00:00:15.760Okay, great. So you've been in a little bit of hot water here. There was media reports that there
00:00:22.400There was an investigation launched by the commissioner of Canada's elections.
00:00:29.420I just want to get your perspective on that.
00:00:31.440And for the audience who might not be familiar, like, you know, can you just explain to our audience what, you know, what do you make of those media reports and that you were under investigation and just days before the voting began?
00:00:45.100well first of all i have absolutely no notice of being under any investigation i've never been
00:00:55.100contacted by elections canada or anyone on behalf of the commissioner neither has my official agent
00:01:03.340from that federal run which was about 13 months ago now and it's very curious the timing that
00:01:12.460this would come up just as we are literally imminently about to vote in the bc conserve
00:01:19.180party leadership race the voting started this morning at 8 a.m and goes through to 8 a.m on may
00:01:26.30029th when you say what do i make of it well you know when you're totally taken by surprise i was
00:01:33.420actually out touring around the interior and the Okanagan here when I heard the news and the news
00:01:43.080for me was an inquiry by a reporter who said they had a document they were looking at and wanted my
00:01:50.420comment. I had no idea what they were talking about and I still don't officially but it certainly
00:02:00.360led to a lot of media attention and speculation which is difficult to respond to when you're being
00:02:08.660taken by surprise. I do not believe there is an Elections Canada investigation. My understanding
00:02:16.400is there may be some preliminary inquiries related to an unsubstantiated complaint but
00:02:25.340But it is also my understanding that if there is actually an investigation, then it is incumbent on Elections Canada to let the subject of that investigation know about it.
00:02:38.320And certainly any contact I've had with Elections Canada to date, which is well over a year ago, was where they contacted both me and my official agent at the same time.
00:02:52.760And neither of us have heard anything from them, like I said, for over a year.
00:02:57.120So this has taken me by surprise. I think it's very unfortunate that it went into the public domain and that LIOC took it seriously enough that they started to look into it and had emergency meetings about it.
00:03:13.960the good news is I am still on the ballot and intend to stay there. Voting has begun. I've had
00:03:21.360so many people reach out to me this morning and said, I voted right at 8.15 a.m. or whatever when
00:03:26.820they got the notice. I'm very encouraged by that. Absolutely. And Juno News spoke to the
00:03:33.860Commissioner of Canada Elections. They wouldn't confirm an investigation, but they did say
00:03:38.480they would have to inform you by law if there was an investigation. So I just want to get your
00:03:45.960response to some of the allegations in that. I know you said they were unsubstantiated claims,
00:03:51.080but one of them was that $75,000 of undeclared and unpaid services from a corporation were used
00:03:58.480by the campaign in exchange for promised federal contracts. Is that true? What's your response to
00:04:05.100that? I've made a very public statement that I put online. Actually, I did a press release
00:04:12.840because it seemed to be getting all this kind of attention. And that press release very clearly
00:04:20.460says this is unsubstantiated. It is not true. But I'm encouraged by the fact that our party
00:04:30.020chose to uphold its founding principles of freedom and grassroots representation. I certainly have a grassroots supportive kind of campaign, I guess you'd say, and this is all about democratic accountability.
00:04:46.660And I do not think that anyone would agree that someone should be criticized in the public domain when we're talking about unproven, anonymous, semi-anonymous accusations.
00:05:07.880That's not our form of democracy and accountability.
00:07:54.100But the overarching issue right now, I think, for everyone in the province,
00:07:59.120is the effect of the Cowichan court decision, which followed the law of B.C.,
00:08:07.420because we do have rule of law in this country and in our province and that rule of law in bc
00:08:14.540was what we call dripa which is basically taking undrip out of the united nations and making it
00:08:22.780into domestic law which was done several years ago with a unanimous vote of the bc liberals
00:08:29.740and the bc ndp and no doubt a green mla or two in there and uh i find the talk around it very
00:08:41.420curious because i've heard people say who were bc liberal mlas well we we voted for it the ndp
00:08:50.300lied to us they said it was just aspirational you don't put aspirations into law aspirations
00:08:58.460are something you sit and chat about or hope for but you don't put them into the law of the land
00:09:05.340and in the Cowichan decision what is particularly concerning for all British Columbians is that the
00:09:12.940judge said that neither the provincial government nor the nor the federal government made any
00:09:19.820argument whatsoever nor presented any evidence on the issue of supremacy of our land title system
00:09:27.340which by the way has been in place here for since about 1861 since before we joined confederation
00:09:34.060and also when you see these court cases involving the crown and i've stood up as a lawyer for the
00:09:41.980independence of the judiciary but the reality is that when the crown is one of the parties
00:09:50.220it is the government of the day that chooses the legal team and instructs them on what to argue
00:09:58.200and what not to argue so when the judge made a point of pointing out that our governments
00:10:06.760abandon the field on such a pivotal issue this is where we must say we need a change of government
00:10:14.020We need a government that will speak for and stand up for all British Columbians.
00:10:19.900And I believe there are many economic partnerships in our future, Indigenous and non-Indigenous.
00:10:26.300I believe there will be a need for P2 and P3 partnerships.
00:10:31.340We have failing infrastructure in B.C.
00:10:34.400Every town I was in up north seems to have a bridge falling down.
00:10:38.900one of them in taylor is actually part of the alaska highway system though it's pretty serious
00:10:45.440when truckers have to go over a bridge that's not sound also in quenelle trying to get over the
00:10:53.560fraser river or under it here in the lower mainland through the massey tunnel this has been
00:10:59.880a subject of debate for probably 50 years that we need a bridge or a twinning of the tunnel or a
00:11:07.060bridge and they've been back and forth, still nothing done. These are major infrastructure
00:11:12.220projects. We have needs on Vancouver Island, on the Island Highway there. There are parts of our
00:11:18.980Trans-Canada heading east that need real widening and attention to bring them up to modern standards.
00:11:27.100So we have a lot of work to do and it seems this NDP government is simply not listening.
00:11:32.640The other troubling thing that most people talk to me about, along with our school and education system, which the Fraser Institute has said our academic performance has been going down for the last five years, that's very troubling, is our resource wealth is being left in the ground.
00:11:55.060And we see that Atlantic Canada is buying their LNG from Australia, their oil from the Saudis.
00:12:01.020I mean, this is not the way it should be.
00:12:05.740I believe B.C. can be an energy powerhouse.
00:12:09.220I believe it can be an economic powerhouse with good-paying jobs and a bright future,
00:12:17.060This government chooses to leave it all in the ground.
00:12:20.580I've heard it opine that all Canadians have a resource wealth of $800,000 per capita,
00:12:29.600and we're the only jurisdiction really that chooses to invest in ideology instead of the
00:12:35.660prosperity of our citizens. I agree with the pipeline up north but we also need tankers to
00:12:41.680be able to come in and pick up what is being delivered through those pipelines. We have a
00:12:48.240two to three day geographic advantage to Pacific and Asian markets out of our Prince Rupert port
00:12:55.380over our competitors Seattle and Long Island in California and our pillar resources Clayton
00:13:03.680are what built this province and they are agriculture mining forestry and fisheries
00:13:13.560and yet we have an NDP government under David Eby that often refers to these as sunset industries
00:13:20.900In other words, they want them to fail. And they are not going to do what a Finley conservative government would do, which is get those engines of prosperity working again, getting those good paying jobs available again, and creating opportunity and investment.
00:13:39.720absolutely um you know there's a lot of you have a few competitors in this race what do you uniquely
00:13:47.240bring to british colombians on this ballot um that the other candidates don't well thank you
00:13:54.040for asking that i appreciate it because what i bring is experience and a track record and i'm
00:14:01.560the only one who has any federal government experience i was a cabinet minister under
00:14:06.360Stephen Harper in both as an associate minister of national defense and two and a half years
00:14:13.500as minister of national revenue dealing with the economics of government serving on treasury board
00:14:19.840which is the last say provincially and nationally on how money gets spent because as we both know
00:14:28.180governments do not create wealth and governments are there to prioritize the spending of our tax
00:14:35.940dollars and that's something we did very well and with great success under stephen harper's
00:14:44.900national majority conservative government we worked very hard on what we call drap debt
00:14:51.780reduction action plan to bring down the cost of government make sure that there was measured
00:14:58.980outcomes and delivery where the money was spent worked hard on streamlining procurement
00:15:05.780when i was associate minister of national defense and had say in procurement we had troops in
00:15:12.260afghanistan and it was very important that we got kit and equipment to them in a streamlined process
00:15:19.220which we did at the time also before that i was parliamentary secretary to justice and shepherded0.76
00:15:25.620through a major law reform omnibus bill targeting violent repeat offenders, which meant that violent
00:15:32.680crime went down over 30% in Canada. It would, I think, be even less today if the NDP and Liberals
00:15:41.380hadn't rolled back a lot of those initiatives on justice. So, you know, I have that track record,
00:15:48.200that experience of dealing with the major issues the on the economy just for a moment we were
00:15:56.820coming out of the worst recession and debt since the 1930s and by doing what we did we got back to
00:16:06.040a balanced balance budget and a surplus but we also along the way brought down corporate
00:16:11.980and personal income tax we took gst from seven to five percent we brought in income splitting for
00:16:18.560seniors we brought in the first tax-free child care benefits for people with kids under 18 so
00:16:25.040we were doing so much work with focus and clarity to make life more affordable i believe if i can
00:16:32.260move teams to do that at a national level i certainly can do it provincially on the other
00:16:39.420aspect of that question I also had time under Pierre Polyev as the chief opposition whip for
00:16:47.820two and a half years there and we had a caucus three times the size no floor crossers when I
00:16:54.540was whip I'm just saying and we we stuck together we were united unified and yet we didn't agree on
00:17:04.220100 we had robust discussion we had much the same mix people who are ready to fight and compete
00:17:12.320under a conservative banner but had different points of view libertarians people who said well
00:17:18.360I'm a fiscal conservative but a social liberal we had pro-choice pro-life we had people from age I
00:17:25.300believe it was 21 up to almost 80 you know I mean men and women we had the mix and that is the same
00:17:34.060mix i see in this provincial caucus what i would do is get to know my caucus right off the bat
00:17:40.460make sure i understand what motivates each and every one of them and then start recruiting an
00:17:47.340excellent team to take on the ndp in the next election right on okay well and then so after
00:17:55.980like, let's say there's a BC Conservative majority government under you. What, you know,
00:18:04.040what does the first few weeks look like? Do you think what's your first priorities as a majority
00:18:09.000government? Well, it is my intention to put out a clear 30, 60, 90 day plan, which I've already
00:18:17.460got in draft, but I do want to talk with the caucus first. I think collaborative leadership
00:18:23.200is the best, most workable style with message discipline and with parameters in politics.
00:18:31.800Because I don't think all these MLAs want someone to come in and say, well, I ran a
00:18:38.480big business and I'm going to tell you what to do.
00:18:40.980It's not really the style that I found works in politics.
00:18:46.380Having said that, there are certain things I've signaled and everyone supporting me would
00:18:52.600Some are in legislation and some are in rules and regs, which I want to drastically reduce the government gatekeeping through rules and regulations that don't work or that don't serve the public.
00:19:07.760with that said legislation that requires repeal like drippa or that requires um
00:19:17.420even tweaking you have a legislative process you can say in day one i'm going to go for it
00:19:24.120which i would on that issue but you also have to take it through legislative steps debate
00:19:31.460first second third reading you know there's there's a lot involved committee um oversight
00:19:37.460which is very important and something i don't think the public knows as much about but honestly
00:19:43.140that's where most of the work gets done not in qp which gets all the attention um or that is if
00:19:49.760there's attention and it's usually there but um you know there's a lot to do i want to do day one
00:19:57.340along with signaling our legislative intentions I want to do a core fiscal review and I want to do
00:20:04.380a core legislative review because my experience is that when a government has been in power for
00:20:11.420a decade however they present the books it's usually not as rosy as they want to present them
00:20:19.100and this government hasn't even now pretended that it's rosy 183 billion in debt in four years
00:20:27.320and climbing we've had our credit rating downgraded for the fifth time carriage of the
00:20:33.480debt is our number three line item on our budget that's a travesty 13.3 billion dollar deficit so
00:20:41.260we already know it's bad i need to know how bad it really is i also would like to see
00:20:47.820the equivalent of a parliamentary budget officer here in BC. We don't have an independent legislative
00:20:54.280budget office. I think that's really important. If you're going to talk about a piece of bureaucracy
00:20:59.700that actually creates more transparency and accountability in government, that would be it.
00:21:06.080Not having clean energy coaches so they can, a level of bureaucracy that can tell you how to
00:21:13.820interpret the other level of bureaucracy this kind of thing makes no sense to me on the legislative
00:21:20.040review one of the reasons we need to look at that again is measuring outcomes what's working what
00:21:25.180isn't but the language of drippa has been put into so much of our bc legislation the interpretations
00:21:33.300act the health care professions act the legal professions act the mining act we need to take
00:21:42.660a look at all that with a view to moving that out of there so that we can move forward on our
00:21:49.660natural resources. The other third thing I would do is what I call a core review. So there's triple
00:21:56.700core review of our public service and management at the higher levels. Because if I learned anything
00:22:07.200being in government and I'm the only one in this race who is governed as a conservative it is that
00:22:14.700a lot of governments who've been in a long time will put their supporters in those most senior
00:22:21.120roles even though they're supposed to be neutral they often are not and if you do not move
00:22:27.720on that then they do not support your agenda even though they are supposed to so I would want to
00:22:35.540make sure that the senior ranks of our civil service are in fact on board with our vision
00:22:41.840and move forward from there. Great, absolutely. And I guess just finally, how are you feeling
00:22:48.740going, you know, this is the voting has already started. It ends on the 29th. How are you feeling
00:22:56.280going into this right now? Thank you. You know, I'm really feeling really positive. Yesterday was
00:23:04.120a tough day for sure as people were deciding whether I should stay on the ballot or not
00:23:10.020but I was while all that was going on I was meeting with the business council of BC in
00:23:18.000closed session in downtown Vancouver I had just had a zoom meeting the night before with
00:23:24.700our health care professionals who are very concerned that the government has taken them
00:23:30.180over on april 1st which i would repeal by the way get back to self-governing professions
00:23:35.420the night before that i had a zoom call with the cattlemen's association i also have been holding
00:23:43.800i guess what you call virtual town halls every night and had an amazing engagement hundreds of
00:23:51.000people from all over the province so i feel that my supporters are motivated they want to see a
00:23:58.220change they want to have good stewardship of the party itself as we present ourselves as a
00:24:04.780government in waiting and take on the NDP I feel a lot of optimism today I've had so many calls and
00:24:11.920texts I voted I voted I voted it started right when it started at 8 a.m and then people are
00:24:18.160calling me saying so and so and so and so has voted for you so I'm I'm feeling good I feel
00:24:23.920we're going to win it. I feel we're in the lead. I feel we're strong. And I don't think the plans
00:24:30.920of others to derail me has worked. Absolutely. Well, all right. Great. Thank you so much for
00:24:38.080speaking with us today, Carrie Lynn. Thanks for your time, Clayton. I really appreciate it. And