gender-affirming front, which I have tweeted out. And

made a fair, a lot of noise about this is I think that that is, I think it's the worst form of quasi criminal behavior that I've seen among the professional community since the horrors of World War II. And I know that Danielle Smith brought in legislation pretty early to address the issue of surgical transformation, sterilization and so forth of minors in Alberta and took a fair bit of flack for that.

Any comments about that domain? It's related to what you just described. So my perspective is, you know, we need to make sure that we're supporting people, whoever they are, and make sure that we have that support in place, particularly through education, you know, through the very challenging formative years in terms of having that support for them, having that support that even can extend to families. But as a province, I do not believe it is the right thing to do to support families

any kind of procedure that would sterilize a child. They are not old enough to make those kind of decisions. Who knows where they'll want to be in their future. And I just think as a province, we need to do everything we can to be able to protect children.

Children defined as what, up to what age? Well, that's a good question. I mean, it's at least 15, 16, but it could very easily be considered 18. But regardless of that, I just don't believe that as a province that we should be doing that. Like I say, children, I mean, having children is precious. Taking that away from children before they have their formative years and are able to understand who they are and what they want to be in life, I just think it's just the wrong thing to do. Okay, okay.

All right. Well, we'll leave that issue at that, I think, for now. You said that when you first hit the road, your initial crowds weren't crowds at all. They were very small groups of people. And then it was essentially word of mouth, which is a much more powerful force than people think, that started the crowds to expand. So I'm curious, why weren't you...

What was it in your attitude and approach that allowed you not to be demoralized when you were first going out and speaking to very small groups of people? You know, why did you conclude that this was worth pursuing despite the fact that, you know, you were starting from a 3% baseline? Like, were you curious or did you believe that much in your principles? Or what is it that made you think that it was worth pursuing?

So, as I mentioned before, right, I looked at this from the perspective of we need change. And I didn't want to just, you know, live with it. And so, for me, this was a matter of going out and presenting an option. And I was fully prepared to go through it. If it didn't connect, it didn't connect with people. I was okay with that. It's not, I'm not on some... Why were you okay with that? Because it's not about narcissism. It's not about, you know...

any sort of anything for me personally. This is just, to me, it's the right thing to do. We need to get society going in a different direction. So I was perfectly prepared, and I still am prepared, right, to go forward. These are the things I stand for. This is what I'm trying to do in British Columbia, and try to convince people to support us because it's the right thing to do. Right. And if that doesn't work, you can go back to your other life. And if it doesn't work, you know, well, then, you know...

I can sleep well at night. I know that I stood for the values and principles that I feel were important and that I think I want to be able to see reflected in our society. Okay, so you mentioned when we first met, when we met today, you also said that you're not using pre-prepared speeches.

So what do you do? What do you do when you speak then? And how do you decide what you're going to talk about? Often I read the crowd. But many times there are set things that I want to talk about, the values and things that we want to do, whether it's changing the education system, whether it is ending decriminalization and safe supply, that kind of thing, whether it's getting our economy going, etc.

significant change that's needed in our healthcare system. Our healthcare system is absolutely crazy. We need to be looking at those European models, for example, that are universal healthcare, but delivered by both government and non-government agencies. So there's all these changes. So I'll talk about those. I'll talk about what the problems are, and I'll talk about what I think the solutions can be.

in terms of what we do as a society. And so, and it depends on, you know, which crowd I'm in, whether it's, you know, up in the north or in the interior, or whether it's down in the lower mainland or on the island, as to, it doesn't, I don't change what I'm saying. I change the topics that I may be talking about and focusing on, just because, you know, I know, I believe those topics are more relevant for a crowd, say, in Victoria than it is for a crowd in, say, Fort St. John.

Yeah, well, it's been remarkable to watch what's happened to the healthcare system in the last, particularly in the last five years. I think my wife, we live in Ontario, I think my wife has been without a physician for four years, and my physician is moving, and I have no idea how I'm going to replace him fundamentally. I mean, I have options, obviously, and options that most people don't have, but

It's very, very interesting to me to watch what's happening to the health care system because it's been a real pride point for Canadians and even more specifically for the left, the success of Canada's socialized Medicare system. And it's not an easy problem to solve, partly because...

Even the concept of healthcare in some ways is ridiculous. It's much too comprehensive to be considered as something that's a unit. But...

we have free healthcare in Canada. It's not free because we pay taxes, but it's also not free in another very fundamental way, which is that dying waiting is not free. For example, when my daughter needed an ankle replacement when she was 16, the waiting list was three years. And she was essentially walking around at that point on two broken legs. It's like three

Three years, eh? That's not three years. That's death. Because there's no way you walk around on two broken legs for three years and make it through that. That doesn't happen to people. And so the waiting list approach to cost...

is not effective. And so in Canada now we're in a situation where you can't get the care you need often. You can't even get on a waiting list to see a specialist that would provide that care. And you can't have private insurance to cover you and you can't pay for it. So the rationing system in Canada for health care is you get to die waiting.

Right, that's not free. In British Columbia, we don't actually collect these stats because government likes to operate in secret, which is a whole different topic. But looking at the national stats, we have the number of people dying in British Columbia today

on a daily basis waiting for diagnostic services or surgery is comparable to the number of people who are dying from the opioid crisis. And nobody's talking about it. And it's crazy. I find that completely unacceptable. Say that again. The number of people who are dying on a waiting list for diagnostic services and surgery

in British Columbia is comparable to the number of people who are dying of overdose deaths in British Columbia because of the opioid crisis. Right, right. Well, it seems to me that in Canada right now, and I truly believe this, that there are so many things happening

at a level that's actually scandalous that no one can keep up. I've really watched this with Trudeau because it's something remarkable for me to see. Like, about every two weeks, the Trudeau government has a scandal of sufficient magnitude under normal circumstances to collapse a competent government, and yet...

Nothing happens. And then the next scandal comes along. It's because people have lost faith in reporting because there's so much information out there. So actually, one of the things I want to do is change politics forever in British Columbia. And what I want to do is we have what's called Freedom of Information Requests, right? You have all this information, which is public information. And if you want it, you have to pay a certain amount of money and you can apply to access it. And months later, you might get some redacted document that you get. Yeah.

I'm going to change that. I'm going to get rid of a freedom of information request because I'm going to make all of the information that can be made public, public. And the job of the freedom of information officer should be to say what can't be made public. Give the people the facts. Give them the information. And then it's no longer politicians that are giving spin, but politicians that are responding to the facts.

And you can judge political parties based on facts as opposed to based on whatever spin they're giving. Try to build some confidence and a little bit, you know, restore some of that confidence back in government and government institutions that's being lost and continually eroded, particularly because of what's going on with the politics of the left. Okay. Do you think that you have garnered sufficient management and administrative experience to run a province that

From the combination of your work as a private entrepreneur, an MLA, you were a cabinet minister for a while. So how do you feel about your competence as an administrative leader? But then also, equally importantly, what makes you convinced that among the ranks of the Conservative Party, you have enough talent to formulate a cabinet that will be made of people who are

competent enough to do the job properly. I know, for example, when the Democrats took power in Washington, I know this for a fact, that they knew amongst themselves that they didn't have anywhere near enough competent people to fill the positions that needed to be filled. Hence the situation and part of the problem with the situation in the US. But it is a big problem. It's like

You're running a huge enterprise. It's certainly equivalent to a major corporation, like a major international corporation. 85 billion, 89 billion. Right, right, right. So why you? What do you bring to the table as a, not only as a leader who can speak directly to people, but more importantly, as an administrator and a manager? And how do you know that you have people around you that can actually do this job credibly?

Well, I mean, I'm perfectly willing to admit that, you know, I'm probably going to make a few mistakes. I mean, that's just, no one's perfect. However, what I do know is I know how government works. I know the process of how government works. You know, I'm more than capable from my perspective of being able to manage and govern and direct both the people involved as well as the bureaucracy, which is a huge part of the change that is going to be needed.

in terms of getting things done. We've got a very good group of people that are running for us with an enormous variety of skill sets, everything from lawyers and doctors to prominent business people, very successful business people, entrepreneurs to farmers, to local politicians.

And I also have a handful of people who have been in government before, not in cabinet, one other person has been in cabinet, but have been as MLAs. And so I've got a good mix of people to be able to draw from that I think have the experience that we need to be able to move forward the agenda. On top of that, of course, one of the big pieces is the transition.

You're coming into this and the NDP have had seven years to put all of their people in place and all their ideology driven and infiltrated throughout the system. So we need to come in and I've got a transition team that we've already been building and working on to come in and help us with making some changes that are needed so that we have that supportive layers within the bureaucracy to be able to push forward our agenda as well.

And so, I mean, it's going to be a lot of change. Believe me, there's a lot of work that needs to be done in over a very short period of time. But I've said to my colleagues that are running for me, I've said, look, be prepared for a lot of work. You're going to be putting in long hours. There is a lot to do in a short period of time. And, you know, I'm going to be, I guess you could say, quite a taskmaster to make sure that it gets done. Yeah. Well, you have that combination of

entrepreneurial, business and political experience that's relatively rare to have all three of those. So that's, well, that's something you definitely have under your belt. Let's talk about education for a minute. So I want to put forward a couple of propositions and tell you tell me what you think about them. So I've been speaking with Republican governors and the Republicans I know in the US, and that's quite a few of them as well as conservatives in Canada, about

the K-12 education system as well as the higher education system. But let's start with K-12. So I want to run another proposition by you. So I worked in the universities for a long time and I saw how they worked. And I worked at Harvard, which was

an unbelievably functional institution in the 1990s. I'd never been anywhere like it. McGill was good. I went to school as a graduate student at McGill, and I had a very good educational experience there. And McGill did a lot of things right, but Harvard was really knocking it out of the park when I was there in the 90s.

The senior faculty were the smartest people I'd ever met and the most educated. The undergraduates were unbelievably high quality. Like a third of them were the smartest kids you'd ever seen. And the other two thirds were, they were contenders, you know. And so, and the place really served excellence. And so, and then you could see the edges of the politically correct movement manifesting itself around the fringes in the 1990s, but they really didn't have any real influence.

power. The last time I was down in Boston was about a month ago. I met some of my former colleagues, great people, really. And they've all joined the free speech movement at Harvard, and they set themselves at odds with the administration, which is an appalling thing to see. And that's Harvard. And then

I was at the University of Toronto for a long time, and it made a lot of noise about excellence, but really had no real fundamental clue about what it meant or how to pursue it. But I had a very good time there, and I liked it a lot. But I learned a lot about what was wrong with higher education. And emblematic of what's wrong with higher education is the faculties of education.

They're full of educational psychologists, and that's a corrupt discipline, and almost everything that it's produced is a lie. Whole word learning, that's a lie. That antiphonics movement, the self-esteem movement, that's a complete bloody lie. And all it did was produce a pack of narcissists. Multiple intelligences, that's a complete bloody lie. The educational psychologists have been...

negative influence consistently for 60 years and the the faculties of education have arguably the worst students in the university and arguably the worst faculty now Why is that a problem? Well, they're radical and incompetent. That's a big problem in the United States They control 50% of the state budgets 50% Okay, and the faculties of education are why the Conservatives lost the culture war. I

And the conservatives have been too blind for four generations to see this. And there's a nexus point. The faculties of education have a hammerlock on teacher certification. And I don't understand that. There's no evidence whatsoever that their training regimens produce qualified teachers. None. We also even know what makes a teacher effective. Conscientiousness is the trait. High cognitive ability and conscientiousness. You can select them. Why...

What's your view of what's corrupted the K through 12 education system? And what do you think might be done about it? Because like, I think that the faculties of education should have the right to certify teachers stripped from them. It would kill them and they deserve it. And I think the reason that

Classic liberals and the conservatives have lost the culture wars because the faculties of education have had a hammerlock on teacher certification. So I know that's a mouthful and it's a radical analysis and a radical proposition, but I'm wondering what you think of what's going on in the K-12 system.

So I'm smiling because when I think about the education system, the first thing that comes to mind is our education system in British Columbia today is teaching kids what to think. It's not teaching kids how to think. It's not teaching kids how to be critical thinkers. And that is to me is the fundamental problem within the system itself.

And so there's material that is within our education system, which is designed for more of an indoctrination.

As opposed to actually providing kids with the skills they need. Kids are coming out of school and university professors called specialists are telling me they're not prepared for anything. They can't read. Well, secondary. They can't read and they don't know anything. Some people can't even write their own name. And so I look at that system. I think, okay, what is needed to start with is we need to do a full review of all the material that's being made available for teachers.

So, and look at it from a perspective of being neutral. Who would review it? Do you know? How would you go about that? You've got to put a team together that's going to review it. And so it's going to be some educators, it's going to be some people that are not educators who are going to go through and look at the material from that critical lens. And so, you know, for example, there's, I think, a book in grade four math, I think it's called Math That Matters. And the math

The math is correct, two plus two equals four. But the language being used is all about environmentalism. It's all social justice oriented. Exactly. It's all about, you know, anti-development and that whole side of things. So we wonder when the kids go to school, why have they got this bent? And because this is what they've been taught. Yeah. This is what they've been indoctrinated to. From day one. From day one. For 12 years. So we're going to try to change all of that, right? In terms of that material, make sure it's all neutral. Yeah.

terms of how the information is being provided. And quite frankly, we need to bring in something that I think is critical. Fiscal management, teaching kids about how money actually works, compound interest and debt and all those sort of things. So those will be some big shifts that we need to do. And the fight... Okay, so let me ask you a question about that. So...

why neutral exactly? Like, why not unabashedly anti-communist, unabashedly pro-free market, unabashedly Western tradition of freedom? You know, because I think, it seems to me that one of the errors that conservatives and classic liberals have made consistently across time is a kind of apologetic neutrality. So I'll give you one example. So at the University of Toronto,

In my personality course, so it's a psychology course, second year psychology course, I used to teach the kids about what happened in Stalinist Russia. And I did that because I used Alexander Solzhenitsyn as an example of existential psychology because he was an existential psychologist like Viktor Frankl. Now, one of the shocking things to me was that none of my students had ever heard about what had happened in Russia between 1920 and 1989, let's say.

even though we fought, we just about torched the planet and we fought a Cold War over it. They had no idea what the Stalinists had done. And so that's a good example of something that where even neutrality isn't sufficient. It's like the communists were brutal, genocidal murderers wherever they've set up shop. It's happening again in Venezuela. It's still happening in Cuba. It threatens all of South America. China is a complete bloody catastrophe on the

on the ideological front and they're permeating the world, it's a catastrophe. And our education system tells students nothing about that. And, you know, conservatives are,

This is particularly true in Canada, although it's starting to shift, is that they're so terrified of being demolished by the woke mob and also of being accused of something approximating social conservatism is that they do take refuge in something like neutrality. But I'm not sure it's time for neutrality anymore. It depends what you mean by neutrality. Yeah, okay, okay. And by the way, regarding the cancel culture, cancel culture only works if you allow them to cancel you. You just have to stand up and say, you know, take a hike.

And it goes away, right? Because if they can't cancel you, then they have to find something else to do. But with Garden School, what I mean by neutrality is not that we won't teach about communism, that we won't teach about the Holocaust, because we will. We need to show that from a perspective, this is the facts that happened. This is the evil that happened. This is the damage that was done with it. Not just from an ideological perspective, but from a facts-based perspective.

And that's what I mean by neutral. I don't mean neutral as we won't talk about communism, we won't talk about fascism, we won't talk about democracy or capitalism, whatever the case may be. We will. But in terms of providing facts and information so that people, the kids, can look at it.

look at this and come to their own conclusions. And because you're going to have people still on the left and the right and families are still going to have lots of influence, I think that's okay. That's a rounded society. I think where society runs into trouble is it gets too far on any one particular side, you know, the pendulum swinging back and forth. And so you want to try to keep that as much as you can into a place where it creates positive opportunities and people who are informed and critical thinkers and are able to look at information that comes forward with a critical eye and ask the questions.

based on facts that they have, you know, particularly from our history. And so that's what I'm hoping our education system will become. So I have mixed feelings about this because

For a conservative to stand up and say all the institutions that we relied on the West are corrupt in some ways plays directly into the hands of the leftist radicals who say all the institutions in the West are irreparably corrupt, right? And this is a real problem. It's a real problem. And then I look at the K-12 education system and I think, well, we could look at what happened at Twitter when Musk took it over. He fired like 85% of the people. No decrement in Twitter performance. In fact, quite the contrary. But he had to do that in order to

dispense with the ideological corruption because it was that deep. It's like, it strikes me as highly probable that that's the case with the education system. And it, because it's been four generations of this. So, you know, in, in British Columbia, so I was a school trustee for three years. And, uh, there was, uh, one of, one of the schools I looked after, there was two grade four classes. Um, you know, all the kids going into one class were at or about a grade three reading level and left at or about a grade four reading level.

All the kids going into the other class were at or about a grade three reading level, left at or about a grade three reading level. Right, right, right. And so I looked at it and went, wait a second, this teacher is obviously, there's something going on here. If this is happening year after year after year, there's obviously, you know. Performance problem. Performance problem. Well, in the education system of British Columbia, you can't remove somebody for bad performance. Yeah.

It's not possible. I think there's only one person since 1986 and in a system that's got 42,000 teachers. I mean, as you know, there's going to be a certain percentage just by statistics that are going to be problematic. 65% of managers add negative net value to their companies. Exactly. That's why the old rule, 20% getting work done, right? In terms of it. So you look at this and you think, okay.

this is a real problem. But because the union has such a lock on this, it is extremely difficult to change that. So there are some shifts that I am looking at and considering in terms of the education system. But I need to start with the basics first and then see how that can improve and then look at what the next level needs to be in terms of making those shifts. And the reason why I'm saying that is

There's only so much change people will accept.

Absolutely. As you know, right? Most people won't accept any change, except when you get these moments in time, like I think we have in British Columbia, where people are expecting and wanting change. Right, so you have a window. So you've got a window to be able to do a number of things, right? And so there's a lot of change that's needed. And so how far do you push on some of those things before you prevent yourself from actually being able to get changes that you need in other areas? Well, you're going to be in the same position as Pauliev, I think, because...

Whatever you think the state of the British economy is, or the British Columbian economy, it's worse. And so that's going to be dumped on you the moment you take office, assuming that you win. And the same thing is going to happen to Polyev. So you're going to have the problem of having to make radical changes while simultaneously having to bear the burden of every bad decision that's been made in the last decade.

who knows how long, at least seven years. So yeah, that's a very tough, that's a very tough road to hold. And the number one thing we need to do, right? I mean, there's all these changes we need on the social side and structure within government and all that kind of stuff. But the number one thing we need to do is we actually need to get our economy going. I mean, they've driven the economy into the ground. And so we're going to basically have a bit of a slogan, which is just to get stuff done. I might use a different word, the S word. But,

But we just have to do this, right? We have to get the permits out the door. We have to change that structure in place so that we can actually start driving the economy and creating the environment where people want to stay in British Columbia and to give them hope for that they can build their future. So that's going to be a big focus.

While we are doing the structural changes on all the social side, like in health and education, the stuff we need to change on the criminal codes and the stuff we need to change in the drugs and that whole side of things. So there's a lot that's going to be going on all at the same time. But as a priority, you've got to think, okay, we've got to be able to pay for this. We're running an $8 billion deficit, the largest deficit in BC's history. We're running a 10% deficit just about.

And you want to be able to get tax relief, you've got to get rid of things like the carbon tax. It's another $3.5 billion that are taken out of people's pockets. So you've got to do that structural change, but at the same time, you need the money to do it. So you have to be able to get the environment where people will want to invest in British Columbia again and create those jobs and drive, quite frankly, wage growth, which is another big factor that needs to be done to deal with affordability. Okay, so I wanted to close with a discussion of priorities because I thought it would be useful for you to tell your voters...

you know, what your priorities are in the near future if you become premier. And you just alluded to that. So let's close by delving into priorities. So you said that your first priority is going to be to get the economy moving. And so what...

What relatively short-term measures do you think that you could take that would give you that 80% return for 20% investment? Like, what are the egregious errors that are being committed right now that you could, in principle, reverse rapidly that would signal to people that,

if those who can will now be allowed and encouraged to do? What could they look forward to in the first three or four months? So we have 17 mines that are either permitted or about to be permitted in British Columbia. That represents a $38 billion investment that will generate between 20,000 and 30,000 jobs with an average wage benefit of $138,000 a year. And we'll add $500 to $800 billion to British Columbia's GDP over the life of those mines.

So we're just going to get those things out the door and get started. Obviously, there's going to be work with First Nations and things that need done. That's going to be a priority to get done. There are three more natural gas pipelines permitted to the coast. Those permits will start expiring in November of this year. They've already had five-year extensions. They can't apply for another extension. So on day one, we are going to do a pass an order in council to give a 10-year extension to those permits because there's a linear project they don't need to go through. Nothing has changed.

We're going to be then changing the need for using electricity for compression of LNG, of natural gas, to using natural gas for compression. So these are the basic things that we'll do right at the beginning to start getting the investment back into British Columbia. Then there's some structural changes on forestry we need to do. And then, of course, there's some structural changes we need to do just from the economic side as well.

Period. For example, in British Columbia, it takes two years or longer to get something as simple as a warehouse built. South of the border, it's three months. And so we need to strip away. So everybody just moves south of the border. So we're just, we got to strip away all that, all that permitting process and go to a place that's one project, one permit. Right.

and clean up a bunch of these things. So all of that stuff is designed to set the stage. But then the key is you still have to get people to invest. You still get people that want to do work in British Columbia. And so you set the stage and then you have to build the confidence that they can come in and actually make- For the long run. For the long run and know that when they're putting $38 billion into the ground for various projects, that they have a reasonable expectation for return within a reasonable time frame.

And so, and the certainty when they go in that, you know, the land's not going to shift from underneath them. Okay, so if I was an environmentalist radical listening to what you just said, I'd be rubbing my hands in anticipation of all the protests that I could mount. So if you go ahead with rapid, what would you say, restructuring so that these projects could take place, you'll be facing a substantial amount of pretty radical opposition. And so

That's a very difficult thing to deal with, right? Except for one thing. This is a democratic society, at least it should be. And if we're given the mandate to do this, then that's what we will do.

It's not like we're not being upfront and talking to people and saying, this is what we're going to do. This is what we're going to do. And we will have the people's mandate should we be elected to actually be able to implement these things. Now, we're not throwing environmental standards out the window. Of course, we're going to meet the environmental standards. We want to make sure that we are good citizens of our environment and of the land that we have.

But we're not going to be jumping through these enormous hoops and the barriers that are put in place that have been intentionally put in to stymie the opportunity to actually do anything. And so if there's going to be people that are going to protest it, I get it. There's going to be. But they're not going to stop you. People have the right to protest. If they want to fill the lawn of the legislature, that's fine. You know what? And I listen to them if there's reasonable arguments to be made. But if they're just going to be, you know, just protesting because they want everybody to be naked running under the trees...

you know, fill your boots. I'm not interested in going down that path. But if they want to come forward with reasonable things that we need to address, okay, we'll look at that. But the one thing I will not allow is I'm not going to allow hate and I'm not going to allow, you know, violence in terms of our society. Like what we're seeing right now, for example, the anti-Semitism that is going on in British Columbia and the protests where people are calling for the destruction of the Jewish people and the genocide of Jewish people. Wait a second.

That is hate by its very definition. That should not be allowed in our society. It should not be, it needs to be stopped. Government needs to step up and say, no, that is not acceptable. Because if that's allowed, where does that carry on? Where does that go? I was talking with one family, one Jewish family. She's 67. Her mom grew up through the Holocaust. And she is making plans to leave British Columbia. And I asked her why. And she said, because what's happening today is,

reminds her very much of the stories her mother told about 1932 in Germany. It's unbelievable. I never thought I'd see this in Canada. That scares me. And so that's a fundamental shift that we need to do to get back to a society that is open, that is fair, that is treating people fairly and safely. And it's a shift on that side that is desperately needed. Okay, so I'm going to summarize our conversation. For everybody watching and listening, I think I'll continue to talk to John Rustad about

the philosophy of conservatism and small-L liberalism in some detail on the Daily Wire side. So that's an important... And to contrast that with the radical utopianism of, let's say, the progressive neo-Marxist left, I'd like to go more into the philosophy of government and governance. So we'll do that on the Daily Wire side. To summarize, essentially, well...

British Columbia is a province where the war between the utopian socialists and the free market classic English liberals really is particularly market intense. And the utopian socialist green types, anti-human green types, I think, have had the upper hand for a good long time in British Columbia. And there's been a fair amount of

Very little environmental progress and a fair amount of economic havoc wreaked as a consequence. And so you want to take the reins, let's say, and return the province to something approximating a free market orientation. Your primary considerations upon taking the reins of the government will be economic. You want to get rid of the obstacles in the way of allowing the people of British Columbia to have a

high quality economic futures. You talked about mines, you talked about forestry, you talked about fossil fuels. It's low hanging fruit in a sense, if you can clear away the red tape and keep the protesters at bay, at least stop them from stopping everything. And so that's your short term plan. On the longer term, you're looking at education reform, healthcare reform, maybe some additional

fortification of property rights, and you think that you can get the economic ball rolling in relatively short order. You think that you're the man for the job, at least in part because

You made a decision to run on principle, even though you don't exactly need the job. You have private enterprise experience as an entrepreneur and as a manager. You're an MLA for a good period of time, and you're in the cabinet. And you think that you have enough people around you so that you could do a competent job. Is there anything that I missed as a summary?

That's a pretty good summary from my perspective. And I always like to say, what we stand for is just to stand for what's right and fight for the average everyday person. When you look at the class differences, the left has really become a party of elites and environmentalists, and the average person is being left out of that equation entirely. And so that's got to be a focus of us as a government. It's so funny. You and I, we're about the same age. And when

when we were younger, it was pretty obvious that the NDP was a working class party run in large by labor union leaders. The conservatives were the party of big business and the liberals were sort of in the middle and everyone knew that and everybody played that game.

In a pretty straight way, I would say. It's pretty damn weird that Pierre Boliev is attracting all the people in work boots now and that the Conservatives have become the party of the working class. You know, and in British Columbia, we are getting a large number of people from the NDP actually coming over and joining us and being part of our party. I've got a former NDP MLA running for us. The former leader of the Green Party has come out and endorsed policies and approaches that we're doing because they just make sense as opposed to much of this ideology that, quite frankly, is going too far. So,

And we put together a very interesting coalition in British Columbia, and we call it conservatism. Yeah. And we call it the Conservative Party. Yeah. Really, like I say, it's more of that just standing for what's right instead of, you know, on ideologies. Right, right. All right, sir. Well, good luck on the October 19th election. I'll be watching that with great interest and not a little trepidation because it would really be an awful thing to have the ports of British Columbia closed off.

for Canada to aid the world with, let's say, energy provision. That would really be quite the catastrophe for many people, not just the people in British Columbia, for the Japanese, arguably for the Europeans.

Yeah. So I really hope that right across the world, you bet right across the world. It is our hope that we can bring back just a little common sense, even though common sense isn't very common, but just get back to the basics and, you know, open up our province and quite frankly, help that to open up the country as well in terms of what can happen and what should happen for what I truly believe is the best country in the world. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thanks, sir. Very much. Very good talking to you.

Thank you. And thank you to everybody watching and listening. Another, what would you say, slice of the ongoing culture war making itself manifest in what should be and easily could be Canada's richest province. British Columbia is a remarkably beautiful place with an immense amount of

opportunity and possibility and it's a real catastrophe to watch it degenerate into this idiot counterproductive socialist utopia so to speak um and put the entire economy of the country at risk so i'm hoping that there'll be some change on october 19th thank you to everybody who's watching and listening thank you to the film crew here in fairview alberta where we managed to do this live so that was quite an unexpected bonus and uh

a welcome opportunity. And thanks again, sir, for taking the time to talk with me. Thank you very much. I've enjoyed our chat.