Juno News - October 29, 2026


British Columbia finally has a Conservative government

Canada’s broken justice system is failing its own people Manitoba NDP Minister accused of $250K offer in First Nations dispute

Episode Stats


Length

2 minutes

Words per minute

177.17

Word count

510

Sentence count

34

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 British Columbia finally has a conservative government, for the first time since 1933.
00:00:14.020 And this time, it's not a centrist government under the liberal banner,
00:00:18.260 it is a true conservative provincial government.
00:00:21.400 The sea is definitely blue!
00:00:28.520 Oh my goodness, thank you so much, everyone.
00:00:32.760 We are so glad that you're here.
00:00:35.120 Thank you to everyone in this room.
00:00:38.320 And of course, everyone watching at home, what a night this is.
00:00:42.660 Together, we...
00:00:44.400 man i am out of breath i am so excited together we seized this opportunity you guys and together
00:00:55.920 we voted for a better british columbia i was there in that room on saturday night at the bc
00:01:02.460 conservative party election night event alongside my colleagues at juno news kian bexty and clayton
00:01:08.980 domain. And after about a week's time of reflecting, I've come to the position, and this is not to take
00:01:15.220 away anything from the BC Conservative Party's victory, a stunning victory, an amazing victory,
00:01:20.440 but I have come to the position that actually this was probably the easiest campaign that many of the
00:01:26.660 people involved in the BC Conservative Party and the MLA's have ever run in, and maybe ever will
00:01:32.320 run in again in the future. Why do I say that? Well, I say that because David Eby, the former
00:01:37.840 Premier of British Columbia, who's probably the easiest candidate to run against. All the BC
00:01:42.520 Conservative Party had to do was pick a relatively unknown, very stable, very normal MLA, who probably,
00:01:51.000 frankly, wasn't known by that many people in British Columbia, certainly wasn't known by,
00:01:55.320 I would venture to guess, basically anyone outside of British Columbia just a month and a half ago,
00:02:01.100 pick him to be the leader, and make sure that the Premier, David Eby, was doing all the talking.
00:02:06.400 because the more talking that David Eby was doing, the worse it was getting for the BC NDP.
00:02:11.520 In many cases, BC Premier David Eby had to walk back his own statements during the campaign.
00:02:16.920 As long as the BC Conservative Party was able to make sure that the election was about a referendum
00:02:21.940 on David Eby, not a referendum on Trump, not a referendum on the BC Conservative Party or their
00:02:28.520 leader, they were going to win. David Eby was unable to sell the British Columbia public
00:02:33.720 on what this election was going to be about.
00:02:36.440 He was unable to convince British Columbians
00:02:38.620 that Donald Trump was the man that he was running against
00:02:41.700 and was the person that British Columbians
00:02:43.520 should be fearing the most.
00:02:45.000 And he was unable to get out of his own way.
00:02:46.860 Besides the actual election call,
00:02:48.460 the decision to call the snap election
00:02:50.360 at a moment when the BC Conservative Party
00:02:53.080 barely had its own leader
00:02:54.860 and was reeling from months of internal party strife.
00:02:59.620 From that very moment,
00:03:00.900 David E.B. made two big mistakes.
00:03:02.640 The first was that he got caught taking up two spaces for $10 a day child care.
00:03:07.680 Those are supposed to go to struggling families, a growing number of them in British Columbia.
00:03:12.480 Jason, the word we continue to hear is hypocrisy.
00:03:16.480 In BC, only 10% of child care spaces are dedicated to $10 a day.
00:03:23.080 And these are positions that are highly in demand.
00:03:26.440 And yesterday, we learned that David Eby's family is one of the lucky few who has access to one.
00:03:32.640 Has your family ever benefited from a $10 a day child care program? And if so, can you clarify when and how?
00:03:39.840 Yes. I don't want to reveal where my kids go to daycare, but yes, my family has, yes.
00:03:45.840 The second big mistake from David Eby was to use the tragedy at CFB Wainwright to make a point about questioning the conservatism of the B.C. Conservative leader and the B.C. Conservative Party.
00:03:58.520 But when David Eby brought up the deadly fire in Wainwright...
00:04:01.920 We all are in mourning about the loss of lives of our true heroes.
00:04:07.540 He was accused of exploiting a tragedy.
00:04:09.940 It is beyond disgusting and desperate for Mr. Eby to invoke the lives of the soldiers lost over the weekend in an effort to save his own political skin.
00:04:18.600 And frankly, what is wrong with this man?
00:04:20.960 Those comments went down so poorly that David Eby had to call a press conference later on in the day just to apologize for those remarks.
00:04:29.160 These young men, their sacrifice is sacred. The grief of these families is sacred.
00:04:36.280 And to ensure that there is no confusion going forward, I will keep any comment related to this horrific tragedy completely separate from conversations about the campaign.
00:04:47.240 Days before voters head to the polls, the NDP leader in damage control.
00:04:52.660 I think it was probably a week after the BC NDP called the election that they realized they were going to lose.
00:05:00.600 Alright, we're going to get into the BC election, what this means for Canada,
00:05:03.420 what this means for the conservative movement across the country,
00:05:05.720 and what lessons can be taken from it later on in the show.
00:05:09.340 Before we do, I want to encourage all of you to take out a Juno News subscription.
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00:06:00.900 As always, be sure to like this video, subscribe to the Juno News YouTube channel, and the common question for the episode is this.
00:06:07.840 How conservative will the BC conservative government actually be?
00:06:12.800 Let me know your answer in the comments below, and let's get into it.
00:06:15.360 All right, so Loren Dirksen is the new Premier of British Columbia,
00:06:18.520 the first Conservative Premier since 1933.
00:06:22.500 Upon winning, he laid out his vision for British Columbia,
00:06:26.260 slashing taxes, securing BC's fiscal future,
00:06:30.420 cutting red tape, repealing DRIPA, and fixing BC's healthcare system.
00:06:35.200 I believe in cutting red tape. I believe in energy.
00:06:39.020 We will double, yes, we will cut red tape like it's never been cut before.
00:06:47.740 We will double natural gas production by 2032 and triple it by 2035.
00:06:57.000 A $1,000 tax cut is just the start with no new taxes in British Columbia.
00:07:03.220 I believe in health care that is fully and publicly funded.
00:07:12.220 I believe rural ERs and maternity wards that are actually open.
00:07:18.220 And I believe, yes, I believe in getting British Columbians the family doctors that they need
00:07:26.220 and the hospitals that are safe for our doctors and our nurses who work in them.
00:07:32.220 believe in the protection of private property rights and that British Columbia
00:07:37.120 and British Columbia where parks are open to all British Columbians.
00:07:48.040 The problems in British Columbia are severe. It's going to take a long time
00:07:51.540 for a conservative majority government to be able to fix everything in the province.
00:07:56.660 And the likelihood of them actually being able to fix everything is pretty slim. That's not
00:08:00.940 usually how things go. And the fiscal situation in British Columbia, the debt in the province is so
00:08:06.400 severe that committing not to raising any taxes while solving that problem is going to be hard.
00:08:12.000 It's a job that needs to be done, but it's not going to be done easily. But let's go back to
00:08:15.400 the election and what we saw from the Conservative Party of British Columbia. You've all probably seen
00:08:19.480 their commitments, their plans for the future of the province, but I want to get into the substance
00:08:24.620 in the strategy of the campaign. Clearly, the obvious strategy of the campaign was to not get
00:08:31.680 in David Eby's way. To not stop your enemy when he's in the middle of making a mistake.
00:08:37.680 And David Eby wouldn't stop making mistakes. The conservatives held far fewer press conferences,
00:08:43.300 for example, than David Eby did. There were fewer media appearances. That's not to say there weren't
00:08:48.160 any. Of course, there were. Lauren Dirksen was not hidden during the campaign, but he was certainly
00:08:53.880 not out in front of the cameras to the same extent that David Eby was. That strategy worked
00:09:00.280 perfectly in British Columbia. It worked perfectly in this election. I would argue that if the federal
00:09:06.900 election was held between Pierre Polyev and Justin Trudeau, obviously Pierre Polyev would have won,
00:09:11.780 but the same strategy would have worked against Justin Trudeau because he would have been making
00:09:16.120 his own mistakes. The message would have been in the federal election campaign had it been between
00:09:21.280 Trudeau and Pierre Polyev, why the liberals shouldn't win. And that's exactly what the
00:09:25.560 message was in British Columbia, why the BC NDP should not win. It wasn't about Lorne Dirksen.
00:09:30.720 It wasn't about the BC Conservative Party, a party which, by the way, was self-imploding
00:09:34.980 just a month before the election was actually even called. That's how you know that the BC NDP
00:09:40.680 was almost bound to lose. Because if you lose under those circumstances, in the way the BC NDP
00:09:45.340 did, if you lose against a party with an interim leader led by a man who many British Columbians
00:09:51.200 did not know of, and yet you still managed to lose by that much, you know that they were probably
00:09:57.100 never going to win. The message that I think conservative strategists, politicos, candidates,
00:10:03.580 politicians should not take away from this is that this is a foolproof strategy that would win in
00:10:08.520 every instance. For example, I want to point you to probably the last piece of campaign advertisement
00:10:13.900 done by the BC Conservative Party. It wasn't a message from the BC Conservative leader. It wasn't
00:10:19.840 a commitment or a plan or a new idea. It was simply rearranging the letters of Eby's name
00:10:25.400 to read, bye. Which was the message that David Eby was the campaign question.
00:10:30.740 It was a referendum on David Eby. And it worked flawlessly.
00:10:34.620 now take the strategy from the bc conservative party and imagine using it in the next federal
00:10:53.820 election against mark carney who right now is extremely popular according to the polls he's
00:10:59.360 obviously not popular in this audience and i'm not saying that one bit but let's look at the
00:11:04.060 general electorate, the general polling. Carney is very popular. Pierre Paulio and the federal
00:11:08.240 conservatives do not nearly have that same kind of popularity or approval rating. So if you just
00:11:13.700 let Mark Carney make his own mistakes during the campaign, well, that's not going to work. He's not
00:11:18.600 going to make those mistakes. So that's just some thoughts about the campaign strategy. One that I
00:11:22.200 think was executed perfectly. And obviously the results bear that out. It was, it was very well
00:11:27.840 done, very well organized and very successful. Now I want to talk about what this means for the
00:11:33.880 BC Conservative Party and the incoming BC government. Look, the BC Conservative Party
00:11:38.820 has a lot of conservative MLAs. There are a lot of very conservative MLAs, but there are also quite
00:11:45.780 a few centrist MLAs. There are quite a few MLAs that you would look at, you might talk to, and
00:11:52.060 walk away from a conversation thinking you were talking to an Ontario Liberal. I don't think
00:11:57.540 that's a controversial thing to say. I think many people can see that. I think part of that is a
00:12:02.900 testament to the BC Conservative Party being able to hold such a wide tent in order to keep as many
00:12:09.040 people involved as possible. But let's not forget that prior to this election, there were several
00:12:15.320 BC Conservative MLAs who left the party, who joined the BC United, the BC Center, only to then turn
00:12:23.480 around and rejoin the BC Conservative Party when it looked like they were going to win. You also
00:12:27.800 have BC Conservative Party MLAs who, for example, believe that the Kamloops claim was correct or
00:12:35.620 that the Kamloops claim at least should not be questioned. So the question then becomes how do
00:12:39.620 you hold this coalition together? And how do you govern conservatively in a way that ensures that
00:12:47.220 you can actually keep winning provincial elections? How do you ensure, for example, that you're able
00:12:51.320 to execute on policies like involuntary treatment for the addicted population in British Columbia
00:12:58.060 without triggering a left-wing uprising in your BC urban centers. The economic policies won't be
00:13:05.600 controversial. Those will be the easiest to actually follow through on. It's the social
00:13:11.680 policies that are going to have the most pushback, education and First Nations issues, which are
00:13:17.220 bound to receive the most protest. Now, let's step back even further and assess what this means for
00:13:23.300 the conservative movement in Canada. There were a lot of people trying to make a through line,
00:13:29.280 trying to find a connection between what Lauren Dirksen's victory in BC means for Pierre Poliev.
00:13:34.200 So the only real concern that I think federal conservatives should have about what the BC
00:13:40.200 election victory means for them is about style and strategy, right? Lauren Dirksen's campaign
00:13:45.520 strategy was basically the opposite of Pierre Polyev's campaign strategy, where Polyev was
00:13:51.160 trying to flood the zone with content and with combative energy and with rallies, which I think
00:13:58.340 did appeal to the Canadian electorate in many instances. Lauren Dirksen's campaign was 0.96
00:14:04.440 completely different and his style is different. I think in some respects, Lauren Dirksen is more
00:14:08.360 of a moderate conservative than Pierre Polyev is. So if there's any concern to be had at a federal
00:14:13.880 level for the conservatives. I think it's purely stylistic. I don't think anyone here is expecting
00:14:18.360 the BC Conservative Party and the BC Conservative government under Lauren Dirksen to be the most
00:14:23.680 based provincial government we've ever seen. I don't think people are expecting the BC Conservative
00:14:28.020 government to be extremely right-wing. I think there are big changes that need to happen. There
00:14:34.860 are big decisions that need to be made in the face of a lot of social pressure, which will inevitably
00:14:38.680 come. But the question obviously now has to be, how conservative is this government going to be?
00:14:45.680 They already have a huge majority government. They have a lot of space. If they need to ditch
00:14:49.440 certain MLAs who are not on board with the program, they can do that and they won't suffer
00:14:54.540 a major problem. They have space to get rid of four or five MLAs if they need to. But we will see
00:15:02.100 how conservative British Columbia will become. Because to those who don't live in British 1.00
00:15:07.640 Columbia. Spend just a little bit of time in that province, the beautiful province that it is, and
00:15:11.700 you'll realize the place needs some big conservative changes. So let's see what can happen. BC voters
00:15:16.940 gave this incoming government a serious mandate, a mandate for change, and that is what will be
00:15:21.600 expected of them, not just in BC, but across the country. All right, everyone, that's going to do
00:15:25.660 it for us this week on the show. A reminder to use my code junonews.com slash harrisonreturn to
00:15:29.980 get a discount on a Juno News subscription. A further reminder to answer the comment question
00:15:34.260 of the video. How conservative will the new B.C. conservative government actually be?
00:15:39.100 My name is Harrison Faulkner, and this is Ratio.