The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - David Eby has already blown its 2nd term (ft. Ryan Painter)

00:00:00.000 Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Wyatt Claypool Show. Usually, provincial politics

00:00:06.700 and federal politics calms down after an election. You know, people realize they're going to

00:00:12.100 have to live with the government for four years. That government slowly gets back to

00:00:16.440 work, and you don't really hear that much kind of explosive, controversial stuff happening

00:00:21.340 at least for several months when the government starts getting sort of the gears of legislation

00:00:27.600 going again. But that is not the case in British Columbia. Everything is a complete disaster

00:00:33.800 already after the last BC provincial election in October, and some of that disaster has to do with

00:00:39.980 the last election. And to talk about it with me today and try and make some of what's going on

00:00:45.880 make a little bit more sense is my friend Ryan Painter, who has a lot of in-house political

00:00:53.340 experience, out-of-house political experience. You've been following it for a very long time.

00:00:57.600 How's it going, Ryan?

00:00:58.780 It's going great. Thanks so much for having me here, Wyatt. I'm enjoying a nice,

00:01:04.420 mostly restful Sunday here in just outside of the capital in View Royal. Most people don't know

00:01:10.140 where that is, so I just say Victoria.

00:01:12.180 Yeah, it's somewhere on the island. I only know that there is BC, there's Vancouver,

00:01:16.300 there's things outside of Vancouver, and then there's things on the island, and then there's

00:01:20.520 Victoria. But yeah, yeah, so I would recommend everyone go and check out Ryan Painter's sub

00:01:27.980 stack. I will be linking that in the description below because he does do some good detailed

00:01:33.040 coverage of stuff that happens in BC politics and other interesting conversations with people

00:01:37.920 I know and people I don't know. But let's start with what I think is going to flavor the entire

00:01:44.300 conversation, which is the Surrey-Guilford sort of election irregularities controversy that's going

00:01:52.600 on. Because I didn't know this until right before the show, but you actually have some insight into

00:01:58.160 what the controversy is on the ground. It's a rioting where the BC NDP only got Gary Begg re-elected

00:02:04.520 by 22 votes. The BC Conservative candidate, Hanvir Endawa, has brought a lawsuit to the courts

00:02:10.480 in order to basically nullify this election and hold a new by-election because of irregularities

00:02:16.340 found. And you can give me some details on what you have seen with that, because I think this is

00:02:21.860 important to sort of contextualize the behavior of why it seems like EB and the BC NDP are so

00:02:28.320 aggressive right now. They really do not want a new by-election happening.

00:02:35.520 Yeah, you know, it was interesting because I was involved in the election, as I know you were.

00:02:42.480 I was working up north and you were doing all kinds of stuff down on the lower mainland. And,

00:02:47.540 you know, there were concerns about ballot boxes and various different things like that going on.

00:02:54.560 And I tend to be very, I guess, slow to look at things. Like, I'm very analytical. I try not to

00:03:04.180 get too excited about stuff because when it comes to elections, I know people are people. Sometimes

00:03:09.280 mistakes are made. It doesn't mean that there's corruption. It doesn't mean that there's problems

00:03:12.920 or issues all the time. So I try to take a very methodical approach to concerns around elections,

00:03:18.880 not least of which is it's become so de rigueur to call people election deniers that I would just

00:03:24.780 like to stay away from that moniker as much as possible. But what happened here in Surrey-Guilford

00:03:31.120 was just so seemingly crazy that it just had to be pursued. So what you had was a care home for

00:03:42.460 addictions and mental illness in Surrey-Guilford, a place called Argyle Lodge. And essentially it

00:03:51.640 turned out that there were 21 people who voted in this one place. And why that's weird is they had

00:04:00.100 21 mail-in ballots apparently sent to this place without anybody asking for them. And so anyone who

00:04:06.760 knows, and I don't expect most of your listeners to know the Elections Act inside and out,

00:04:11.980 but in order to get a mail-in ballot, you have to ask for one. It won't be sent to you otherwise.

00:04:18.880 And what we found was that, no, in fact, these 21 ballots had arrived, had been there,

00:04:25.480 that folks had filled them out and sent them in when the actual polling station was maybe

00:04:31.680 500 yards or something across the street. Like it was just across the street.

00:04:37.220 It was like Argyle Lodge, the sidewalk, the road, the other sidewalk, and then the walk up to the

00:04:42.820 school where the polling station was. Exactly. The polling station was right there. Now,

00:04:47.820 you know, we don't know where the doors were for the polling station, but at the end of the day,

00:04:51.040 that doesn't really matter. The polling location wasn't so far away from Argyle Lodge that it made

00:04:58.000 sense that some, for some reason, 21 mail-in ballots were there. Now let's put that whole

00:05:04.060 piece aside because I actually think what is more important is that we've now had the manager of the

00:05:09.360 Argyle Lodge say in public, well, for 30 years, we've been getting mail-in ballots delivered to us

00:05:15.400 in bulk from the commission. She says the commission, she means Elections BC and ostensibly Elections

00:05:20.400 Canada. But Elections BC has come out and refuted that and said, we don't do that. We don't deliver

00:05:26.880 mail-in ballots in bulk to anybody. Individuals have to ask for them. And another side of this is

00:05:33.520 only one person can vouch for another person if you're voting. So, I mean, there's all kinds of

00:05:37.840 things mixed up in this, right? The concern is how did all of these ballots get here? Who orchestrated

00:05:45.160 all of this? And sworn affidavits were also brought forward where people said that they were coerced

00:05:51.660 into filling out these ballots. They didn't know who they were voting for. They felt that they might

00:05:56.440 get kicked out of the lodge if they didn't vote a certain way. Lots of concerns around just being

00:06:02.080 forced to vote in a certain way, right? Because it's a recovery lodge, it's not like, oh, well,

00:06:07.560 I got kicked out. I'm standing up to this unprincipled manager and I'm going to go get a new place to rent.

00:06:12.760 It's like, this might be literally the only place that would actually let you in because

00:06:16.920 you've had to recover from addictions. You have maybe mental illness sort of issues because of

00:06:22.560 that. And so, like, you're a textbook vulnerable person. And you're right. The thing, too, about the

00:06:29.300 polling location being so close is I actually, at first, when I heard the story, assumed it was like

00:06:33.580 a long-term care home for people in their 80s who have mobility issues. Like, no mobility issues that I

00:06:39.540 know of. But one thing that was problematic that I heard, and this was part of the affidavits,

00:06:46.260 was that there were issues, or it wasn't part of an affidavit, it was technically just eyewitness

00:06:50.060 because this person wouldn't have been able to sign an affidavit, that there were several nonverbal

00:06:54.140 people who would have not been able to articulate a voting preference or would have not been able to

00:07:00.840 have, or would have not had the capacity to have engaged in the election in any way someone would

00:07:05.600 actually see as legitimate. And so, when the manager came out, and you, I'm not sure if you

00:07:11.100 know this part, did you hear that she said, well, I spoiled my ballot in this election? 0.62

00:07:15.720 No, I didn't hear that. That's a new wrinkle that I haven't heard. And I don't think this is the last

00:07:20.560 we've heard from her either, I have to say. I think we're going to hear more from her in the next couple

00:07:23.800 weeks. My thing is, like, that's a really cute lie in the sense that, yeah, really, are you one of

00:07:29.200 three people who intentionally spoiled their ballots in this riding for the election? Because obviously,

00:07:34.580 she's not going to say, oh, I voted conservative, well, don't bark up this tree, because her 0.84

00:07:38.560 donation record of $1,400, a maxed out donation to the BC NDP in 2023, makes it so that she can't

00:07:46.580 say, well, I voted conservative. And so, if she votes NDP, that's, like, obviously a problem if

00:07:51.800 she's filling out other people's ballots and donating to them. So, no, no, no, I spoiled my ballot.

00:07:56.040 It's another ripple. It's another ripple that just raises more questions than answers. So,

00:08:00.360 what Hanveer is doing is he's pursuing an independent review of this in court. He submitted

00:08:09.200 the filings that is, you know, essentially moving forward. We don't have any more news

00:08:13.580 on that. But the party itself has also called for police investigation. Now, given all this

00:08:19.720 new news that we have about all these ballots that apparently arrived, the concerns from folks

00:08:25.420 around, you know, kind of harvesting, forcing, coercing, there's a lot of concerns about what's

00:08:32.500 happened at this lodge, given the public statements from Baljeet Kandola, who is the manager of the

00:08:38.360 lodge, a lot of her public statements run contrary to the public statements of elections BC. And,

00:08:45.180 and, you know, our elections and our kind of democratic rights, they require this investigation.

00:08:51.360 But the province, the province in terms of, you know, saying we need an independent investigation,

00:08:55.620 which is what conservatives are certainly calling for. The province has said, no, we're going to do

00:09:00.200 an all party committee. We're going to have everybody sit down and talk this out. And the

00:09:04.180 conservatives are saying, no, we need to take this out of the politicians' hands and make this an

00:09:08.040 independent inquiry. But the all party committee that's being run by someone from the BCNDP.

00:09:13.400 Of course, of course, the chair will be an NDPer. And the vice chair will probably be an NDPer as

00:09:18.140 well. And they'll probably have one or two, you know, conservatives and maybe one green and that'll

00:09:23.920 be it. Right. So if we, if we come into the ballpark of some interesting questions that need

00:09:28.960 to be asked, I will assume that they will not let that go forward.

00:09:33.000 Yeah, the committees, committees are great because I mean, they, they, they're places where conversations

00:09:38.160 can happen. You can tease out some issues, but they're not, in my opinion, places where you get

00:09:41.960 good investigative work done. Yeah, definitely. So the, the thing that's so funny about this

00:09:48.060 was that David Eby himself was the man in November when we had a lot of these more, you know,

00:09:55.400 headline catching issues in the election come up, they weren't really affecting any important

00:10:00.560 ridings. It was like a ballot box was found in a riding that wasn't counted that the conservatives

00:10:06.200 won by like 5,000 votes. And it had McKenzie. Yep. Yeah. It only had a few hundred and like

00:10:11.680 500, 800 votes in it. That's a lot of votes, not in that riding in terms of the margin of victory,

00:10:16.840 but that's when Eby felt comfortable to come out and say, yeah, we need, you know, a commission to

00:10:21.360 look into this. The, uh, BC elections needs its procedures tightened up. We'll look into what we

00:10:26.240 can do. But then when Rustad and Hanvir come out and say, well, Hey, look, Surrey Guilford,

00:10:32.340 where your buddy only lost by, or only only won by 22 votes has at least 45 irregularities that

00:10:38.760 we've been able to find on our own without any data that was useful to us from elections, BC,

00:10:44.940 maybe we should look into this. And then David Eby pivots into, well, you're a bunch of election

00:10:49.400 deniers, sore losers, all this stuff. And why he's this concerned about the election is because 0.93

00:10:55.800 if a by-election was held, I guarantee he loses and he knows that he loses because so far it wasn't

00:11:02.840 even like a second, almost in terms of political time. It wasn't even like a second after the

00:11:07.800 election that things started popping loose and BC and DP promises did not come to fruition.

00:11:12.740 Like a week after the election, wasn't it that like, like 50% of ERs in the province,

00:11:19.360 like a month or so after had already had closure issues. The $1,000 grocery checks, the BC and DP had

00:11:26.920 promised during the campaign suddenly cannot be paid for anymore because the government's about to run a

00:11:32.740 record deficit aside from all those new spending promises, because the revenues, the tax revenues

00:11:38.940 from 2024 were not what they expected them to be. It came in way lower than expected. Who could have

00:11:45.380 seen that coming considering the fact that they have been basically killing private sector jobs all year

00:11:52.200 long? Every time they posted, oh, well, we added 11,000 new jobs this month, you would look at it and

00:11:57.620 they added like 20,000 public sector jobs. They lost 9,000 private sector jobs.

00:12:03.820 They, on this piece, on this jobs piece though, like the BC is leading nationally in the number

00:12:09.540 of public sector jobs, uh, compared to private sector. It's like six to seven public sector jobs

00:12:14.760 to one private sector job. And I think in actually in the most recent jobs report survey that I looked

00:12:19.600 at, I think BC lost some, uh, I'm going to get the number. It was 6,500 or so. Yeah, it was like 6,500

00:12:25.860 jobs that like private sector jobs that were lost in BC. Which pay for public sector positions. I never

00:12:32.340 get when people don't understand this. There are great public sector positions we need filled that

00:12:37.120 are very, uh, productive for the province. You know, the police, firefighters, nurses, doctors, all those

00:12:43.280 sort of things, people who work in government offices that are actually doing good work. But the thing is,

00:12:48.220 every time a new person's added, there isn't like a paper that comes out justifying why we needed,

00:12:53.420 you know, 2,000 more people in this department and why this department needed, uh, 50 new office

00:12:58.940 workers. It's just kind of taken as a net good that a bunch of people were hired to do stuff.

00:13:06.100 And, and in all of that, you've got the, the, which the irony of all of this is you have the

00:13:10.660 collapse and bankruptcy of small business BC, which was an organization, uh, essentially, uh,

00:13:17.480 created through provincial and federal mandate to support small businesses and who sat on the

00:13:23.960 board of small business BC, but a direct line to the minister of jobs. Uh, I think it was the deputy

00:13:31.160 minister or something who sat there and all of a sudden, uh, and it came so fast after the election,

00:13:36.680 just suddenly it's gone bankrupt. It had gotten an infusion of cash from the feds just before.

00:13:42.200 And now not only has it gone bankrupt, uh, there's concerns about whether or not people have been

00:13:46.920 fully paid out for what they're earned. There's concerns that there's actually going to be more

00:13:50.600 money that BC is going to have to pay out because they're bankrupt and they actually owe creditors.

00:13:55.880 Like it's a huge problem that we have not seen the last of yet.

00:13:59.880 Sounds like the BC United of government institutions. 0.75

00:14:04.520 But like, and that, and that's, and that's so pathetic because they probably knew it was going

00:14:09.560 bankrupt probably months ago, but it just got enough cash that they knew it would take them past

00:14:14.840 October 19th. And that is blatant corruption in a lot of ways when you're running the government,

00:14:21.080 not for the actual purposes you're meant to achieve, not because small business, uh,

00:14:26.280 BC is supposed to support small businesses. It is basically just trying to exist for six months

00:14:31.640 to take them past the election. A lot of this stuff, just like the, the water treatment plant

00:14:38.520 on the North shore project. And that this is literally probably in terms of a macro project,

00:14:46.120 no doubt there's been some small government contract for like $500 that ended up costing

00:14:50.200 10,000. And it's like crazy, the overrun, but for like a macro infrastructure project,

00:14:55.720 I don't think there has been a bigger cost overrun in Canadian history without like a justifiable,

00:15:02.040 like environmental crisis that happened, like an earthquake set work back. This is just mismanagement.

00:15:08.520 The BC North shore water treatment plant was supposed to cost $700 million,

00:15:14.680 dollars, which is an absolutely realistic amount of money to spend on something like this.

00:15:19.800 Unveil to the audience, how much this is costing now while I take a sip of coffee out of grief.

00:15:25.160 So I I'm, I'm, I'm not going to get the number right, but I think we're somewhere now at five,

00:15:30.840 six billion, somewhere around there. My number may be off, but I've heard it is at least 4 billion now,

00:15:35.720 but it's not even complete. So I think your five to 6 billion is what they're now projecting.

00:15:39.640 I think five to 6 billion is the projection of where we're going to wind up when, when it's all done.

00:15:43.800 And, and look, I wouldn't be surprised if it, if, if it went higher, I mean, here's the thing,

00:15:48.520 why it everything costs more now, right? Everything costs more. Interests are up, uh,

00:15:52.840 carpenters, uh, contractors, construction workers, materials, everything costs more.

00:15:57.240 Now, if, if it was just an increase that, as you say, you could justify based on labor and materials,

00:16:03.240 totally fine. But the problem here had nothing to do with that. It was everything to do with

00:16:08.760 mismanagement from Metro and between axiona, the company that was hired to do this work.

00:16:14.920 And my understanding, and this is going to blow your socks off. My understanding is that there

00:16:20.200 may be a settlement between the two and they may be looking to sign NDAs. And if that happens,

00:16:26.440 oh my gosh, are we the public in trouble? Because we won't be able to get the information we need about

00:16:32.440 what, what happened in all of this. I mean, we have little bits and pieces of information and

00:16:37.880 some material was purchased that wasn't quite right. And they had to go, it's almost like a,

00:16:42.680 a blue bridge scenario for anyone from Victoria who understands the issue of Chinese steel that was

00:16:48.200 brought in to remake the Johnson street bridge. And it sounds like there were some issues there with,

00:16:51.880 with this, but if they sign NDAs, they can hide behind that. And we don't get any information.

00:16:57.560 So we need a full public inquiry and an audit from the inspector general of municipalities

00:17:02.280 to really get to the bottom of this and understand what went wrong and who screwed up because it's a

00:17:07.720 lot of money. And I have no doubt that when, when this kind of like truly hits the fan in the public,

00:17:14.760 that you're going to have NDP politicians and supporters, influencers blaming the private

00:17:21.000 businesses that were involved, the private contractors involved when it's public policy,

00:17:25.880 which is incentivizing the misuse of funds. Because right now in the current rules,

00:17:31.240 let's just go down to the ground level of road construction, road repairs.

00:17:35.960 They, the government, when they pay people for, you know, for like a provincial highway or a federal

00:17:42.520 highway that the province is managing or some municipality right now in BC, they will give you

00:17:47.800 an allowance for overruns of overruns that are acceptable. You never give a company and say,

00:17:54.040 you know what, this job to do this many kilometers of the road, we're paying you guys $200,000 over

00:18:01.080 the next three or four months. But you can go over time by about three or four extra months,

00:18:06.520 and you can actually charge up to 500,000. Who in their right mind is going to get the job done fast

00:18:12.440 and efficient, even if you were a bonus for getting it done fast and efficiently, when you can be lazy,

00:18:18.360 get nothing done and get paid more for it. And there, there really has to be. And look,

00:18:23.240 I'm not anti union. That's something I want to make it really clear. I've been in a union. I've

00:18:27.240 been a union organizer. I really respect the work that unions do. But I think the community benefits

00:18:32.360 agreement that the NDP have put out there, which really, I think, have racked up costs at a time when

00:18:38.440 costs are already flying up like crazy has to be reviewed. I mean, at the end of the day,

00:18:43.640 there is one taxpayer, and we have to respect taxpayer dollars. And look, I run a nonprofit

00:18:50.520 here in in Victoria. I'm also part of another international nonprofit that does work. And we

00:18:56.040 have a line that I'm the director of development for the international one. And I have a line that

00:19:00.920 I always use donor dollars, we must respect our donor dollars. And that's my mindset, because that

00:19:07.000 money is precious, we get it, and we have to respect it. But yet, because taxpayer money is

00:19:13.240 somehow infinite, it doesn't need to be respected with a given the due consideration and care that

00:19:19.480 it should. So I think on that piece, we need to do a lot of work. And I don't know if you saw

00:19:24.040 last week, the Metro Vancouver mayors that are making more than the president of the United States,

00:19:28.360 in some cases, like, I was like, Oh, my gosh, who's like $400,000 for them? The the what was it?

00:19:35.720 Um, was it Ian Brody? It was Delta. Yeah, this Delta's mayor need $400,000.

00:19:42.760 Delta is barely a real municipality. All these places are just subsections of Vancouver,

00:19:47.880 they can basically take whatever Vancouver is doing, although I wouldn't advise it,

00:19:51.480 and just copy and paste it into their area. Did you hear Mike Hurley, the mayor of Burnaby,

00:19:56.200 actually say he deserved it? Like, yeah, I think I deserve it. I do a lot of work and and I'm up late,

00:20:01.320 and I'm having a lot of meetings. And it's just like, I'd hope that Brad West, who is also taking

00:20:06.920 a lot to be the mayor of Port, Port Coquitlam, that he'd maybe advocate for a slashing of his own

00:20:13.160 salary, because I feel like if you want to be a new fiscal conservative kind of champion in the

00:20:17.560 province, that should be looked at as like, you know, money where your mouth is take a small

00:20:22.520 sacrifice here. I'm not saying, you know, slash your salary by 50%. But a lot of this stuff is like,

00:20:28.360 well, no doubt this guy's doing a good job running the city, we're paying him a mountain.

00:20:33.400 Well, you know, I like Brad and and, you know, I know.

00:20:36.200 That's what I'm saying for his brand.

00:20:38.360 I'd say, you know, but that's the thing. I mean, the brand, it doesn't look good. I mean,

00:20:43.720 look, whether what you can't say that you're a fiscal conservative and then suddenly have a whole

00:20:49.800 bunch of money tied to you, it creates an optics problem. And so for anybody trying to be a fiscal

00:20:56.760 conservative, just be watchful of how much taxpayer money you're spending. And if like, if it's if

00:21:04.120 it's beyond what you think is reasonable, then, you know, slash it, donate it to something, you know,

00:21:10.600 do something else with it. I don't actually, I wouldn't even mind if they started tradition with

00:21:14.680 some of these mayors, don't take a pay cut. But every year you donate 20%, 15% of your salary to

00:21:21.240 an organization or I'm donating 15% of my salary this year to refurbish park benches.

00:21:26.600 Perfect. Absolutely. Local food bank, because Lord knows that food banks usage has skyrocketed more

00:21:31.880 than anything else I've seen here in a long time. There there's a community up near where I live

00:21:36.760 called Sydney by the sea or Sydney. Lots of people know it. You come through it when you take the ferry

00:21:41.160 here. I understand that food, it has a high, high density of seniors that live up there. Food bank

00:21:47.400 usage has increased over 100%. This is one of the wealthiest municipalities on the island. And yet food

00:21:54.200 bank usage by seniors up there has increased tremendously. And that was shocking. I heard this

00:22:01.160 a couple weeks ago. And it's because it used to be an affordable place to live. Probably these people

00:22:06.040 probably did well in their careers. But you banked a certain amount of money per year after you retired

00:22:12.680 that you assumed that you needed to live on. And when you thought you were going to have to pay

00:22:16.680 15,000 a year, because you already own your home, you already have all this other stuff,

00:22:20.600 you only have to pay 15,000 a year to sustain yourself. And your costs are going up to $23,000

00:22:25.960 a year that you have to pay in your municipal property taxes keep going up eventually doesn't

00:22:30.440 work. But you mentioned the fairies just now. And I think that's something else we have to talk about

00:22:35.480 because this is a yet another failure of the government that rolled out like right after the

00:22:40.760 election, to the point where people couldn't get from Vancouver to Vancouver Island for Christmas.

00:22:47.080 Yeah, yeah. I mean, the fairies stoppages 1.00

00:22:50.040 World War Two, and we're trying to get soldiers back to base camp so they can celebrate

00:22:53.960 Christmas away from the front lines. We're just trying to get people in their SUVs from one location

00:22:59.480 to another. And they're SUVs or walk-ons or if you're like me for the first year and a half that

00:23:05.160 I lived here bussing over because my wife went to Caplano University at the time. Look, the BC

00:23:12.440 ferries are called the island's highway system. And I really do believe that they are an excellent

00:23:16.760 innovation from Wacky Bennett, WAC Bennett to bring in the ferry system that can connect the mainland and

00:23:24.280 connect the island. And they have been largely, I think, successful, well-managed. That's another

00:23:31.720 issue. I mean, it is a crown corporation. Maybe it needs to be brought back under BC control. Maybe it

00:23:36.120 needs to be made a completely private entity. I don't know. I'm not that much into kind of the

00:23:41.480 mechanics of it. But I tell you what, ferries breaking down, two or three ferries breaking down

00:23:46.360 every week or every two weeks, stranding people on either side of the ocean is not what it was meant to be.

00:23:52.520 It was meant to be something that could continuously run. And heaven forbid, you need to actually get

00:23:58.680 to the island and you're into Wasson and a ferry breaks down and you have to jet to Horseshoe Bay

00:24:03.640 just to hope you can get something or fly out. It's really terrible that the ferries are having

00:24:10.760 this much of a problem for a community that depends on them. And this is exactly what happened,

00:24:15.960 except it was centuries ago. So it's embarrassing now. But two centuries ago in the 1820s,

00:24:23.560 there was a problem with the ferry system between New Jersey and New York. And it was because the

00:24:31.400 government had basically lent a monopoly to a company that did not require itself to do a good

00:24:39.240 job in order to keep getting its subsidies. And they even had like clauses that prevented competition

00:24:45.880 from getting into the game with them. And it was actually Cornelius Vanderbilt who had to create an

00:24:50.920 illegal ferry system that could get people across the water in half the time for like half the money

00:24:57.000 that eventually ended up running the state monopoly out of business. And right now we just the problem in

00:25:03.000 our modern day is that you could not just start up your own random ferry somewhere and get it going.

00:25:08.920 You got to be connected to public roads. You got to be from a public port point. And if you're you

00:25:14.760 start up your own, it's not going to work. But we have to just accept that, oh, well, it's a public

00:25:19.800 service. So we can't have it be like, you know, a competition or whatever. It's like, well, it costs,

00:25:25.480 it costs like half of a minimum wage worker salary to cross the river if you needed to do that sort of

00:25:31.000 thing. To get a car across, it's like an entire day's wage and a half.

00:25:35.880 Yeah. Well, you're not wrong. And they have I mean, they are there. There have been some

00:25:39.880 introductions of some small private sector stuff like you've got Hello and Nanaimo and that's just

00:25:44.040 a walk on. You know, they had the V2V in Victoria that lasted all of a year because it was too expensive.

00:25:52.680 It just couldn't you can't make it work. So and this kind of stuff always brings up conversations

00:25:56.760 around a permanent road to the island. And again, I'm not an engineer. I don't know any

00:26:03.240 feasibility of any of that stuff. But look, like whatever we need to do to keep the ferries running

00:26:08.200 on time, to keep the trains running on time, people here on the island and and back and forth,

00:26:13.480 because there are people here who go to Vancouver for cancer treatment or go to Vancouver or if you

00:26:17.400 can't get cancer treatment in BC anymore, you go to the States. But you have you need access to this

00:26:22.760 stuff. So breaking down is just not an option. Yeah, it's like honest. I've been a long time

00:26:28.760 advocate, actually, even though I'm a fiscal conservative. They should just pool airport fees

00:26:35.240 in general tax pools rather than having it be on ticket prices, because if you haven't checked

00:26:40.600 recently, your ticket cost on an airline these days is like one third of it is just government taxes

00:26:47.080 and airport fees and all this other stuff and airport fees that don't even make sense. Why do I need

00:26:51.080 to pay 25 bucks for the Vancouver airport every time I land for improvement fees? It has nothing

00:26:56.040 to do with that must be that improvement fee cost. Security, even though security checks require

00:27:03.400 fewer people and less time than ever. So somehow I owe them $8 after I stand in line for a few minutes

00:27:09.320 and walk through to get your bags probably late. You had to pay another $7. You get nickel and dimed.

00:27:16.280 And I am I'm always the person having to stand up for the honor of the airlines,

00:27:19.960 because like, it's really not their fault. It's not their fault that they suck. They have to suck 0.99

00:27:24.600 to make money because when all went out, there's so many fees, there's extra fuel taxes they have to 0.99

00:27:29.880 pay. They have to pay, you know, like they have to pay usage fees in order to get access to terminals

00:27:35.880 and all this stuff, which makes sense. But it's also bloated. Obviously, you're going to have to add

00:27:40.760 three or four more rows in the plane that probably shouldn't be there. Everyone could have way more leg

00:27:44.920 room if it wasn't for government regulations and taxes. And so if you're going to give basically

00:27:51.080 public corporations the monopoly over an airport, at least make it all publicly funded rather than

00:27:57.400 user fees from people who, in theory, are bringing business to other parts of Canada.

00:28:03.640 You're totally right. And and just just on the point around around fees and around taxes, I mean,

00:28:09.560 we are paying so much these days, whether it's through carbon taxes or the myriad of other 30

00:28:14.280 some odd taxes that the NDP government introduced. And yet, in their most recent fiscal update in

00:28:20.360 December, the NDP reported a nine point four billion dollar deficit, which is just it's wild when you

00:28:28.680 think just just over two years before that date, the late John Horgan left David EB with a six billion

00:28:36.040 dollar surplus. So that means in two years, David EB went from a six billion dollar surplus to almost

00:28:43.880 10 billion dollars in deficit. And now we're the ones we're going to have to probably deal with

00:28:50.200 program cutbacks, housing program cuts, all other kinds of cuts that we already know this,

00:28:55.640 this rebate that we were supposed to be getting a central economic pillar of EB's 2024 election

00:29:01.720 campaign. That's not coming, y'all like I know, like they're talking about shelving and it might

00:29:05.880 come. It's not coming like it's gone. It will not come because they can't. It's just if whether it's

00:29:11.640 10 or 15 percent that Trump brings into the tariffs, the NDP are going to lean on any excuse they can to

00:29:17.560 try to save some money because we're in serious trouble debt wise. And that's that's also the thing I

00:29:23.160 want to get to. David EB is exploiting the issue of Trump to pretend that, well, you know, it's not

00:29:30.520 actually my fault. B.C.'s economically weak. It's the Trump tariffs that are only theoretical at this

00:29:36.040 point that haven't even come in yet. That's why I suck at my job. I like the whole Team Canada thing 0.99

00:29:42.440 feels like a psyop in terms of like a literal psychological operation to try and make Polyev and

00:29:48.120 Daniel Smith and other conservative premiers like Scott Moe to join with these bloated other provincial

00:29:54.760 governments and the federal government. And let's let's have a strong, you know, stance against Trump

00:30:00.120 and the Americans. It's like you guys actually need to be doing your jobs first. Maybe it would be

00:30:04.760 good if this whole Team Canada that half the team wasn't smoking and overweight. You know, I mean, for

00:30:10.760 for like a for a sports metaphor here, maybe if we're going to actually face them down, you guys need to

00:30:15.880 cut your wasteful spending. You need to cut your over taxation. It's crazy. And the funniest thing

00:30:22.840 is Bill Vanderzam throughout all of this was actually vindicated because without his campaign

00:30:29.640 to stop the HST, David EB would be even more screwed than he already is because he didn't have to forego

00:30:36.760 the provincial sales tax between December and February. 0.91

00:30:40.520 So shot. Not only a shout out to to Vanderzam, but Bill Thielman, a long time NDP insider and

00:30:47.880 campaigner who was also a lead charge of the anti-HST campaign. I remember working on that campaign

00:30:54.040 back in Vernon when Adrian Dix was still the leader and Vernon ended up approving it by only about 51%.

00:31:01.160 That was that was interesting. You're right, Wyatt. And, you know, it's interesting to look at all of

00:31:07.960 this. Look at how much money the NDP has absolutely shoved down the toilet and then look at how they 0.71

00:31:15.560 gave every single MLA a cabinet level position or a minister of state position or a parliamentary

00:31:21.160 secretary position, some kind of position that gave them a raise. And if you look at the ordering

00:31:27.080 councils that are coming out and I check these every day when when when I'm when I'm at work,

00:31:32.200 because I want to see where our money is going in these ordering council. 0.97

00:31:35.000 You should start sending me the funniest ones you find.

00:31:37.480 Oh, man. Some of the stuff that that people are like the how many chiefs of staff does Ravi Callon

00:31:43.400 have? Like, I think in all total, I think he's got like eight or nine staff and they're making over

00:31:48.840 a million bucks like in all of that staff. You need you have you need staff members to run around

00:31:53.720 managing all of his building projects. It's true. You have Matt Smith, who was David Eby's

00:31:59.800 chief of staff, who only worked for two years and got a two hundred and seventy thousand dollar

00:32:04.200 severance when he left. That's just his severance. I think in total he got like eight hundred thousand

00:32:09.480 dollars for two years. Yeah, because the severance was half the salary over a certain period of time.

00:32:13.880 So his salary was double that half a million a year to do to make trouble, basically. And the funny

00:32:20.840 thing is he has a bigger cabinet because everyone got a he's the Oprah Winfrey. It's the Oprah Winfrey.

00:32:26.440 You get a raise. You get a raise. Everybody gets a raise. Every useless random MLA.

00:32:32.200 Anyone who could fog Amir in the party got a got a got a new higher position. Some of the lowest end 0.74

00:32:39.080 promotions only get them like a parliamentary secretary bump of twelve thousand. But some of the other

00:32:43.960 cabinet minister positions are getting them eighty four thousand more a year or a hundred thousand for

00:32:48.840 certain positions. The cabinet literally costs four hundred thousand dollars more than Horgan's

00:32:55.640 cabinet cost, even though he had a far bigger caucus where you could have argued that, you know,

00:33:00.920 this guy's just he has a Ph.D. in, you know, mathematics. I really want him to be in this

00:33:06.040 position, even though I already have a finance minister. No, he has less talent because a lot of

00:33:10.440 the talent left before the election. A lot of these people are just in these roles. So with the B

00:33:16.680 squad, the B squad, for some reason, justified even more positions and the four hundred thousand

00:33:22.760 dollar cabinet price increase, that's only the MLA extra cost that has nothing to do with what you're

00:33:28.680 saying. Yeah. Everyone has a bunch of new staffers they get to employ because you're not just the

00:33:33.960 parliamentary secretary. You're now an important person who now needs three other interns and you

00:33:39.240 need a you need a chief of staff. You need an EA or maybe you need two EAs and maybe you need a

00:33:43.720 co-chief of staff and maybe you need a director of communications. Maybe you need several administrative

00:33:48.040 assistants. Maybe you need a special advisor. Yeah. I mean, there are special advisors listed

00:33:53.320 in some of these roles, which I'm just like, what are you special advising on and why, why, why do these

00:34:00.360 cabinet ministers need special advisors when they have government bureaucracies that are set up and

00:34:06.680 designed to give them the best information possible? Like I've worked in the bureaucracy

00:34:11.640 here in BC for a few years. I know how expert some of these bureaucrats really are. These are people

00:34:17.480 who spend a lot of time looking and thinking about problems and trying to fix them and to not lean on 0.96

00:34:24.680 them is ridiculous. I took a master's degree in public policy. So I know that even some of these

00:34:29.480 people in these very technical policy jobs are actually genuinely worth it. They actually genuinely

00:34:35.160 know how to take your big piece of legislation, break it down to its component parts and knows

00:34:39.480 how to hand each part off to its right department so they can make the changes they need. There are

00:34:44.120 some good people in there, but it feels like with so many people in government, it's like watching that

00:34:50.280 rich kid who never had his parents really teach him the value of money going out and being given a

00:34:56.840 million dollars. And you wonder how they end up blowing it all in like two years because they go on

00:35:02.120 vacation and they spend like $45,000 on a vacation. And that's what the NDP feels like. It's like

00:35:07.560 watching people who have never learned the value of money. The thing that always drove me up the

00:35:12.680 wall as something you think the government would, even if they don't want to admit that there's

00:35:17.560 problems, you think they would silently do this in the background because it's such an easy solution

00:35:21.240 to reduce wait times and ER closures in BC healthcare. 40% of people who are in HR and administration

00:35:29.480 and management in the healthcare system, some of them should be in those positions,

00:35:32.920 but 40% of them are registered nurses and doctors. So when I talk about eliminating some of these

00:35:38.280 positions, we're not eliminating the position, we are removing them back to front lines. And the

00:35:44.200 problem is, is all, everything is just perverse incentives in the BC government and in the different

00:35:49.320 institutions. You make more from stopping being a nurse, which doesn't pay that well in your first few

00:35:55.560 years. So you're probably already pretty resentful. But if you get in good with the union and it's not,

00:36:01.320 again, it's not that unions are bad. It's just that unions have now been taken over by politicians

00:36:06.520 themselves. The people who run them are very much lefty politicians. Cause I heard in the nineties,

00:36:10.360 there was almost a riot with the nurses union when they heard 15% of the healthcare budget was going

00:36:15.160 to administration. These days it's like 50, 50 front lines at administration. But the thing is like,

00:36:21.560 we're the thing is that that's why there's so much bloat is because people who are disgruntled

00:36:27.640 and who are, and who have the right connections can move from being only paid 70,000 a year, 65,000

00:36:33.480 a year as a nurse and bump up to an HR rep or the region. And you're now making 130,000, even though

00:36:40.040 you have actually increased the workload on everyone else, the front lines, it is a vicious cycle.

00:36:44.600 It is. And look, I've seen it happen within unions in my time in union environments. I've seen folks

00:36:51.880 who I honestly didn't think were that exceptional at their job, somehow managed to get involved in

00:36:58.920 union executive roles. And now they are, because they were a union member, they were allowed to be,

00:37:05.400 or they got to be elected into an executive position. And now somehow they're running the union

00:37:11.480 for something that they weren't actually all that good at before. So it really is just a cozy place

00:37:17.000 to land where, in my opinion, you're not really doing that much work. But you're getting to siphon

00:37:21.640 off of union, you're getting to live off of union dues and not really, not really get much,

00:37:27.080 not much done for it. In my opinion, these people in many cases make more than these mayors we just

00:37:32.840 talked about. They're making like executive salaries for being like professional useless people, 0.97

00:37:38.680 because a union fundamentally should be an advocacy group for good workers, that these people deserve 0.89

00:37:45.640 better. But really, it's that certain members deserve cushy administrative jobs. And I've heard

00:37:51.880 this happens in Alberta all the time, is that people who are really cozy with the Alberta Teachers Union,

00:37:57.480 they will work as a teacher for maybe a semester, maybe a year. And then they'll get bumped up to

00:38:02.280 co-principal at a school, because the schools have a lot of people who want to stay friendly with

00:38:06.680 the Alberta Teachers Union. And the way that you stay friendly is that you give the people that they

00:38:11.160 kind of indicate what should be put in a manager role, into a manager role. And within a couple of

00:38:16.520 decades, even the Calgary Board of Education is full of union people, because they think,

00:38:23.640 okay, we'll take on your people to stay friendly. But then it's union people then promoting good union

00:38:29.000 people into union jobs, the whole thing. It's like unions all the way down.

00:38:31.880 Well, and you know, you've segued into another issue that I know really well, which is education.

00:38:38.360 And here in Victoria, we have an issue where we have our local, the local school board for the

00:38:43.320 last 18-19 months has been running in direct opposition to its community, to every locally

00:38:49.400 elected municipality, to the two indigenous nations that are here, to multi-faith organizations,

00:39:00.120 you name it, parents groups, advocacy organizations, all of them. And essentially, what they did

00:39:04.600 is they kicked school police liaison officers out of their classrooms 18 months ago, out of their

00:39:10.200 schools, pardon me, and said, we don't want them in our schools anymore, for really no reason. So what

00:39:13.800 happened was, at the time, the Human Rights Commissioner for BC, Kasari Govinder, essentially

00:39:21.960 said, we don't have enough information to prove that these school police liaison officers are

00:39:26.120 actually a benefit. And so what we did, because I was on the board at the time, I said, okay, well,

00:39:31.160 let's review. Let's review and see what the community thinks, and let's see what students think, and

00:39:36.360 are they serving a purpose? Are there things we can do to improve? Because I am someone who believes

00:39:40.360 no policy is outside of review. Everything should be reviewed. All of it, right? And so we reviewed

00:39:48.520 it. We got a feedback from the community after about a year and a half or so of talking about this.

00:39:54.920 By and large, everybody wanted the program to stay. Some folks wanted some tweaks, but like a 70%,

00:40:01.640 75% majority surveyed wanted it to stay. Well, I didn't run again, but...

00:40:07.000 Oh, sorry. I was just going to say, I assume that the other 30% wasn't even people who were...

00:40:12.280 I've lost sound with you for some reason. That's weird.

00:40:16.440 Oh, okay. Sorry. Can you hear me now?

00:40:19.640 Yeah. Can you try again? Can you hear me now?

00:40:22.200 Oh, that's weird. It's out of my monitor. Hold on one sec.

00:40:25.080 No worries. I'll let Ryan fix that. But the thing I was going to ask, and which Ryan can respond to in a

00:40:30.520 second, is that even when you see something where it's like 70% of people agree and this happens in

00:40:35.160 polling all the time, that doesn't mean the 30% disagree. So I assume you had a lot of, well,

00:40:39.560 you know, I'm neutral to it as well. We did. We had neutral folks there.

00:40:45.800 We had folks that were just like, yeah, you know, we can see where there are problems,

00:40:48.520 but it should be changed. It should be fixed, which was fine. I didn't run again, but in, I guess,

00:40:54.680 six or seven months after we got those survey results, the school board just said, okay,

00:40:58.280 they're gone. There was no, they just brought a motion to get rid of them. There was no discussion.

00:41:02.840 There was no anything. They just got rid of them. And so the community, of course,

00:41:06.120 has been up in arms about this. We had petitions. We've had protests. And just last week,

00:41:12.200 we had all of the police departments in the community, Victoria, Oak Bay, the West Shore RCMP,

00:41:17.720 Saanich Police Department, all chiefs of police wrote to the minister saying they had no confidence in

00:41:21.880 this school board that they couldn't work with them effectively. And so the minister essentially

00:41:27.800 demanded that this board write some safety plans to put this back in place or to do something to

00:41:34.440 work with the community. We've had the nations also say, because there's a Squamalton Songhees

00:41:38.520 nations here too. They've also said this school board is not engaging with us respectfully. And I really

00:41:44.040 think that this board should have been fired quite a long time ago. And under section 172 of the school act,

00:41:48.680 the minister can appoint an official trustee, that's the word for it, who can take up the

00:41:55.160 roles of a trustee. And under, I think it's subsection C and D, I think there's specific

00:42:01.720 mentions around safety. So I honestly think this board is rogue. They've given an opportunity

00:42:07.480 to try to fix things they don't want to. This is a headache for David Eby because

00:42:12.920 down here in Victoria, it is NDP territory and it has always been NDP territory and people here

00:42:19.400 always vote NDP. But stuff like this starts to happen where the government isn't super responsive,

00:42:24.680 things are getting more dangerous. You know, you don't mess with people's kids. You just don't do it.

00:42:29.400 It feels like in LA. Yeah. Well, I was going to say, it strikes me as something along the lines of

00:42:36.040 like Karen Bass in Los Angeles, cutting the fire department budget because she wants it freed up 0.98

00:42:41.560 for other stuff because the government's so bloated, obviously it's hard to even raise spending at this

00:42:45.880 point. So maybe you've got some anti-police progressives on the board who have already an

00:42:51.400 excuse to not want these police resource officers in schools. And it gives them an extra few million

00:42:56.600 dollars to play with if they eliminate it. Well, the funny thing is there's, there's no money.

00:43:02.040 The school board doesn't pay for this. The money comes from, no, no, there's no, like the school

00:43:07.240 board has never paid for this program. The program is paid for entirely by local police. And so this has

00:43:12.920 never been something that the school board ever had to pay for it. They don't save money by getting rid

00:43:17.240 of this. Right. And so, uh, the, it is purely ideological. It is a 100. And what they'll say is they'll say,

00:43:23.800 well, some black and indigenous kids feel unsafe with police in schools. How racist is that?

00:43:33.480 I hate that mentality. I'm like, you might as well start referring to people as slurs if you're going

00:43:38.440 to start basically saying, oh, these people can't have police around. What? That's disgusting to say.

00:43:44.360 It is, it is, it is. It's totally disgusting. And we actually have, uh, we had local members of the, 0.98

00:43:50.600 the black community and the indigenous community say, we want police involved. Like maybe we change

00:43:55.400 how they're involved or something, but we want them involved. And so it's, they're completely

00:43:59.640 ignoring them because they're not the right indigenous and black voices for them. The voices 0.84

00:44:04.360 that they want are the voices that line up with their ideology. And that's, that's actually what happens

00:44:08.680 all the time in the U S it's usually white progressives telling you that black people don't

00:44:14.360 want police resource officers in their communities or more police doing patrols in their communities.

00:44:18.680 And when they pull those communities, they're like, they're literally the most pro police communities

00:44:23.320 is the black community in America. They're the most pro police. Yeah. So, so yeah, I guess to kind of

00:44:30.040 round all of these pieces up, David Eby's second term has not started well. It's gone about as well

00:44:35.880 as his first, if not worse than his first. Um, and you know, where are we going this year? Well,

00:44:42.120 the budget is going to come down at the end of February when the, uh, actually the beginning of

00:44:45.640 March, when the, uh, the, the legislature comes back in on the 18th. Um, I imagine we're going to get

00:44:52.280 cuts. By the way, something we haven't talked about yet. When is the legislature actually sitting

00:44:59.000 this year? How many days? I think it's 69 days, 67 days, something like that. Yeah. And here's the

00:45:05.320 thing I thought I think is most disgusting about that. It's not because you could say like, oh,

00:45:10.120 well, it's good. Government's not meeting as much. They can't screw as much up. Sure. But the problem

00:45:15.000 is, as you would know, when you're in opposition as the BC conservative party right now, you get

00:45:20.840 fewer opposition days to put forward petitions and do your own bills and do your own commit,

00:45:26.120 like your own work in the, in the legislature. Everything is truncated. Yeah. Everything is truncated.

00:45:32.200 And I think it's because David EB does not like hearing from other people, not people from his

00:45:36.520 own party, not people from the other party. David only listens to David. And so I think that there

00:45:43.080 is a real risk right now. And this is just from my perspective. I haven't talked to anyone that he

00:45:49.000 might have an NDP MLA cross the floor at some point, whether that's to the greens or the conservatives,

00:45:54.760 or just saying I'm an independent now, leave me alone because he talks down to people so much.

00:45:59.960 And he, it seems like he feels like he can just muscle his way through this entire, uh, situation

00:46:05.720 right now. The, the, all the bad economic news, the, the, the Surrey Guilford, uh, riding, uh,

00:46:11.320 like lawsuit, he can just kind of push through and he will eventually win. Cause I'm the leader.

00:46:16.520 Things are not looking good for him on that because, and I'm glad you brought up. So yes,

00:46:20.040 legislature is only in for 67, 69 days, something like that. It's ridiculous because you're right.

00:46:25.320 67. Yeah. 67. You're right. It does not allow the opposition an opportunity to do it's, it's,

00:46:32.040 it's, it's job. It's, you want to call it a Royal prerogative or a democratic prerogative,

00:46:36.280 whatever it is, it doesn't get to do the job of opposing proposing and doing its work and

00:46:40.520 scrutinizing. And EB hates that. That's why in the last session of his government, uh, the last term of

00:46:46.120 his government, he dropped so many bills late and really clipped the, had the time that they could be

00:46:51.720 debated for his closure on quite a few things. Didn't allow any time for stuff, just ran things

00:46:56.680 through. He's probably going to do that again because he has even, uh, even more weak people

00:47:02.280 elected, uh, to now try to argue and push this, this stuff through. That's why we've been on a

00:47:07.080 break for four months since the election. But I just want to hit on something you said around

00:47:11.240 discontent in the party, because you know, I was an NDPer for, for 20 some odd years and, uh,

00:47:17.160 I haven't been in the party now since January, 2023, but people in the party still talk to me

00:47:22.440 and there are unhappy people in the party, very unhappy. And, um, I know that there are folks who

00:47:27.800 feel that he, he is the one who barely law barely, barely won this election. Um, and, and I think,

00:47:35.080 I think he has quite a bit to contend with inside the party. I would not be surprised if there were

00:47:40.360 some really unhappy people who didn't get cabinet promotions, like higher level ministerial positions

00:47:45.800 who should have, who stayed loyal, who stayed behind. Um, and you just have to look at the

00:47:51.880 ridings. And there were a few of them where you had an NDPer win only because there was a former

00:47:59.080 BC United candidate, or there was an independent candidate who pulled votes away from the BC

00:48:04.920 conservative. Otherwise the BC conservative would have won. Look at those ridings. And those are places

00:48:09.960 where I think you have some real potential for disease, uh, and, and upset and unhappiness

00:48:16.360 within the NDP caucus. Now, nobody there that I've talked to has told me anything, but I know other

00:48:20.600 people who, who talk to me about stuff and there's quite a bit of dissatisfaction in that party right

00:48:25.960 now. Yeah. Maybe this is a final point. And then, uh, then I'll, you can talk about a bit about your

00:48:30.360 sub stack, but the place I always kind of circle in on is Surrey, because there's so many of these

00:48:35.560 Surrey, BC NDP, uh, MLAs, especially guys who are more community figures and less NDP ideologues

00:48:44.760 who look at the education minister absolutely getting skunked in the election. And it was

00:48:49.960 specifically because she was the NDP, uh, education minister and could not run away from SOGI 123.

00:48:56.680 I know a lot of these guys in Surrey were running around saying, well, of course I get a free vote

00:49:00.920 on SOGI. Of course I'm against it. They know next election, whenever that comes,

00:49:05.240 they're going to be against potentially the same opponent with more name recognition,

00:49:09.160 more money and more disdain for their position on the issues. If BC conservatives push forward,

00:49:16.840 I would say a dozen votes on everything to do with SOGI around it. You're going to have a lot of these

00:49:21.400 guys find ways of taking an off ramp and joining the BC conservatives, because it's hard to run for

00:49:28.840 reelection when people know you're a fraud on an issue that fundamental to the more socially

00:49:33.720 conservative community in Surrey. Yeah. Or, or they just get challenged, uh, for a nomination.

00:49:39.560 You know, we don't call it primary up here. That's what it is in the States, but essentially that could

00:49:43.000 happen too. I mean, you're not guaranteed a nomination, uh, in the NDP. I, I know, uh, internally,

00:49:48.280 I've seen, uh, uh, folks thinking that they were a shoe in and suddenly their nomination doesn't get

00:49:53.320 approved. Uh, and we in fact saw that when, uh, we saw that with the Nathan Cullen fiasco that happened

00:49:57.880 back in 20, uh, 2020, right. There's, uh, that, that certainly happens and it can happen here.

00:50:02.760 Yeah. So what's, uh, what's your website and, uh, substack all about?

00:50:06.920 So politicalpulse.ca is my substack. Um, essentially it is, uh, a broad cross-section

00:50:14.120 discussion around politics, the, the federal, the provincial. Um, we talk about culture, society.

00:50:20.120 Um, I just had a really good in-depth conversation, uh, with Chris Sankey, who was the North Coast

00:50:27.000 Haida Gwaii candidate, proud indigenous, former indigenous elected official from the Tsimshian,

00:50:32.360 uh, nation. Um, also, uh, a resource, uh, a very proud resource champion, natural resource champion.

00:50:39.160 And Chris had, uh, uh, he had, he had a tough go of it in the last election. Um, he had, uh, some lies

00:50:45.000 told about him by the premier, which made, uh, things very, very difficult and challenging for him.

00:50:49.880 Death threats, uh, included as a result of that. Uh, and so Chris and I got really deep, um, on that. I was

00:50:55.560 his campaign manager. And so there were things that we kind of both got to talk about. Um,

00:50:59.480 I had it behind a paywall, but I actually had quite a few people say, we want to see this whole video

00:51:03.560 with you and Chris. So I un-paywalled it. So now people can just go and watch the whole video.

00:51:08.520 Um, I had a discussion with former federal minister of health, Ujjal Dessange, also former premier of BC.

00:51:14.280 We talked about, um, uh, what Ujjal says is Canada descending into a nation of street fights. Um,

00:51:20.920 and it was a really fascinating conversation. He had, he doesn't pull his punches when he tells

00:51:25.960 you what he thinks about Justin Trudeau. I really, you know, I really like Ujjal Dessange. That's a

00:51:29.480 good one to check out. So I'll be linking cause I, this won't be released right away. So everyone,

00:51:34.680 I will be linking the Chris Sankey interview in the description below. So you can go check that out.

00:51:39.240 It's going to be pinned at the top of the comments as well as, uh, Ryan's overall, like,

00:51:43.560 sub stack as well. If you go, want to go over and subscribe. Uh, but definitely I'm going to have

00:51:48.040 you back on. Cause it sounds like, you know, the policy better than I do. I'm never going to be

00:51:52.520 the person saying like, you know, the elections act, subsection, whatever here. I'm a policy guy

00:51:58.280 who hates reading policy. I, you know what? Uh, I, I don't know at all why it, but I tell you,

00:52:04.440 there's some stuff that I can go really deep into because I'm a bit of a nerd with certain things.

00:52:09.080 Um, you know, don't, don't ask me about health stuff because I could go a high level on health stuff,

00:52:14.280 but on education, on things like mining, natural resources, I'm all over it.

00:52:19.080 Yeah. I was going to say one more thing, uh, shout out to Chris Sankey, because I was just

00:52:23.000 looking at the 2020 election results to the 2024 election results. And despite there being no

00:52:28.440 third party candidates, uh, Chris Sankey went from, uh, cause the BC liberals, their candidate

00:52:34.120 last time, Roy Jones Jr. Got 22% of the vote. It was the more technically conservative option

00:52:39.560 compared to the NDP. And he ended up getting Chris Sankey got 35%. So that's a 12% increase.

00:52:46.520 Very, very respectable in a riding like North coast height of Gwaii. That is never expected to even

00:52:51.720 have a large conservative population. And now you're actually probably in punching distance

00:52:57.080 for whenever the next election breaks. We're very proud of that outcome. We poured everything into

00:53:00.760 that race, man. And, and, uh, we didn't have a huge team, uh, but we had a lot of heart and we're,

00:53:07.160 we're proud of that. And there's a lot that we both learned coming out of that, that campaign.

00:53:10.920 Yeah, no, I was, I was like, uh, people who are good at campaigning actually try hard on the ground

00:53:15.560 because so many people in the campaigning world think it's that, you know, your social media ads

00:53:21.400 and your brand that are going to pull you through. It's like, that's a, that's a quarter of the campaign.

00:53:26.360 A quarter is your local ads. A quarter is your door knocking. And as quarter is the candidate

00:53:30.520 actually themselves going out there and talking to people. So many people think you can win with one

00:53:35.560 to three of the quarters. You need all four. You need all four. Yeah. You need all four.

00:53:40.840 Anyways. Well, thanks for coming on the show, Ryan. And definitely we'll be seeing

00:53:44.360 you in the coming months as things in BC continue to be insane. Have a great one.

The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - January 25, 2025

David Eby has already blown its 2nd term (ft. Ryan Painter)

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