Two BC Liberal Party leadership candidates visited Powell River in the final days of the campaign to be the next premier.
About 40 people attended an event on February 16 hosted by Powell River Sunshine Coast BC Liberal Riding Association to meet Kevin Falcon, who has been endorsed by 19 MLAs and at least 153 business people. Falcon said the leadership race is energizing communities around the province. “This leadership race has been the best thing that has ever happened to us as a party and as a government,” he said.
Falcon said that the HST was the right thing to do, not the easy thing. He said the government introduced it “ineptly and I take my share of the responsibility for that.” He also supports the HST referendum and will ensure that the public receives information in order to make an informed vote.
In answering a question about BC Ferries, Falcon said David Hahn, president and CEO, has said recently unless the company receives $25 million more from the province, there will be stratospheric increases in fares. “I know David well, he’s a tough negotiator and what he’s doing there is called maneuvering,” said Falcon.
The BC Ferry Commissioner will make recommendations, Falcon said, then the government will negotiate a final deal that will determine what the government’s subsidy will be. “The issue is what is the right amount and do we have to have something different for the smaller runs,” he said. Falcon committed to listening to small ferry-dependent communities, to learn from that discussion and to “make decisions that will reflect the importance of ensuring that we have access.”
Two previous events with Christy Clark had to be cancelled because of weather. But the former Liberal deputy premier who is considered the frontrunner in the contest, persisted and told about 100 people at the Shinglemill Pub and Bistro on February 21, that she was the only one of the four candidates who represented change. “If we do not offer change to British Columbians, the New Democrats will win the election,” she said. “We can’t let the NDP get back into office and we’re going to have to offer real change.”
Even though she spent time in cabinet, Clark said she feels like an outsider in this race. “One of the things that I’ve discovered as I travelled is that a lot of our own BC Liberal Party members now feel like outsiders in our party,” she said. “I think we have to bring the outsiders inside and I don’t think we can let the politicians and the insiders decide who wins this race.”
Clark said she supports the HST, but the government needed “to talk to people before they brought it in.”
About BC Ferries, Clark said if she’s elected, she will discuss rising fares and the provincial government’s subsidy with Hahn and tell him to look inside the company to find efficiencies. “I think this attitude that one of the things we can do is just raise rates is totally unacceptable,” she said. “The other side of that is if you raise rates enough, you won’t have any more customers and if you don’t have any more customers, you will kill coastal communities.”
About 95,000 party members are eligible to cast ballots on Saturday, February 26, to elect the next premier of the province. George Abbott and Mike de Jong are the other two candidates in the race.
