Western Standard - Mountain Standard Time - April 14, 2021

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00:02:00.000 Thank you.

00:02:30.000 Thank you.

00:03:00.000 I'm your host, Nathan Gita.

00:03:28.900 and this is Mountain Standard Time.

00:03:31.840 Before we get into my opening statement, I just want to introduce who my guests are going to be.

00:03:35.780 Of course, today I'll be speaking to Cliff Graydon, former member of the Legislative Assembly for Emerson,

00:03:41.020 as well as Darcy Weapon, the former mayor of Telquois and co-founder of the Brural BC Party.

00:03:47.120 That'll be a little bit later in the program.

00:03:50.660 I guess if we're going to start anywhere, perhaps never forget to like and subscribe The Standard on Facebook

00:03:57.540 and do try and take out a subscription on our website.

00:04:00.420 We don't get any government dollars, and that's how you can support this content.

00:04:04.100 I mentioned the other day that one of the most notable and growing divides within Canada

00:04:07.360 is that between urban and rural Canadians.

00:04:09.960 It actually mirrors very closely what's happening between Western Canada

00:04:13.400 and the rest of the country, particularly the Laurentian consensus.

00:04:17.280 Those people who make the decisions and those who are affected by them

00:04:20.460 aren't the same in both cases.

00:04:22.060 I'll give you an example.

00:04:23.520 My parents live on a farm, and for a while I worked on it as the agent,

00:04:27.000 mostly for sales but also for interactions with the government i was the guy they called

00:04:31.000 i love dealing with the customers and the restaurants even when they were a bit picky

00:04:34.200 but when it came to finding grants or looking up local ordinances or trying to conform to rules set

00:04:38.680 by four different bureaucracies it was hell it was hell on earth there's a half-billed secondary

00:04:44.360 residence on the family farm stop work order was put on it as it reached lockup the regional

00:04:49.080 district wants fifteen hundred dollars to review the case which is no guarantee of success meanwhile

00:04:53.800 the building stands empty an unfinished home but a complete testament to the micromanagement of

00:04:58.200 authorities who never pay the consequences of their actions but these realities in my family

00:05:03.240 are just a microcosm of the wider issues the regional district while better than most local

00:05:07.800 governments has its hands tied by the agricultural land reserve and of course the province your local

00:05:13.240 municipality of course might genuinely care about you but the capitals of victoria edmonton winnipeg

00:05:19.880 and vagina make their own authorities on those questions and finally we get to the scope of

00:05:24.680 western canada from pipelines to environment from the approval of large-scale developments 0.53

00:05:28.920 to cross-border trade deals the west is dependent on the people in ottawa actually giving a damn

00:05:33.080 about them and the people in canada's capital and their friends from toronto montreal get paid

00:05:39.240 regardless of the situation west of lakehead our political class has become completely detached

00:05:44.680 from the ramifications of its own ideology. The COVID pandemic has exposed this best. No one got

00:05:49.960 a vote on whether or not they were an essential or non-essential worker, but the layoffs broke

00:05:54.440 mostly along class lines and with those who were already doing well on the upper end of the spectrum

00:05:59.800 doing better because now they didn't have to drive to work. There were a whole bunch of write-offs

00:06:03.560 for having a home office. That's another debate for another time, but for right now it's clear

00:06:08.520 that those who do the ruling and those who are being ruled are clearly not on the same page.

00:06:13.080 what needs to change in order for us to overcome that perhaps voting reform perhaps land reform

00:06:18.280 perhaps salaries for politicians to be tied to the mean income of canadians perhaps hard

00:06:23.720 talk with ottawa or even sovereignty it's hard to know but for some illumination on questions

00:06:29.000 of urban versus rule and the west versus the rest as well as just what it's like to come up in the

00:06:33.560 world and have helped build it we're going to turn now to cliff grayden cliff welcome to mountain

00:06:39.160 standard time it's great to have you on it's my pleasure and thank you very much

00:06:46.120 yeah i think the best place to start is uh the best place to start is just just your own background

00:06:52.200 how how did you uh kind of see the world growing up and then what did you do to make your way

00:06:57.800 forward what were the places you visited i know that you were a boiler maker for your career

00:07:02.200 for most of your career tell us a little bit about that what was the raising you had and how did that

00:07:07.160 uh how did that shape your real view well just to begin with i started out

00:07:15.480 and uh i learned one lesson from my father uh we were picking stones one day

00:07:21.320 i said to him why why did we not move back to where we were flooded out to in 1950

00:07:29.320 and he said picking stones fills character and he raised four characters i'm just one

00:07:35.480 and you'll have to put up with it at any rate as I as I left left home left the

00:07:43.800 farm I worked on both railroads in Manitoba Saskatchewan and Ontario and

00:07:51.080 then went to British Columbia because I had a grandfather and a grandmother out

00:07:57.080 there and and an uncle who my uncle was a founding member of the Boilermakers

00:08:02.140 And I became a Boilermaker Apprentice, but as a pre-apprentice I worked in Hudson Hole,

00:08:10.260 as some of you in British Columbia would know where that is, the Bennett Dam.

00:08:14.640 However, I had the opportunity of getting my Boilermaker's card in British Columbia.

00:08:24.140 I worked in many, many, many different places in British Columbia, and at the same time

00:08:31.900 I got the opportunity to work in all of Western Canada and part of Eastern Canada and some

00:08:38.400 in the United States.

00:08:41.360 And I got to see Anna at the same time when I was going to apprenticeship school.

00:08:47.800 I didn't have any money so I bought a tow truck to help put myself through school because

00:08:53.240 you learn as a farmer's son, you learn to support yourself.

00:09:00.940 And I also then bought into a tow truck or to a trucking business in Vancouver as I was

00:09:07.440 doing my apprenticeship and working because boilermakers don't work full time.

00:09:13.360 At any rate, from there, from British Columbia, my father was on the farm and not doing well

00:09:22.060 health-wise and he needed help and so I came back to Manitoba and then eventually took

00:09:29.660 over the farm and as being having a lot of experience all over the country then

00:09:40.100 you take a look at what's happening locally and you voice your opinion and

00:09:44.660 that's what led to getting involved in different farm organizations being

00:09:51.900 actually being appointed to boards whether it was a grain elevator or grain

00:09:57.860 company board or whatever, and then I became a local councillor on the local RM.

00:10:07.480 And you speak up for the people that elected you.

00:10:10.980 And then after that six years that I was on there and the things that I learned, I was

00:10:19.280 involved in different things that because we saw the expansion of

00:10:26.480 agriculture but was being dumped on by environmentalists and today even today

00:10:36.340 agriculture is being ridiculed by environmentalists and yet they do it with

00:10:44.720 full stomach and a full mouth and they expect you should be able to produce all

00:10:52.940 of this for next to nothing but it does cost money to produce and the

00:10:58.220 environment is very very important it's very important to agriculture it's

00:11:02.600 important to the people that live in in the rural area whether it's in rural

00:11:06.620 BC or if it's in rural Saskatchewan Alberta or Ontario for that matter it

00:11:13.160 doesn't matter where the environment is very very important to you one of the

00:11:19.400 things that is it's a fake tax is the carbon tax that is a fake tax and quite

00:11:32.340 frankly we need to compete in the world with what we produce here but we have to

00:11:40.140 build our country and we have to expand and exploit our natural resources so and

00:11:48.300 along the road one day someone said the MLA has retired and we want you to run

00:11:59.460 of course four other people wanted the job too and I hadn't given any thought

00:12:08.220 for myself I had actually been supporting someone who had left the

00:12:12.240 province because of the provincial government he had been working for he

00:12:18.040 left the province and went to work in Alberta anyway he encouraged me and

00:12:24.000 encouraged me and finally I didn't say okay and I did become an MLA for 13

00:12:29.720 years but the environment has been important all the way along the road

00:12:35.160 whether it was when I worked in British Columbia or when I worked in Saskatchewan, Alberta, wherever.

00:12:43.300 So that's just a kind of a short overview of where I started.

00:12:49.700 And I still do farming and a certain amount of farming in between sitting around creating newspapers.

00:13:01.320 Well, and we're happy to have you on this newspaper today.

00:13:04.000 Well, our broadcast that's affiliated, obviously, and directly affiliated with the Western Standard.

00:13:09.880 I think that may be something to kind of give people an idea of just how far and how much could be done by one person.

00:13:19.460 I mean, you had listed for me a little bit earlier the various projects you worked on.

00:13:22.920 Can you give us that list in a bit more detail, maybe even explaining how you got into some of those jobs?

00:13:29.300 especially your time in British Columbia, as a Boilermaker, you were at both mills and

00:13:36.240 at dam sites. How did that feel, being a part of these projects? I mean, they're still standing

00:13:42.120 today. I can still visit the place that you helped build.

00:13:45.240 It was actually very, very good. You met a lot of people, but you also learned how they

00:13:56.400 existed where they were and some of them people hadn't traveled very far from where they were

00:14:04.400 born and so on but to see how prince george was developed for example that was uh that was quite

00:14:12.960 something i was there when they they built the uh the first pulp mill i worked on that

00:14:18.240 And at that time, I made fun of people that had left Kansas City to come and live north of Prince George, where they could actually claim a quarter section of land and move on there.

00:14:37.740 And a lot of us young men that were working in Prince George laughed at these people as they came up the highway and convoys and homesteaded a quarter section, not thinking farther ahead that we were building the fault mill and they were going to clear their land and make money and they became great citizens there and great people to work with.

00:15:03.120 You learned a lot of different things working in places like that.

00:15:07.840 In Cornell, it was the same, building a mill there.

00:15:11.840 And I worked in Kitimat, worked in Terrace.

00:15:18.100 And some people have said, and I have said it often,

00:15:22.980 that Rupert may not be at the end of the world,

00:15:27.180 but you can see it from there, from Prince Rupert.

00:15:30.620 True, true.

00:15:31.560 It's true, but I worked in Fort St. John and Dawson, and yes, I also worked in Squamish, and was gassed there at a chemical plant.

00:15:46.520 Woke up in the hospital.

00:15:49.040 Those kind of things do happen.

00:15:50.780 I worked in a place called Wood Fiber where a boiler had blown up.

00:15:56.360 It was something to see and how the people around there had survived because even though it did happen in their area.

00:16:06.360 Lots of good experiences, worked on Vancouver Island and different places.

00:16:11.760 Jordan River, I built the Pennstock there to the powerhouse.

00:16:15.120 That's the southern tip of the island.

00:16:17.220 I don't know if you know that, but it's the southern tip.

00:16:20.240 There's actually below the 49th parallel there.

00:16:23.600 A lot of good people there. 1.00

00:16:25.220 And at the time, Victoria was a place for the newlyweds and nearly-deads. 1.00

00:16:31.220 It has changed a lot since then, too, but that was the term that we used for Victoria.

00:16:39.220 So, yes, and I worked in Skookumchuck and Kittim at, well, Kamloops and pretty much all over the place,

00:16:49.220 as well as having a sideline business.

00:16:55.220 Because you don't work full-time all the time, but you have to meet so many good people, great people, in a rural area.

00:17:05.320 But in Vancouver, you would run into a different situation.

00:17:10.060 They didn't understand what it takes to build a province.

00:17:16.160 They didn't understand what the basis of their province was.

00:17:22.360 And so that industry would a lot of times get penalized by the politics of the province.

00:17:33.640 And unfortunately, they paid the price in a lot of cases.

00:17:38.800 And it turned out it's the same in pretty well every province.

00:17:43.180 But we need to build our country and we need to develop our natural resources

00:17:48.900 to be able to compete in the world.

00:17:53.060 And we also need to look at our immigration policy,

00:17:59.660 which doesn't exist anymore.

00:18:03.080 Not that I'm opposed to immigration at all,

00:18:06.760 and I'm not a racist in any respect.

00:18:10.120 I grew up beside an Indian reserve,

00:18:14.840 and when we did a DNA we were closer than we thought at the same time I

00:18:24.220 forget what year it was but there were ten families of us after I came back to

00:18:31.240 farm that sponsored a family from Vietnam in Canada great people hard

00:18:39.040 workers and they they paid attention to our laws and our rules I'm not saying

00:18:47.680 that they gave up anything that they believed in they didn't have to but they

00:18:52.840 were hard workers and that's the two of them started businesses after they came

00:18:57.880 here so there's a lot of things that you learn as you you work around the country

00:19:06.880 And then when you come back and you've got your own business that you have to make money at and make a living at, and then have people that don't understand it, you have to stand up for yourself.

00:19:19.980 And you're finding that out as well on your own farm or your parents' farm.

00:19:27.940 Yeah, sometimes it's a real fight.

00:19:30.760 I mean, I value the fact that I think this actually goes back to Barrett's government in British Columbia.

00:19:38.500 That would be the NDP government that broke up the social credit government for one term.

00:19:44.260 And so they brought in the ALR to try and ensure that there would always be farmland and arable land.

00:19:49.120 And I want there to be arable land.

00:19:51.420 And I don't want there to be condos built, especially in the Fraser Valley, all over the place.

00:19:55.620 It's some of the best growing land in this country.

00:19:57.560 But at the same time, up here in Prince George, I mean, I'm not building a secondary residence to run an Airbnb that's, you know, 80 miles from the airport.

00:20:08.420 Like, that's not what's happening.

00:20:09.680 Like, I just need a secondary residence.

00:20:12.140 The amount of laws and ordinances that surround that, it's a lot.

00:20:15.880 I think coming back to rural issues, maybe you can talk a little bit about, you know, everybody would probably think, most people would think, you know, if you're thinking about Manitoba,

00:20:25.320 hey manitoba this is a it's a rural province it's a western province it's got lots of farming going

00:20:31.860 on you know it has entire cultures based around farming my mother's mennonite i know there's a

00:20:36.680 strong mennonite community inside of manitoba and others as well uh farming based how how could

00:20:43.760 there be any difficulties for rural manitobans in this area i mean it sounds like the kind of

00:20:47.960 province where they can just you know anybody can farm anything and things can go really well

00:20:51.860 What's the specific problems, difficulties, challenges faced by people in Manitoba when it comes to rural issues?

00:20:59.840 Well, I'll give you one issue that I was really involved in.

00:21:06.620 One of them was the expansion of the hog industry in Manitoba.

00:21:14.260 And at the time, we had an NDP government, but we also had two companies.

00:21:22.660 One of them was a very large company to begin with, McLean's, but the other was just a family in rural Manitoba in a place called the Brokery.

00:21:35.840 The Veilfeer family and one partner by the name of Janssen started a company, and it

00:21:46.200 was called High Tech at the time, and now it is High Life, and it's a very, very, very

00:21:52.500 large company, which has been now sold, but it still operates in Manitoba, but at the

00:22:02.540 At the time, the NDP said we were polluting everything and because at that time I was

00:22:10.260 involved locally on a council and also with a small organization in southeastern Manitoba.

00:22:25.260 We tried to explain to them that we weren't polluting water with agriculture, we weren't

00:22:31.900 polluting the Red River, or as they said, damaging Lake Winnipeg, blah, blah, blah.

00:22:39.220 And it was quite a battle.

00:22:42.560 And finally, we just did take water samples everywhere to prove that we weren't

00:22:49.940 and to let that business build.

00:22:54.880 And today, it's one of the biggest employers in the province of Manitoba.

00:22:59.700 is the hog industry because now you have your slaughter plants and so on and so forth but one

00:23:07.320 of the biggest polluters to the lake yet today is the city of Winnipeg they're sure if there's

00:23:18.120 a half an inch of rain in the summertime a lot of their sewers carry both rainwater and sewer in the

00:23:29.040 same pipe only at a different level and if you get a half an inch of rain it

00:23:36.180 just washes it all into the Assiniboine River and the Red River which end up in

00:23:42.360 Lake Winnipeg the north end of Winnipeg they've been talking now for oh forever

00:23:50.760 about building a big plant there, but this is the first year that a government,

00:24:00.520 the provincial government, has said that they will put some money forward to that,

00:24:04.740 but the city of Winnipeg doesn't know where they'll get their money to protect our lakes.

00:24:12.060 Agriculture has been, over the years, has been accused of doing that.

00:24:17.880 So those are the kind of things that do hurt agriculture, and today in the free press,

00:24:24.760 for example, the Minister of Conservation, and I'll try and quote it,

00:24:31.960 and I'll probably have to read it, says that the transportation

00:24:38.440 and agricultural sectors remain the largest contributors in the province to greenhouse gas

00:24:47.880 emissions that's from the minister of conservation get serious

00:24:56.120 she's saying that with a full mouth she's eating three meals a day

00:25:02.280 has no idea what we do in agriculture and at the same time the cattle industry 0.97

00:25:09.400 doesn't contribute but actually helps sequester the carbon

00:25:15.640 the grain growing out there sequesters it. Why do they not measure that as well?

00:25:23.460 And because of my father had farmed all his life, he farmed through what they

00:25:31.580 called the dirty thirties in the prairies when the climate was dry, terribly,

00:25:40.080 terribly dry. Then I think about now what they do in a little place called

00:25:49.080 Roland, just here in southern Manitoba. They're digging up dinosaurs.

00:25:58.580 Where did they come from? And who changed the climate so bad that they got buried?

00:26:05.900 get serious we we need to address the environment yes we have to protect it

00:26:14.020 but at the same time use some common sense and and listening to to to Trudeau

00:26:23.240 I can't call him to go on this can I but at the same time listening to him

00:26:29.860 suggests that the carbon tax is going to lower the carbon emissions,

00:26:39.000 and then he's going to give you the money back.

00:26:42.280 Hell, though, get serious.

00:26:46.040 I can see where development into electricity and Manitoba

00:26:52.560 has clean, clean electricity.

00:26:56.960 We actually sell electricity to Minnesota and to the states, and it ties in.

00:27:05.020 And I see again today in the paper where the United States and Canada are in a discussion over importing electricity from Canada.

00:27:14.960 But I know in Alberta, you'll take a company like Suncor has invested in an electric plant.

00:27:27.300 And Alberta really does need that.

00:27:30.740 Wind power takes a lot of steel to build one tower, a lot.

00:27:38.120 How do you get that steel?

00:27:41.000 You're just going to go out and pick it up on the ground?

00:27:44.720 No, you've got a lot of stuff to do to create that, to build it.

00:27:51.800 And if you were on a respirator today suffering from COVID,

00:27:57.660 would you only want wind power to supply the electricity?

00:28:04.580 Hello.

00:28:07.840 It doesn't blow every day.

00:28:11.620 And how do you store it?

00:28:14.040 and to build batteries, you have to mine.

00:28:21.420 So there is a lot more to this environment

00:28:28.440 and carbon tax hoax than what most people know.

00:28:36.260 I think that a lot of people inside of, well, within anywhere,

00:28:41.720 It's just a bit of ignorance around the whole thing.

00:28:44.680 As soon as you've been off the farm for a few generations, or you've just never had

00:28:51.960 a family member who had that kind of line of work, or there's a lot of professionals

00:28:57.700 in your family, even if they're not doctors and lawyers, or teachers, or accountants,

00:29:02.460 and that sort of thing, and nobody has a family farm lying around, or there's just Uncle Joe

00:29:08.020 two provinces over he's a carpenter so that's the last guy you know that works with his hands

00:29:12.740 everybody else in your family is doing uh tertiary jobs right uh service industry jobs

00:29:18.820 or professional work there's just a disconnect and i think that's what happens in a lot of urban

00:29:24.240 centers is that a lot of urban reality is like there used to be more working class jobs and when

00:29:29.640 we had more manufacturing in this country you could actually bump into someone who actually

00:29:33.900 worked with their hands for a living nowadays right there's the contractors and then their

00:29:37.900 various laborers who are always kind of moving around the city doing what they're doing

00:29:41.660 and everybody else in a shiny office building they don't really they don't really get to do

00:29:45.820 that do you think that some of that the disconnect there's a cultural disconnect between

00:29:49.900 the people who get the benefit to the work and the people actually doing the work

00:29:54.380 oh absolutely there's a huge disconnect and you're you you've hit the nail on the head 0.99

00:29:59.420 in that respect as well, because at one time a lot of the immigrants

00:30:06.880 and Mennonites are part of that, when they came to Canada, they farmed.

00:30:15.140 They worked with their hands, and they raised their families on the farms.

00:30:20.000 Today, our farms are much larger in size,

00:30:24.680 but with a lot less young people involved in it.

00:30:29.420 And another thing that I think that people don't understand is or don't pay attention to, and maybe you don't even know about, but they like to say that Alberta is polluting the world with their oil industry.

00:30:50.180 And yet Quebec, where does it get a big portion of its oil?

00:30:57.300 Saudi Arabia oh yes how do they go about getting that do they use coal yes

00:31:12.120 they do yes and I have a brother that's a

00:31:14.920 boilermaker that's worked all over the world and he now lives in Africa and is

00:31:22.620 is semi-retired basically, but at the same time has built coal-fired boilers in different

00:31:30.500 parts of the world in the last few years.

00:31:33.940 You see Germany now doing that, and China is still building coal-fired boilers, and

00:31:44.060 Yet, we are not supposed to be able to use our natural resources.

00:31:53.160 And the people that have elected the liberal government today that is actually, in my mind, ruining Western Canada.

00:32:04.160 The people that have elected them don't know where their energy comes from.

00:32:09.700 They don't care because they have a disconnect with the environment totally. 0.99

00:32:17.180 Only thing they'll listen to is the crap that the media carries. 0.98

00:32:23.360 And the media has been bought and paid for by this liberal government that's in place today. 0.99

00:32:30.060 That's unfortunate.

00:32:31.900 The socialism is ruining our country.

00:32:35.420 I strongly, strongly support the whole country.

00:32:43.180 I don't want to see Western Canada, or Western Canada being Manitoba West, break out of Canada.

00:32:53.000 I don't want to see that happen.

00:32:54.780 We have a great country.

00:32:57.480 We need to appreciate what we got and understand how we got it, but at least develop it.

00:33:03.180 There should be a pipeline going to Eastern Canada.

00:33:08.400 I've helped get the pipelines through Manitoba and, in fact, worked with Enbridge in order

00:33:19.140 to get the pipeline across the border in Emerson before the opposition in Minnesota

00:33:28.380 knew that the pipeline was even going to be there.

00:33:33.180 we see people

00:33:35.940 that live

00:33:37.000 put their hands out

00:33:39.680 give me, give me, give me

00:33:42.060 but they don't have

00:33:43.700 any blisters or calluses

00:33:45.860 on their hands

00:33:48.380 that's unfortunate

00:33:50.980 deeply unfortunate

00:33:55.100 deeply unfortunate

00:33:56.300 I think there is

00:33:57.760 that disconnect between

00:33:59.960 the reality of how it takes

00:34:02.200 you know, how, you know, how the sausage gets made and then who's eating the sausage.

00:34:06.420 It's this thing. I don't want to know how it's being made. I just like, I just like the,

00:34:10.540 the end product. Right. And, and it's tough work. It's tough work to get these things done.

00:34:16.480 Let's talk a little bit about your time in, in the legislature proper. So you're elected to

00:34:23.000 that big, beautiful building in Winnipeg. It is, I actually think it is one of the more beautiful

00:34:29.060 legislatures we have uh throughout the country let alone western canada of the tyndall stone

00:34:34.020 and everything else of course it's also a gigantic masonic temple but that's a different question

00:34:38.840 altogether uh the point being that it's yeah it's a very cool building i got a tour of it while i

00:34:43.740 was there by a buddy who was working with with the premier at the time and you know it's it is

00:34:50.500 this kind of testament to what's happening throughout the province of manitoba you were

00:34:54.680 elected there. You guys sit in a semicircle, which is a little different than the parliamentary

00:34:59.160 tradition that we're used to otherwise. And what was your time like there? You've been there,

00:35:05.520 I think, in opposition and then as well as in majority. What was it like to be a part of a

00:35:11.260 movement in Manitoba? And did that movement achieve what you wanted to achieve?

00:35:15.140 it uh it was a bit of a challenge to say the least because when you're when you're working

00:35:26.180 in your own business you uh you make the decisions and you live with them and you get it done

00:35:34.900 and when you're elected you have to work with a lot of people with different ideas

00:35:40.420 and define what your decisions are going to be and what your projects are,

00:35:47.840 and then it just takes too damn long to get it done, in my mind.

00:35:54.920 But at the same time, it is the way that the legislatures work.

00:36:02.780 And, yes, we did accomplish a lot of things.

00:36:07.500 Even when you're in opposition, you can't accomplish certain things.

00:36:12.500 But it does take a lot of time and a lot of effort to do that.

00:36:19.500 But one of the big parts is to be able to educate the total population in the province.

00:36:31.500 So as a rural MLA, you have a big chore to educate those that disconnect, as you pointed out, from the rural area in order to move ahead with things.

00:36:50.900 And then, of course, we also have the same situation that British Columbia has with our aboriginal population.

00:37:01.500 And they're, how should I say it, not just claims, they do own a lot of land.

00:37:12.140 And then you need to cross that land with certain things.

00:37:16.860 And Manitoba was, for example, is to bring our power from our dams in northern Manitoba down to southern Manitoba.

00:37:26.760 and you have to cross different reserves and so on and so forth.

00:37:33.520 And the NDP, rather than to deal with each aboriginal tribe,

00:37:42.700 decided we're going to circumvent that and go a different way

00:37:46.660 and they built this Bipole 3 at a cost, an extra cost of $5 billion

00:37:52.800 dollars at whose expense at the people of manitoba's expense it runs all around the

00:38:02.480 doggone province and back to winnipeg but nobody can tell you can't tap into those kind of powers

00:38:09.680 until after it's gone through your uh your station so it's going to take years for manitobans to pay

00:38:18.080 for that and we couldn't stop that when we got elected that was something that

00:38:23.240 we were going to stop but we couldn't and that well I don't know it does it's

00:38:31.400 disappointing that you can't do that but there's too much money put into it in

00:38:36.860 order to stop it so there yes there's and there's other things that that I

00:38:44.460 brought up myself I suggested that I have a program that I was working on to

00:38:54.400 stop the switch I don't know whether you've heard of it or not but switching

00:39:00.700 from daylight savings to that's right yeah back and forth it was called stop

00:39:06.960 the switch was my project and the reason for it was so many people suffer health

00:39:18.360 issues when the switch is made whether it's in the spring or in the fall so

00:39:23.940 many people suffer and there's a group of people and when I say a group there's

00:39:33.540 an age group

00:39:35.320 that don't suffer.

00:39:39.440 And so then

00:39:40.140 they want to golf and they want to do this

00:39:42.260 and they want to do that, but they don't understand

00:39:44.500 what effect

00:39:46.640 this switch has

00:39:48.000 on people.

00:39:51.020 And I wanted the government,

00:39:53.080 our government,

00:39:54.520 to

00:39:55.680 have a referendum on it.

00:39:58.920 And they

00:40:00.000 refused that.

00:40:02.120 And I'm a conservative

00:40:03.400 through and through, but they refused to even debate it in the legislature.

00:40:10.780 Although I brought forward private members to do that, they refused to debate that.

00:40:17.980 And so I talked to some individuals since I've been out of the legislature, and they

00:40:26.280 said, well, you know, I wouldn't mind if it was on daylight savings time all the time.

00:40:31.840 I said then why don't you why didn't you support it when you had the

00:40:35.920 opportunity and yes well no the boss said you can't support any of that those

00:40:46.060 are the kind of things that were I found to be very frustrating when you're not

00:40:49.720 going to take a look at what's happening to the people and it's not just in

00:40:57.640 Manitoba it's in every province it's not just in Canada the European Union took a

00:41:04.600 vote and said we're going to quit switching so now what we want is we want

00:41:15.280 the government to mandate you have to get up one hour earlier for the summer

00:41:20.520 so you can stay up one hour longer golfing and it doesn't matter how that affects

00:41:28.980 your grandmother and grandfather that's that's very frustrating but there were some good things

00:41:37.460 yeah yeah i i remember you know i remember uh learning that statistic in like law 12 like you

00:41:45.160 know which is over 10 years ago for me now you know the end of high school that that the amount

00:41:50.680 of crashes that happen right after right after the the time switch is astronomical like and there's

00:41:57.540 there's visits to the the heart attack for for emergency and it's it's really rough on the body

00:42:03.240 they say they say that about swing shifts right like you want to if you want to take uh years

00:42:07.800 off your life do swing shifts now those who have to do swing shifts i mean all we can do is pray

00:42:12.360 for them but that i mean it is it is nasty idea you're going to do four nights and then four days

00:42:16.900 and four nights and four days like it's hard on you and and now you're doing that to an entire

00:42:21.620 population one time uh twice a year i mean uh an hour this way an hour that way you could you

00:42:28.140 it's predictable it's predictable that that would have adverse uh health effects so i mean there was

00:42:34.460 there was this journey through the legislature um your representation in legislature advocating for

00:42:40.860 rural Manitobans. Did you find that your party, the Progressive Conservative Party,

00:42:47.560 was more amenable to rural Manitobans or did you find that there was just as much resistance from

00:42:52.960 them as there had been from the NDP when you were in opposition? I found that they were very

00:43:01.080 amendable until after we formed government no problem well because once we formed government

00:43:12.680 and we had the largest majority in the history of manitoba when we formed government

00:43:19.800 and but to maintain that

00:43:24.600 you have to uh

00:43:25.960 I've got to think of the terminology that's appropriate to say it this time.

00:43:34.620 But basically, you have to bend over to the people, the urban people,

00:43:46.320 because they were the ones that were holding the NDP in government.

00:43:52.840 and quite frankly

00:43:54.980 even though I haven't been in British Columbia

00:43:58.140 for a number of years

00:43:59.280 I would say that's the only reason

00:44:01.160 that the NDP are in there

00:44:03.000 is because of the urban population

00:44:04.880 you're not wrong

00:44:06.340 and unfortunately

00:44:09.080 when

00:44:11.000 then you start to look at

00:44:13.080 well I've got to maintain

00:44:15.280 our position here

00:44:16.840 you've got there to do a job

00:44:20.580 do the job

00:44:22.840 do the job do the things you said you were going to do manitoba is the one of the only provinces

00:44:29.400 that i'm aware of there might be others that have a school tax on agricultural land yeah we don't

00:44:36.840 have one in bc it's suspended so you look at after you declare yourself a farmer all of a sudden your

00:44:42.040 land tax worth is like

00:44:43.340 yes well

00:44:45.560 in Manitoba

00:44:46.840 our land tax

00:44:50.280 is very very

00:44:52.100 high the education tax on land

00:44:54.120 is very very high

00:44:55.720 and we had said in opposition

00:44:58.100 that we were going to get rid of it

00:44:59.740 five years later

00:45:01.720 now in this

00:45:03.980 particular legislature

00:45:06.060 today they said

00:45:08.500 that they are now

00:45:10.260 going to

00:45:12.040 lower the education tax on farmland, or on, excuse me, on property, 25%.

00:45:20.240 I'm not opposed to paying education tax on my residents.

00:45:24.580 That's where I raise my family.

00:45:26.620 That's where the educators or the education tax should be on.

00:45:32.880 But in the province of Manitoba right now, I see the NDP are beating up the premier

00:45:39.480 because the education tax at 25% reduction puts $4,000 in his pocket this year on his

00:45:50.120 particular residence in Winnipeg.

00:45:55.660 But at any rate, they say they're going to lower it by 50%.

00:46:01.960 We also have something else that other provinces don't have.

00:46:06.960 We have an employee tax.

00:46:11.960 So if you employ X number of people, then you have to pay a payroll tax.

00:46:16.240 None of the other provinces west of us have that.

00:46:22.400 That's unfortunate.

00:46:23.400 There were people that all of a sudden have built up a business and find out that they're

00:46:29.780 paying a payroll tax.

00:46:33.140 And that payroll tax was brought in by the NDP government at one time for a certain purpose,

00:46:40.640 but now it goes into general revenue.

00:46:45.740 Why do we want to discourage people from building a business here with this unnecessary tax?

00:46:56.520 So yes, there's lots of things that I was disappointed in after we formed government

00:47:02.560 that we didn't pay attention to what we said we were going to do.

00:47:11.340 At any rate, yes, going forward, well, even, and I just want to go back a little bit.

00:47:19.900 There was things that you could do.

00:47:22.640 You could bring in private members' bills, and I brought in one in Manitoba to honor the RCMP.

00:47:31.560 And I don't know if you know the history of the RCMP, but they started out as the Northwest

00:47:39.120 Mounted Police.

00:47:40.660 And in 1920, the federal government formed them with Eastern Police, formed the Northwest

00:47:48.960 Mounted Police and the Eastern Police into the RCMP.

00:47:54.400 And the Northwest Mounted Police actually started in Manitoba.

00:47:58.560 At any rate, after some of the things that have happened to the RCMP, and it happens to other police forces too, but I thought, you know, you look in the mirror and you see that red light.

00:48:13.820 What's the first thing that goes through your mind?

00:48:16.220 You look at your speedometer and say, where in the heck did he come from?

00:48:21.060 But at the same time, if somebody's breaking into your house, then who do you call?

00:48:27.640 And we know that a number of the RCMP were shot.

00:48:35.820 Their families go through something every day that our families don't have to go through.

00:48:42.400 When the RCMP member goes to work, is he coming home?

00:48:47.200 So I felt it was important to honor them with the RCMP day, the day that they were formed.

00:48:54.660 And so I put forward a private member's bill, which passed in the legislature.

00:49:00.840 Those kind of things I think are important to recognize the people that do things that normally we take for granted.

00:49:15.580 You take for granted that you're protected all the time.

00:49:20.680 We should not take those kind of things for granted.

00:49:24.660 No, we shouldn't. We shouldn't. It's a rarity in this world, actually. There's very few places where you don't have to give your police bribes or feel like you need to be armed at all times in order to protect yourself. I'm not saying I'm against self-armament whatsoever. I'm very pro having armaments and being able to defend yourself.

00:49:45.260 But nonetheless, the point that I'm trying to draw here, to your point, Cliff, is that, of course, we need to honor those who put their lives on the line every day, first responders, military, of course, our police.

00:49:56.460 I think that maybe the way we can kind of round out what we've been talking about here, we've been talking about this divide, you know, the West and the rest.

00:50:05.100 We've been talking about the divide within rural and urban, even in a place like Manitoba, again, a place where most people would think, no, like, I mean, that's still a rural province.

00:50:13.240 It's like Saskatchewan, the farmers have the say, and you're explaining to me in no uncertain terms, like, well, no, actually, Winnipeg is kind of pulling all the strings around here nowadays.

00:50:24.160 Let's talk a little bit about what the future then holds, but for Manitoba and for Canada in general, what's going to happen here?

00:50:31.440 How does the premier of Manitoba or the premiers of the rest of the western provinces, how do they get either more out of Ottawa or how do they lead as a group in order to ensure their own populations are better taken care of?

00:50:46.620 Well, I think they have to stand together, first of all.

00:50:50.760 And I am disappointed in one respect that the Premier of Manitoba didn't stand up with Scott Moe and Kenny and Ontario when they were fighting the federal government on the carbon tax initially.

00:51:16.760 and but in Manitoba our premier and I was sitting in that in the government at

00:51:25.460 the time and he said we're going to have a carbon tax here and I said no and I

00:51:32.660 said it in caucus I said it privately to him and because the people in rural

00:51:41.840 Manitoba that elected me were saying the same thing.

00:51:46.100 Now apparently, well then he changed his mind afterwards, but in the meantime, didn't step

00:51:53.060 up at the time, and now he is still saying, well, we've got our own, what do they call

00:52:00.840 it, the clean green machine that they've got here, and they're going to court on that with

00:52:07.980 Trudeau, the federal government.

00:52:10.260 And we do need to also explain to, or how do you go about saying it, because we have a lot of people from eastern Canada that have come to work in western Canada, because that's where the jobs were, in Harper's days.

00:52:33.680 Alberta had

00:52:36.360 many, many, many people

00:52:38.360 from New Brunswick

00:52:40.460 and from

00:52:42.620 Newfoundland and from

00:52:44.520 Ontario working in the oil patch.

00:52:48.260 They've

00:52:48.900 gone home and they're not working.

00:52:51.320 Or some of them

00:52:52.540 are working in the oil patch

00:52:54.320 in the ocean, on the floating

00:53:00.660 drillers there.

00:53:03.680 But at the same time, we have seen a lot of Western Canada money go down east and transfer money.

00:53:15.180 And Manitoba is not one of them.

00:53:17.000 Manitoba is actually one of the highest taxed provinces in Canada.

00:53:24.320 And they have benefited from transfer money from the federal government, but not at the same level

00:53:32.100 that Quebec has benefited from it, or even Ontario.

00:53:38.460 We have to start working as a country, as a country, working for the benefit of every

00:53:48.040 province, not taking from one province and giving it to another.

00:53:55.300 And stay out of the way for provinces to develop their resources.

00:54:01.760 Manitoba does have some oil drilling going on in western Manitoba.

00:54:08.160 And we have mining opportunities in northern Manitoba.

00:54:13.580 In fact, we have some of the ingredients for batteries, a fairly large deposit of that.

00:54:22.820 Saskatchewan could be doing more work with nuclear.

00:54:26.140 And nuclear energy is another fairly, fairly clean energy.

00:54:31.140 I worked on nuclear boilers as well in the United States and in Ontario.

00:54:39.700 We can develop some of this stuff, but we need to do it as a country for the benefit

00:54:45.840 of all the people, not just a certain handful that's going to support a socialist government.

00:54:55.620 it's a strong statement but i think a necessary one uh and the fact the matter is is that our

00:55:02.700 country it has lacked vision for a long time and without a new vision or a concrete vision forward

00:55:08.480 which i think is something that's costed and serves a lot of elections myself we're not we're

00:55:12.820 not going to get anywhere just as kind of a final thought cliff if if you could give one piece of

00:55:17.560 advice to people who are aspiring to be mlas counselors even perhaps mps even the prime

00:55:24.780 Minister of Canada someday, premiers of provinces, mayors of towns.

00:55:28.940 What would you tell them?

00:55:30.100 If they want to lead their people, what's the best advice you could give them?

00:55:37.260 Pay attention to what is beneficial to your area that you can contribute to your country.

00:55:47.560 And if you're going to be the Prime Minister, you need to be able to 0.95

00:55:54.780 promote your country not your own ass and that's what he has been doing he's 0.95

00:56:02.740 been trying to buy a seat for that and I shouldn't have said to that respect but 0.97

00:56:08.680 he's been trying to buy a spot for himself and his foundation he's never

00:56:16.000 had to work for a living you need people that have worked and many many of the

00:56:27.220 politicians have I'm not suggesting that being a lawyer isn't work or you don't

00:56:33.220 have to work with your hands as as I have done and as many other people have

00:56:37.960 But you need to be able to say, yes, this is what my work history has shown me.

00:56:48.040 You don't take something like this playboy that paid two and a half million dollars to keep some young lady in B.C. quiet.

00:56:59.760 and then he was a snowmobiler and blah, blah, blah,

00:57:05.580 and he took advice from his father who made Canada number one

00:57:13.140 with his fingers stuck up in the air.

00:57:17.200 That's what he did to Western Canada.

00:57:20.680 That is not building the country.

00:57:23.580 and we have a reputation as being an open country and this guy is ruining that and he's ruining it

00:57:34.600 for all of us we need to have respect of other countries that we do business with

00:57:41.440 that we ship our whatever we we produce here i don't care whether it's oil

00:57:49.580 whether it's mining, whether it's agriculture, whatever we produce,

00:57:56.540 we need to be able to stay in the world market.

00:58:01.240 And right now we've been made a fool of by this individual that is leading the country

00:58:08.180 and by some of the premiers in the past too have done that to us.

00:58:16.120 So you have to look at how you can compete in the world with respect, with respect from the rest of the world.

00:58:26.240 That's important in my mind.

00:58:29.960 I completely agree and have pride, pride in one's own country.

00:58:34.980 Absolutely.

00:58:35.520 And I know that you are very proud of Manitoba, proud of the place you came from, proud of the things you accomplished.

00:58:40.440 And we're proud to have you on here today.

00:58:42.580 Thank you so much for joining us, Cliff.

00:58:44.680 Well, thank you for the opportunity, and I hope I didn't embarrass you with my language.

00:58:49.460 Nope, not at all. Not at all. Thank you so much. We hope to have you on again soon.

00:58:55.380 We'll look forward to it. Thank you again, and keep up the good work, and the young man that

00:59:02.100 works with you, I have a lot of respect for him. There's no reason why he can't be the premier

00:59:08.780 of british columbia at some time there you go we'll keep we'll take care of him for you don't

00:59:14.480 you worry thank you so much clip well we'll be bringing on darcy uh darcy reppin right away he

00:59:22.000 of course is the co-founder of the rural party of british columbia and the former mayor of telco

00:59:27.640 darcy are you there let's see i am uh hopefully you can hear me yeah i can hear you just fine

00:59:34.780 Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and how you founded the Rural BC Party and what kind of the purpose is and what you're hoping to accomplish.

00:59:45.300 Sure. Well, first of all, good morning, Nathan, and thanks for having me on.

00:59:50.820 Yeah, the politics didn't come to me intentionally.

00:59:54.600 I initially got involved because of issues that were happening here in Telcwa that I was concerned about and a number of other people were concerned about.

01:00:05.240 And so I really began with my term as mayor of Telcwa.

01:00:10.460 I didn't seek re-election partially because I wanted to focus more on rural BC issues, provincial level issues, and even to an extent, federal level issues.

01:00:21.520 um and so at the time i was uh considering this project i realized there were some other regional

01:00:28.580 politicians that were pretty fed up with the way our region in particular was being uh handled by

01:00:35.100 the the provincial government and so uh you know ultimately we got together and had a chat about

01:00:41.340 the best way forward and determined that forming a province-wide rural party one that targeted

01:00:47.720 rural areas and emphasized the need for equity for rural British Columbians was the best way

01:00:55.480 forward. So yeah, Jonathan Van Barneveld, again, a very successful local politician in Houston, B.C.,

01:01:05.400 and myself and a couple of other people that we've been working with really got together and said,

01:01:11.620 But, you know, we need to present some solid policy that shows people in rural BC that there's another way forward besides the urban centric parties that currently rule the roost.

01:01:25.680 And, of course, we know that the urban areas will still be that target.

01:01:30.720 Our belief is that for us, if we can take seats in the rural areas, we'll have a disproportionately loud voice in the legislature just because of the shakeup that would be and what it would show our Victoria politicians,

01:01:47.920 and how rural people are feeling about the treatment

01:01:51.600 and also the potential of rural areas

01:01:54.620 that is really being overlooked.

01:01:56.260 And, you know, it's easy to take a negative route

01:01:59.060 and look at the problems that we have

01:02:01.680 in terms of funding and infrastructure development

01:02:04.820 and, you know, managing the revenues from our resources.

01:02:09.920 But really what it's about is having a positive projection

01:02:13.900 of what rural BC can look like in the future.

01:02:16.420 And that's the thing that gets me excited about what we're working on.

01:02:22.440 You know, it's funny because I've always lived in Prince George, except for my brief time down in Vancouver.

01:02:30.800 And well, I was in Langley, to be honest about for my schooling.

01:02:35.540 I went to Trinity Western University in Langley.

01:02:38.160 But the thing that kind of comes to my mind is that when it comes to these rural areas, they do just get completely ignored.

01:02:45.620 Now, I mean, maybe people out in Telco don't feel that people here in Prince George have a lot of solidarity with them.

01:02:52.380 I mean, we've got too many Starbucks and we've got some of the big box stores.

01:02:56.020 It's not we're not exactly, you know, Hudson's Hope.

01:02:59.260 But but at the same time, obviously, people live in Prince George in order to experience the outdoors and to be, you know, to get to hunt.

01:03:07.200 And they enjoy being here instead of being in the long commute of the lower mainland and the various bumper to bumper traffic that happens there.

01:03:14.760 And we have more similar concerns to you than we do to the rest of the lower mainland, that sort of thing.

01:03:20.780 I think that there still is that feeling of disconnect, though, between, you know, smaller rural areas, slightly larger rural areas, and then actual cities or towns.

01:03:29.940 And then, of course, the metropolitan areas down south.

01:03:33.540 How do we make a connection between places like Prince George and Telco?

01:03:39.120 I think that connection has already been made, Nathan.

01:03:41.760 And to be honest with you, I don't think that disconnect exists because the people that live in the smaller areas recognize the importance of places like Prince George and terrorists in our connectivity with the world.

01:03:55.640 Right. So Prince George is our medical hub for much of the work that people need done with their health care for our area.

01:04:04.880 and also terrorist factors strongly in that.

01:04:08.580 In terms of, you know, trips out of town, shopping,

01:04:11.940 different appointments, often those are also hubs

01:04:15.020 that we're engaged with.

01:04:17.900 And so, you know, again, it's not an us versus thing scenario.

01:04:24.060 And I'd like to make that clear right off the bat,

01:04:26.620 is that the Rural BC Party is not anti-urban by any means.

01:04:31.460 In fact, we believe that what we're proposing

01:04:34.160 will be hugely helpful to the urban areas that are really under a massive amount of stress

01:04:41.060 because of the population growth and the challenges that they're having with accommodating people both

01:04:46.900 in terms of housing and work that pays a living wage. So, you know, really, yes, there's a lot of

01:04:55.300 variation within our region, not just between Telco and Prince George, but really, you know,

01:05:00.140 you could look at telco and taylor bc taylor is a very similar sized community incredibly

01:05:05.980 different situation different politics going on there different level of needs different flat out

01:05:13.980 municipal wealth level but we recognize that you know if you take a 60 000 foot view

01:05:22.140 really all of us that are outside of those major core urban areas and most specifically the greater

01:05:28.220 vancouver and southwest vancouver island area are the ones that are truly in a different world

01:05:34.620 and you know perhaps colonna is starting to uh bridge that a little bit as well as it becomes

01:05:40.860 more urban but um you know really uh you know we believe that if our government was taking

01:05:48.780 rural development seriously and really investing in us in terms of economic diversification

01:05:56.620 and a greater level of sustainability and development

01:06:00.900 and really taking a close and accurate look

01:06:06.240 at what the funding levels look like

01:06:09.780 in terms of infrastructure investment,

01:06:12.880 in terms of resource revenues,

01:06:15.880 and generally in terms of investing

01:06:19.060 in the social and cultural baseline

01:06:22.140 for these communities is,

01:06:25.620 to me it's a reasonable thing to do it's the fair thing to do and I believe that

01:06:29.640 when they do that they'll see that they need to increase the investment in rural

01:06:33.600 BC but that investment will pay much more dividend than a similar amount of

01:06:40.060 money invested in our urban areas and there's one very clear and simple

01:06:45.420 example that I use for that and that's the proposed elementary school that

01:06:48.900 they're looking at putting in right downtown Vancouver Smithers is building

01:06:53.700 a new elementary school as well right now and there are some differences in design the one in

01:06:59.140 vancouver will have residential space above it slightly different number of classrooms and kids

01:07:04.740 accommodated in the school and both facilities have child care involved but the bottom line is

01:07:11.860 you can take those two budgets and you can look at them and go what's going on here and what's

01:07:16.100 going on in terms of the cost and the bottom line there's no brainer it is far more cost efficient

01:07:22.900 for the government to invest in building these sorts of facilities and housing in rural bc than

01:07:28.980 it is in downtown vancouver and so if you're looking at bank for your buck again we don't

01:07:33.860 want everybody from vancouver to move to rural bc it's impractical it's not going to happen

01:07:38.420 it's used as as often a boogeyman argument by people that say hey like we love our lifestyle

01:07:44.340 we don't want to have everybody moving here it's not going to happen but if we saw a one percent

01:07:50.340 annual increase in migration to rural BC. Really, we'd barely notice it in terms of livability,

01:07:58.820 but it would create a massive boom in terms of housing, employment, infrastructure development,

01:08:06.460 the fact that we can actually have other businesses that forever have only been able to operate in the

01:08:12.180 urban areas can now set up quite comfortably and actually do business as efficiently or more

01:08:18.780 efficiently in say the highway 16 corridor with our rail route and our access to the port and our

01:08:25.820 fiber optic internet there's just no reason anymore to lean on that historical excuse of

01:08:33.100 well darcy people historically have moved to the urban areas great historically there was no

01:08:38.540 internet right this has revolutionized our world so every time someone brings that argument up to

01:08:44.620 me about why rural bc is dead in the water and is just going to slowly you know fade away i just go

01:08:53.440 no actually it's going to go the other way and you guys are behind the curve because we now have

01:08:59.120 everything that we need to do exactly what you're doing in vancouver cheaper better faster more

01:09:06.280 efficiently and what we need is the government to recognize and support that those are i mean

01:09:14.600 they're they're incredible points i and i wouldn't excuse any of them or or you know go against any

01:09:21.740 of them it's absolutely true the infrastructure here in northern british columbia it's far superior

01:09:26.840 than what it was even 20 years ago uh let alone uh you know 50 years ago and now and now there's

01:09:33.720 a way forward in that sense if there is a place for not necessarily counter argument but maybe

01:09:39.120 those unintended consequences of population change or increase or but but there are other macroeconomic

01:09:44.880 factors that are uh around this is that i mean one of the things we talk about on this show at

01:09:50.160 every now and again i bring it up as a refrain is that you know i remember when four hundred

01:09:54.720 thousand dollars was a doctor's house um now in storage you know people want that for a bc bungalow

01:10:01.840 now let's be clear i love i love bc bungalows they were pretty okay well built depending on how how

01:10:08.400 real fast ever put together their split levels are very simple if the roof line's angled enough

01:10:12.800 and you got shingles it's something you can do yourself later and if they've been renovated on

01:10:16.160 the inside they're not a not a bad looking house like that's fine but four hundred thousand dollars

01:10:22.400 on whatever that is point three of an acre i don't know uh is is a lot uh let alone the taxes that

01:10:29.280 happen here in prince george i don't know if you guys are experiencing that uh further west or if

01:10:33.920 housing brides are just going up everywhere it's just everybody from vancouver moving to prince

01:10:37.600 George but it's it's getting to a point where people cannot get into a decent

01:10:42.260 house even if they have you know like a government job and a decent down payment

01:10:47.140 yeah absolutely and yes it is happening further west I believe Smithers and

01:10:52.560 telco actually had the highest property value increases this year and telcos

01:10:56.800 average off property value I believe is either just below or just slightly higher

01:11:04.100 than Prince George's. So the issue there is not people leaving the city and migrating to

01:11:11.780 rural areas, in my opinion. The issue there is our failure to develop a building code

01:11:19.740 and a construction industry that can meet the demand that we have for housing. I'm not even

01:11:26.580 going to use the word affordable. I'm just going to say housing in general. And it's been an

01:11:32.560 ongoing frustration for me going back to when I was mayor of Telco, that we haven't been able to

01:11:38.420 be more proactive in going, look, we can build houses that meet the requirements of our climate

01:11:45.180 and of our living conditions more affordably than we are right now. And Nathan, part of the reason

01:11:52.060 that those housing prices are so high is that when you look at the actual cost of construction now,

01:11:57.200 even in rural and northern BC, I believe you're looking at for a high quality house between 250

01:12:04.020 and 300 dollars per square foot. So when people are comparing single family homes that are already

01:12:10.280 existing and constructed versus buying and building a new home on a lot, even at 400 or

01:12:18.160 450 thousand dollars, really you're probably still getting better bang for your buck with older

01:12:25.400 houses. My feeling is that we need to drive those construction costs down. I am absolutely an

01:12:33.540 optimist and someone who believes so much in our ability to create as a species. And already we're

01:12:41.880 seeing some really interesting innovations, things like 3D printed homes. We're seeing new techniques

01:12:47.280 for building highly efficient and even net zero buildings. What we need, again, is a very clear

01:12:55.140 roadmap and i'm i'm not anti-publicization of different industries to be clear but i believe

01:13:04.020 that one way or the other whether it's through private industry or through public a public

01:13:09.140 construction entity we need to get more efficient and more cost efficient at building housing and

01:13:16.420 when we get there it will still be cheaper to build in rural areas because the land is here

01:13:22.660 and the the opportunity to upgrade and redo infrastructure water and sewer systems is going

01:13:29.540 to be far far cheaper and easier to deal with than it is to dig up broadway street in vancouver

01:13:37.380 right um and the other thing is is that many of the towns in bc so prince george is seeing

01:13:43.780 a boom um smithers and telco are seeing a boom uh terrace and kitimat obviously are

01:13:51.540 in another boom which for them is i think getting a little tiring for the people that live there

01:13:56.820 because it's boom it's bust it's boom it's bust prince rupert is kind of doing what it's been

01:14:02.500 doing all the other small towns in our region actually haven't seen a large shift in housing

01:14:08.420 prices or in migration and i can tell you right now i grew up in mckenzie bc there's a lot of

01:14:15.300 perfectly fine empty homes in mckenzie bc which is a fantastic place to live especially if you're

01:14:21.780 lifestyle oriented and you're into fishing and hunting and hiking and beautiful mountain views

01:14:26.820 out of your window um yes is it a little bit of a dated layout i mean it's a company town that was

01:14:32.660 built in the 1970s but um you know my belief is that if you have a community that galvanizes

01:14:38.980 around something and wants to promote it that you can make things that might look pretty dated

01:14:45.460 look pretty amazing and there's a benefit to mckenzie's layout as well with the density in

01:14:51.280 terms of maintaining their infrastructure that again will be much more cost effective than it

01:14:55.660 would be in the lower mainland so there's some missed opportunities right now there is housing

01:15:00.540 available in rural bc it's just maybe not in the places where the demand is but again you

01:15:08.960 you know, even for Prince George, yes, those housing prices are up high right now. But if we

01:15:12.920 were to see a depreciation in the cost of new building, I think everything would sort of

01:15:18.480 stabilize on that level. We, of course, don't wish negative equity on anyone. It's not something you

01:15:27.280 want to wish on anybody, but it's one of those funny things. When you're a renter, you, you know,

01:15:31.320 you don't think being a landlord's a job. And when you're a property owner, you don't want to

01:15:35.300 values go down it's it's it's an old adversarial problem but i think the the kind of coming back to

01:15:41.680 the the general idea of rural bc and and some of the divides that are found there at least between

01:15:47.340 us and and especially the metropolitan areas in the lower mainland is throughout the show today

01:15:52.840 we've been talking a little bit about the fact that it very much mirrors the kind of western

01:15:57.720 alienation concept so we have a comment here from aaron ekman of course friend of the show i know

01:16:03.340 he's a friend of yours as well. And he's just making the point that, you know, there's a lot

01:16:09.040 of, there's, you know, a cause of Western alienation. Has the rural BC party debated

01:16:13.100 Wexit internally? Maybe that's a little bit on the nose, but the idea just in general that

01:16:17.700 if this is the debate going on in the rural BC party, that of course the metropolitan areas

01:16:25.380 aren't really paying attention to us. What about that larger scope question? Do we have an answer

01:16:31.420 to should victoria and the rest of bc not be you know maybe the same place anymore vancouver and

01:16:36.460 the rest of the mainland or and for that matter the rest of the west and and even ottawa somehow

01:16:42.140 go their separate ways or find some new political arrangements i can tell you that it hasn't factored

01:16:48.700 in our party policy and i can answer the the question very um up front for myself and the

01:16:54.620 answer is no i love bc i've lived in vancouver i've lived in victoria i'm not a person who

01:17:00.620 believes that the way forward is to go hey we should just cut ties um i about solutions and

01:17:07.580 i absolutely believe that within bc um there are solutions and i'm working on them and i'm

01:17:13.500 i believe that we're we're seeing progress um icbc is an example it's an incredibly frustrating and

01:17:21.020 long and difficult slog but if you are able to present a clear case backed by data showing

01:17:30.140 that there is a clear and obvious disparity my optimistic feeling is that when you bring that

01:17:37.020 in a cohesive manner to the government that they'll listen to you and they'll correct those issues

01:17:42.620 and so that's kind of my approach i mean you know i just think the grass is always greener and i

01:17:49.180 couldn't fathom um you know a wexit scenario involving bc i think that again when we talk

01:17:57.100 about differences especially politically and lifestyle wise um british columbia as a whole

01:18:02.540 is quite different than than alberta and i think alberta is quite different than saskatchewan and

01:18:07.340 manitoba i've worked in all these places right i'm familiar with them um and i appreciate uh

01:18:14.700 all of them and what canada brings as a whole and to be honest with you i appreciate what our

01:18:19.180 international neighbors bring as a whole as well i mean on that level i think that we have one

01:18:24.700 one globe that we're all living on and that we need to instead of living in fear of our neighbors

01:18:30.460 and always fighting and trying to figure out how to get the best of another entity that we actually

01:18:37.660 go like what's the real goal here and that's for all of us to have a fulfilling and high quality

01:18:43.420 standard of living and i believe that's attainable but we need to take a different approach that is

01:18:49.100 much more problem-solving oriented and so yeah um you know what i honestly i think wexit is a

01:18:56.780 a no-go in bc i know that i got more votes than all the wexit candidates combined in the last

01:19:04.620 election and i think the reason for that is that i made it very clear that actually i'm

01:19:09.900 um i'm very uh progressive and problem solving oriented rather than um you know sort of stuck

01:19:19.340 on the things that you know are wrong that i you know i need to bring forward solutions to things

01:19:26.380 and i think the people take an interest in that so um yeah wax it no go for me that's not a problem

01:19:35.020 at all i i mean on the show i've i've been rather ambivalent about this obviously the western

01:19:39.820 standard has a pretty hard sovereignness line and they prefer to be called sovereignness over

01:19:45.020 separatists i i i for myself i'm just interested in a better arrangement politically uh so problem

01:19:51.420 solving is another way of putting that maybe i would put it more cynically because i'm obviously

01:19:55.100 just on the more tragic conservative side of the spectrum but the the other side of it is that it

01:20:00.140 It definitely, in my mind, is that I don't want to see the borders of Canada change.

01:20:04.120 I have put it as maybe some of those internal borders should change.

01:20:07.800 I have advocated in the past, for example, that we should follow the diocesan lines or maybe something else.

01:20:15.360 But the point is that that would give us at least 47 districts.

01:20:18.160 And actually, to the point of having we had Cliff Graydon on earlier, so we're talking about Manitoba.

01:20:23.220 Well, I've been up to Churchill, Manitoba a few times now.

01:20:27.420 And I can tell you the people in Churchill, Manitoba feel far more connected to the people and none of it than they do to the people of Winnipeg. And so maybe those borders in that sense should change some of those provincial lines.

01:20:37.660 Coming back to the rural BC question, what kind of political arrangements might find some of that innovation?

01:20:44.860 Would you, for example, be in favor of, I don't know, a provincial Senate or somehow the regional districts getting kind of a say as legislation comes out of Victoria?

01:20:54.600 The various regional districts have a say in things or local candidates somehow have a way of influencing that in a secondary fashion?

01:21:02.120 I don't know if it's a second chamber or how it works, but something like that.

01:21:07.660 I struggle with it a little bit because what we see so often in rural BC in these small

01:21:14.220 municipalities is a lot of candidates elected by acclamation and we see a lot of sort of

01:21:23.380 municipal gridlock people are stuck in their own municipal bubble of dealing with the day-to-day

01:21:31.700 issues that they're trying to address for their constituents and the reality is that in

01:21:37.580 all of those communities it's it's a you know it's a part-time job um i when i was mayor uh

01:21:45.740 much to my wife's chagrin kind of called it mayor school and actually left my previous career

01:21:51.820 to really dedicate myself for those four years now the unfortunate part of it is that combined

01:21:57.580 my regional district director salary and mayor salary was under 20 grand a year so i gave up

01:22:03.820 about half a million dollars over four years to serve my community and that hurt and that was

01:22:08.700 definitely part of the factor of me um stepping away from that but the other thing is is that

01:22:15.100 by stepping away from it i can actually dedicate that kind of focus so um you know honestly i think

01:22:22.700 you're going to be challenged in a parliamentary level in addressing this i think that the best

01:22:31.260 way forward for people in rural bc is not going to think that they're going to get better

01:22:35.980 representation in uh victoria and there's a very good argument for that which is that uh you know

01:22:44.060 most people feel that a vote should be equal to another vote and we already have some problems

01:22:49.660 with that in canada the senate i think we can circle back to your western alienation a bit later

01:22:55.820 and talk about some of the things that drive that fall into the same category.

01:23:01.480 So, again, my feeling is that we need to provide the evidence

01:23:07.820 and the proof that we are not being treated equitably,

01:23:11.860 and that comes down a lot of the times to math.

01:23:14.480 That's what I've done with ICBC through a series of Freedom of Information reports,

01:23:18.700 and today is actually a very – it's a huge day for me

01:23:22.940 because today is the day that icbc has as a deadline to respond to the first information

01:23:29.020 request in their rate requirements proceeding and so that issue is now plainly on the table

01:23:37.340 and we will see what their response is and i've also engaged with our local mla nathan cullen and

01:23:45.100 he also is paying close attention i've also reached out now to adam olsen and to sonia first

01:23:51.340 now as well so people are apprised of the issue and now it's kind of the balls in their court

01:23:57.900 and we have to see whether they're going to do the right thing or whether they're going to dig 0.68

01:24:02.600 in and quite clearly just say you're second class citizens so it's a start it's the approach that

01:24:09.280 i'm taking in terms of representation in the legislature again i think if we flat out are

01:24:15.760 able to elect representatives in the rural areas in those you know 24 25 ridings that would I think

01:24:25.160 be very interested in that kind of representation number one there's a chance that we would hold

01:24:31.000 the balance of power in the legislature we saw that with three seats with the greens

01:24:36.100 and the other one is even just breaking in we know historically how hard it has been

01:24:41.720 for a party to um elect uh representatives it took the greens i don't know how many elections and

01:24:48.960 you know i was on the radio with stewart parker the other day and one of the things that he remarked

01:24:53.940 on was you know first election i wasn't even here i was in uh the northwest territories during the

01:24:59.740 last election spent zero dollars on signs or radio ads or tv ads um participated remotely in the

01:25:06.440 debates and got almost 11% of the vote. I mean, I put pennies on the dollar, what we put into the

01:25:14.240 campaign compared to the other candidates and 11% of the vote came. So to me, I look at and I go,

01:25:22.440 there's clearly a strong interest. And one of the things I've always said too, is that my biggest

01:25:28.980 job isn't during election campaigns. I may never run again. And that would be perfectly fine with

01:25:34.580 me because i'm all about policy i'm not about the politics i'm not about smiling for the cameras or

01:25:40.340 cutting ribbons i think that we can do better and that's where my focus is so we're certainly

01:25:46.180 working on that for the next campaign and hopefully we can find compelling candidates

01:25:50.340 throughout the province that people engage with and go yeah like this is a problem that we need

01:25:57.140 to see addressed and by electing people to the rural bc party we can start to address them and

01:26:03.380 at least shine a real light in the legislature on what's going on i think that you know speaking of

01:26:12.900 shining that light in the legislature i mean there are things that affect rural british columbians

01:26:17.220 that simply don't affect you know urban british columbians i was just bringing this up again just

01:26:21.540 a little bit earlier with cliff i was talking about all the ordinances and the incredible

01:26:25.860 amount of red tape that comes around for those of us in in especially in farming communities or just

01:26:30.660 in rural parts of the province that have a little bit more acreage that does qualify under the ALR

01:26:36.280 as farmland or whatever. The idea of trying to build a secondary residence and having generational

01:26:42.520 farming, all this stuff, you'd think that they'd want to facilitate this, but the amount of red

01:26:46.200 tape that's around it is incredible. What are some of those key planks in the rural BC party

01:26:52.400 platform that address some of those issues, not just about people who are farming and whatever,

01:26:57.500 that's very important but but of other rule issues what does that look like uh well again

01:27:02.940 it looks like uh drafting policy that addresses it i agree with you nathan i am a hugely passionate

01:27:09.820 advocate of agriculture in northwestern bc um and you know i'm a co-founder of a cooperative

01:27:16.620 the coast field and forest cooperative that has been engaged in trying to get funding for

01:27:22.060 a agricultural research center in our region um the alc is a dumpster fire it has been a dumpster

01:27:31.100 fire for decades it's an absolute embarrassment and it is totally stunning to watch the decisions

01:27:39.020 that they make time and time again i mean you probably know of the lady today uh decision on

01:27:46.620 they're wanting to access the lake there for a rehabilitation center and the alc saying no on

01:27:53.660 their own territory it's insane to see some of the decisions that are happening so i certainly

01:28:00.620 support and i know that our regional district board um you know specifically mark parker is

01:28:05.420 the chair and mark fisher is a grower here and in my area have been doing incredible work putting

01:28:11.500 pressure on the provincial government on some of these issues uh particularly the overruling of

01:28:17.580 local boards uh local commission boards which is uh you know whenever that happens everybody's

01:28:24.060 jaw drops and just goes what wait a second a guy who's not a farmer who's in victoria

01:28:29.020 is telling the people that are farmers up in northern bc that they're making the wrong decision

01:28:33.740 on agricultural uh proposals i have to i have to interject here with just a with just a story

01:28:40.060 to this effect now admittedly it wasn't the alc that that's bad enough it was it was bc assessment

01:28:45.020 and it's one of the reasons why i grind an axe against those guys every day again bc assessment

01:28:49.660 if you're listening no one decides what my house is worth except for the person who pays for it

01:28:54.460 that's it that's it and the bank i guess when they want to do the equity back door thing whatever to

01:28:59.340 keep the economy spinning because we want all these spinning plates to keep doing what they're

01:29:02.380 doing whatever right the point being that uh the bc assessment was trying to tax my parents property

01:29:08.300 as their backfield to the second section they're trying to tax it as lakeside residential to a lake

01:29:14.060 with no public access except the ancient public access that's an overgrown goat trail and and no

01:29:21.100 utilities and no buildings and then all their examples were literally like from ena lake they

01:29:26.140 were all from these little like these little residential places that are you know like cabins

01:29:29.900 on a lake so that's all that and then they're comparing it to this 160 acre that's next to this

01:29:34.460 tiny little lake that doesn't have any utilities i'm just saying i'm like did somebody call this

01:29:38.940 in on a friday like really like a friday afternoon it was already halfway through happy hour and they

01:29:43.420 just punched this up and threw it up on the website for their response to my challenge

01:29:47.180 it's like this is nonsense it's like who who is running this thing so and this is this is the

01:29:53.500 problem right is that um we leave these decisions to individual bureaucrats that absolutely that

01:30:01.500 friday and they've you know they've already mailed it in and they're like i'm gonna look at lakeside

01:30:07.900 properties today and do it and then they end up getting back by their superiors or they get it

01:30:13.980 sent off without um having that actually being looked at and i hear those complaints time and

01:30:19.820 time again um from you know people living here and it's you know whether it's bc assessment

01:30:25.820 whether it's how they're being managed by the health system um whether it's ei issues i mean

01:30:31.980 it's just you know income tax problems over and over again and um you know i i kind of cheekily

01:30:40.060 put something out there a couple years ago when i was you know kind of a peak frustration going

01:30:44.780 really what uh you know i basically said here's my resume i would like to be a service tester

01:30:49.980 i'd like to be the person that goes and tests all government services and tells you whether they're

01:30:53.900 garbage or whether they're working because with my experience i'd say literally the majority of 0.53

01:30:59.660 the government services that i've tried to access have been absolute garbage and it's not because 0.98

01:31:05.100 anybody's intentionally um you know again it's handling's razor right like we're not talking

01:31:10.460 about people that are intentionally going we're just going to be annoying to people today but

01:31:16.220 through this incredible bureaucracy in the end that's exactly what the result is and you know

01:31:22.860 again i often joke that the only place if you ever want to revisit the 70s or the 80s and hear a busy

01:31:28.300 signal the only place that you can do that is to call the candor revenue agency yeah yeah right

01:31:35.260 so yeah it's really the alc is just another example of that now it's great to see and you know

01:31:44.300 sometimes you have to acknowledge the positives as well as keep pushing on the things that need

01:31:49.260 change i think so much pressure was put on the ndp government because of the issues with housing on

01:31:57.740 uh agricultural land that they did finally announce we don't know exactly what it looked like

01:32:04.780 that they were going to relax the restrictions on that now for me i always think you know there's a

01:32:11.820 way to do this more uh in a more sophisticated manner so that they can achieve the objective

01:32:18.220 that they're trying to achieve the first time around but also recognize as you said um you know

01:32:23.580 uh generational uh farming opportunities or even you know one of the things that i'm a big advocate

01:32:29.980 of is uh getting a more intensive agricultural industry going in our little pocket here where

01:32:35.820 we have in place is a very beneficial climate and a ton of water so as we see the challenges

01:32:42.620 that the central valley of Vancouver's pardon me of California is experiencing with their drought

01:32:49.580 my feeling is that we can supplant a lot of that supply by developing the agricultural industry

01:32:57.340 in the right parts of BC especially with climate change coming on because we have water and water

01:33:04.140 when you're growing intensive vegetables and fruits is the key so yeah I again I think it's

01:33:12.140 it's a long haul i don't really want to see agricultural land protection lifted entirely

01:33:18.700 but again i think one of the key things for me and again with the the uh the rural bc

01:33:26.220 party as a whole is that we're huge advocates of candidate independence and the candidates need to

01:33:32.300 bring ideas for their region to the table first not their part not the party's ideals but they

01:33:38.780 need to go into their region and go this is an issue that people in our riding our consensus

01:33:45.660 feeling needs to be addressed that they know that the ndp of the liberals are not going to

01:33:49.660 take seriously in victoria and that our candidates bring those issues forward first and foremost

01:33:56.380 so yeah agriculture is going to be a huge one how we're managing our forest industry and

01:34:01.020 impertinency and tenure huge you know how we're dealing with oil and gas some of the other mega

01:34:07.740 projects site c is one that has been on my radar we have to look at the 60 000 foot view and go

01:34:16.780 where are we going here like what is this going to look like as a region in 30 or 40 years

01:34:22.380 particularly if there is increasing increasing international pressure for us to develop to

01:34:29.580 either take in more people or to develop and extract more resources to feed that international

01:34:35.500 demand the international demand i mean this is this is another part of this whole question of

01:34:43.900 what development in northern british columbia looks like not just with a phase towards asia

01:34:48.300 or with the rest of canada through the port right because i mean the trains go both ways

01:34:52.460 but even internally uh again there is that divide even within rural areas i it's interesting to kind

01:34:58.860 of it's interesting to have this interaction with you rc because because i it's interesting to see

01:35:04.140 like a truly rural progressive somebody wants to wants to uh innovate here at home and everything

01:35:09.260 else and i i do as well um we might differ in some of those respects but i think that this is

01:35:13.900 another question so are we looking at that international scope is that the future for

01:35:18.280 the rural areas of british columbia through the highway 16 corridor like that that face to asia

01:35:23.900 that pivot to asia this is where our international market is this is how we will be able to facilitate

01:35:28.760 growth in our region and and i know that there's on another side there's people like well you know

01:35:33.260 again that it maybe it is a bit of nimby isn't right not in my backyard but there's a lot of

01:35:37.100 people are also like well i'm more interested in the conservation aspect of what being in the rural

01:35:41.980 part of british columbia comes from do you think there's a way to reconcile that that development

01:35:45.900 and uh the conservational kind of idea the economy and the environment these questions are are often

01:35:52.300 paired against each other what does the rule party have to say to this uh absolutely there's a way

01:35:58.140 forward and to reconcile those and again i i spend a lot of time trying to put forward

01:36:04.860 a perspective that shows both our obligation and how we can move forward and reconcile

01:36:12.460 our our demands and obligation to participate in the international markets

01:36:18.140 with creating stability in our economy and our livability here at home

01:36:23.420 um you know industry is one impact housing is one impact i think that the biggest challenge is that

01:36:32.940 we have a historical wrong that needs to be addressed and that is uh how the first nations

01:36:40.140 people in our region were basically stripped of of their land base and went through historically

01:36:47.260 a very challenging well understatement say challenging devastating period of time and so

01:36:53.820 there's an obligation to address that and land rights are first and foremost in that we know

01:36:59.740 that where i live the witsuit negotiations as much as they're far too opaque and secretive for my

01:37:07.580 liking i believe everybody that lives in a region has a right to know what's going on

01:37:13.500 we all know that coming out of that much like the lake babine nation agreement just north of us

01:37:19.100 where they they gained control of 20 000 hectares of land there we're going to see a similar

01:37:24.860 settlement here and so again for me it's about getting ahead of the curve but i also remind

01:37:31.100 people that people in rural bc are disproportionately enormous consumers of goods and materials

01:37:39.260 we consume more in terms of you know what we buy what we shop how much fuel we burn the heating

01:37:47.320 of our houses the size of our houses all of that on a global level and so i am vehemently opposed

01:37:55.360 to the not in my backyard approach um i am 100 behind doing development that is sustainable and

01:38:02.140 responsible and if we're not going to publicize any of our industrial entities which as I've said

01:38:12.040 before I believe is something that Norway has done very well with and is now incredibly their

01:38:17.800 sovereign wealth fund has something like two hundred fifty thousand dollars per person in

01:38:23.140 Norway available because of the way that they've managed to you know take public ownership of many

01:38:30.220 of their resource industries and the companies doing that extraction um all that being said

01:38:37.660 either way the companies are doing the extraction need to be held to account to do it

01:38:44.620 in a sustainable way that isn't going to leave uh an extraordinarily negative impact i think

01:38:51.100 part of that is to take that 60 000 foot view and get ahead of the curve and picking the areas and

01:38:56.860 the resources that we know exist we know where most of the resources exist in in bc and to get

01:39:03.660 ahead of the curve and go okay these are the areas that we are going to get ahead of the

01:39:08.300 the curve in supporting that will streamline the permitting process it will make it where

01:39:14.780 you know hopefully a lot of the the conflict will go away when there's consensus agreement

01:39:19.740 that this is the right place to do these kinds of developments whether it's forestry or mining or

01:39:25.020 oil and gas extraction and then just do it and go we're going to do this and we're going to make

01:39:30.460 sure that we retain as much of the benefits and the revenue for the people that are here

01:39:37.100 but to be honest with you nathan i don't see because of the the volatility the volatility of

01:39:43.100 the international markets i don't see that as the be all and end all as we move forward i think the

01:39:49.580 key is that we need number one i mean agriculture is far more stable and more important because

01:39:55.100 people always eat and the demand for uh quality uh food from an area like bc is only going to

01:40:04.620 increase there's no way that people go yeah whatever you know we're just going to eat spam

01:40:09.340 that's made in the lab they're going to want our food they're going to want our water

01:40:13.660 and so we have a choice we can either ignore that and just you know twiddle our thumbs and

01:40:20.680 what's going to happen and i think the vice president of the u.s kind of said something

01:40:25.440 that i've been saying for years last week she said you know we fought a lot of wars over oil

01:40:30.180 and everybody caught that part of her her discussion said wow she's admitting that they've

01:40:34.220 been engaged in wars over oil but the next thing she said was we can expect that that's going to

01:40:40.180 happen for water. People didn't catch that. But what she's saying is that water is the new oil

01:40:46.760 and they are very aware of their food supply in the United States and they supply us. The Central

01:40:53.780 Valley of California exports far more food to Canada than Canada exports down to the U.S.

01:41:01.720 So we better take notice when the Vice President of the United States is making a statement like

01:41:07.780 that and realize that either they're going to come and get our water so they can grow our food for us

01:41:13.460 or we better start growing some food and again in terms of that international obligation yep we

01:41:19.860 should grow lots of food so that we can sell it to the people in california and that's kind of my

01:41:25.860 approach is you know we need to maximize the value of what we have here and make sure that we're

01:41:31.460 doing it in a stable and sustainable way and i don't believe in um you know i think we've seen

01:41:38.820 some really tragic situations where corporations have kind of milked the resource and then left the

01:41:44.340 taxpayer hanging um i'm currently involved in a remediation or looking at remediation work in the

01:41:52.900 northwest territories uh in giant mine zone and uh yeah it's uh when you look at the cost of these

01:42:02.260 cleanups uh it's it's a big challenge and much like mount paulie i mean how the taxpayers got

01:42:09.940 that bill hung on them is beyond me let's talk just a little bit here about the challenge that

01:42:17.060 you're putting forward to icbc uh what what does that look like to take us through this what what

01:42:23.140 went wrong when it came to rural residents and icbc rates and what are you hoping to put right

01:42:29.940 um yeah so it's kind of an interesting story that begun uh when uh i was still mayor of telco and

01:42:38.820 actually the wife of one of our counselors showed up a meeting and said we just got our insurance

01:42:44.100 we want to know why we're paying more than smithers and i kind of went what i had no idea

01:42:49.300 and then realized that the dividing line the territorial rate dividing line is in between

01:42:54.420 telco and smithers which on a basic level is clearly you know totally ridiculous because

01:43:01.460 everybody in telco drives in smithers um we worked with uh trying to move that with icbc and just

01:43:08.100 kind of got a very apathetic yeah we see what you're saying and you're right but we're not

01:43:12.420 changing it um so that frustrated me and i began doing more research after we kind of got that

01:43:19.940 response and they did say you know we're doing a 10-year adjustment that's going to make some

01:43:24.340 difference in different territories but it really didn't address that so i started taking a look for

01:43:30.100 myself at some of the data that icbc had online and realized you know i'm a bit of a math junkie

01:43:37.540 and data junkie numbers uh are interesting to me so i'm looking at this data and my eyeballs just

01:43:42.980 well popped out when i saw the disparity in accidents and injuries in greater vancouver

01:43:48.980 and that the collision rates at certain intersections um compared to where i was living

01:43:55.060 and so i did some quick math and went wow we are paying way more than we should be given what we

01:44:03.060 would be getting back in claims this led to an initial foy campaign where i of course there's

01:44:10.020 a three-hour limit on what they'll do for free and i knew that if i put the whole thing in myself

01:44:14.340 they'd send me a bill for ten thousand dollars and say pay up or you get nothing so i i took a

01:44:19.460 more creative approach and i recruited a whole bunch of people from throughout rural dc and said

01:44:26.100 i'd like you to put forward this foy request all prepared and i kept a spreadsheet to track which

01:44:31.940 postal codes and each person submitted an foi for a rural postal code and an urban postal code

01:44:39.700 got those initial 20 something requests tallied up and went yep there you go there is the issue and

01:44:46.180 so what it was nathan is over five years we got the totals of how much uh people were paying in

01:44:53.940 from different uh postal codes and premiums and we got the total of how much was paid out in claims

01:44:59.700 and uh for example the b6b postal code in downtown vancouver uh was actually being subsidized not

01:45:08.100 even counting operating costs subsidized by over 20 million dollars a year uh the last couple of

01:45:14.260 years of that set up and overall were subsidized uh by comparison places like telco and smithers

01:45:20.660 were paying up to 2.7 times as much for every dollar coming out in claims so the next step i

01:45:29.060 took that to our neighbors in houston to their council and asked if they would sponsor a

01:45:34.660 resolution at the union of dc municipalities which they did and that resolution was endorsed

01:45:43.940 by the executive at which point that opened the door for me to then do an foi for all of the

01:45:49.860 postal codes because then you can say it's in the public interest so i did that icbc digging in you

01:45:57.380 know it's amazing on each level i had to involve the office of the information and privacy

01:46:02.260 commissioner because icbc just would not release the data and in fact that first set with the

01:46:08.340 individual um people asking for it they actually put a threat in the response saying that they

01:46:15.060 can't share that information with other people and so the first respondents when they got it

01:46:20.660 called me and said i don't think i can give this to you and i was like it's a freedom of

01:46:26.500 information request and so we tried to pin icbc down on they just oh it was a mistake

01:46:33.140 you know it's like how do you put a threat at the top of an information report a freedom of

01:46:37.380 information report and then say it was just an error it was totally bizarre but that's what they

01:46:44.340 did and so finally we got all the information um i guess probably about three weeks ago and

01:46:50.500 i crunched those numbers and yeah the bottom line is there's no question that uh the people in rural

01:46:57.940 bc uh overall are paying about eight a dollar 85 for every dollar that comes back uh pardon me a

01:47:05.780 dollar 84 for every dollar that comes back and claims and the people in the urban areas those

01:47:10.740 to rate territories of southern vancouver island and vancouver are paying about a dollar 35.

01:47:18.100 so we're paying 49 cents more for every dollar that comes back and claims so today you know i

01:47:26.100 asked some questions in the first freedom of information request with icbc today is the day

01:47:31.220 that they'll have a response to that and i'll put forward my final arguments but i also certainly

01:47:38.180 expect that our our rural representatives in victoria regardless of whether they're ndp or

01:47:43.460 liberal or green uh support their own constituents in fixing this and not fixing it over 10 years and

01:47:51.620 not fixing it partially but right now fix it we should not be paying more for every dollar that

01:47:57.780 we get back in claims than someone in downtown vancouver and uh you know another point to that

01:48:03.860 is when we've got this green or clean bc initiative how does that work when you're

01:48:09.380 subsidizing people in downtown vancouver to insure their cars it's totally counterproductive to what

01:48:16.260 you're trying to accomplish with your clean bc initiative so we'll see what happens it's uh i

01:48:23.460 don't expect that i'm going to get a response saying whoops we made a mistake we're going to

01:48:27.140 fix it all now but i think that we're making progress in in shining a light on what exactly

01:48:33.060 is going on and in terms of the solution sorry you asked about that there's a couple of simple

01:48:39.460 solutions one is break rural bc into a separate pool and rural bc now is very comparable in

01:48:46.100 population to what the initial icbc pool was so there shouldn't really be a logistical issue with

01:48:53.140 that in terms it's a big enough entity it's a million million people um or the other one is

01:48:58.580 they've demonstrated that they can break data down by postal code and so i think that's actually

01:49:03.380 the best way is to do a pro-rated five-year average per postal code and go you're going to

01:49:08.580 pay the rate that your your postal code is um paying and we're going to balance the books on

01:49:13.860 that level and it's totally doable it's just a question of whether the political will is there

01:49:20.260 to fix it and whether icbc can get their bureaucratic butt in order and actually do it

01:49:27.460 execute it it's an ongoing question isn't it whether whether we're talking about the alc

01:49:34.580 or we're talking about icbc or we're talking about bc assessment it's uh it's interesting

01:49:39.780 how many arms length agencies in this province or bc hydro for that matter bc ferries uh how many

01:49:46.180 arms length industries in this province are well some of them are woefully mismanaged a lot of them

01:49:51.300 are just mismanaged but uh they they hurt real people through their mismanagement with respect

01:49:57.380 to to that then it's funny that you you brought up the postal code thing so i want to i want to

01:50:02.660 just kind of give that a bit more of a spin it's interesting the idea of breaking things down by

01:50:09.060 postal code i i think that that's a right that's the right way of doing things but then again we're

01:50:13.940 coming back to a question of localism coming back to a question of place we're not talking about

01:50:19.300 rootless cosmopolitanism which is something that at least people on my side often accuse people

01:50:23.940 down in the lower mainland of to a certain extent how do we how do we bridge that gap how do we how

01:50:30.760 do we find is there is there a progressive argument from your point of view for for localism

01:50:36.620 that isn't just possible trying to find solidarity all across the bar trying to find a solidarity in

01:50:43.540 a locale and build out from there um i don't think that it's a progressive argument it's a logical

01:50:51.260 argument and the answer is this they are already doing it icbc already has rate territories there's

01:50:57.980 already localism they have it built into their system they've had it built into their system

01:51:02.460 for a very long time and they adjust their rates based on some magical formula that obviously

01:51:09.020 doesn't work correctly for those rate territories so really it's not a question of localism or

01:51:15.260 progressivism it's a question of going you can do this better icbc can have a better system

01:51:21.100 and the system that they have right now and certainly one of the key questions from my

01:51:25.260 information request was provide the breakdown of your algorithm of how you calculate rates

01:51:33.980 i want to see that because it doesn't calculate the rates fairly for people in rural areas

01:51:41.820 so that's basically where that focus is for me is to go let's get the information get a response

01:51:47.420 that goes this is how we do it and then i go back into it and i go well this is where it's wrong

01:51:53.180 and again it's not about localism we're not saying hey people in telco should pay a different rate

01:51:58.620 and again i'm perfectly fine um part of the reason that i i broke all those pools down was to go if

01:52:04.540 icbc just wanted to go with the rural pool um here's what it looks like and i actually did a

01:52:09.820 separate pool that took in prince george colonna kamloops nanaimo places that are currently in rural

01:52:16.620 rate territories to go what's their rates um and collectively they were actually they were much

01:52:23.060 closer to the urban pool um however for nclga i broke out prince george alone and went hmm that's

01:52:30.840 interesting prince george is an outlier you're actually in our closer to our rate level so um

01:52:38.060 you know i'm doing this off the side of my desk right i have a full-time job and i'm able to

01:52:43.800 calculate this stuff out. So surely some of those $250,000 a year bureaucrats at ICBC should be able

01:52:50.600 to do better than me. And if they can't, then yeah, I'm willing to come and work for substantially

01:52:57.400 less than $250,000 a year and do the work that they can't do, I guess.

01:53:03.180 And isn't that just the question? Again, whether we're talking about the managers,

01:53:08.040 the endless stream of management that appears to be in Northern Health or in any of our

01:53:13.140 municipalities and they're big enough and certainly within our arm's length organizations this does

01:53:18.740 seem to be the problem i just want to cue in just one last time then into what rural bc uh the rural

01:53:25.460 bc party is if if there's another election tomorrow and suddenly all those seats uh that you had

01:53:33.460 targeted are yours there's 25 seats in your hand and there is a minority uh legislature what what

01:53:40.100 would you what would be the first thing on your agenda uh well the first thing on our agenda would

01:53:46.820 be to push the government to create a ministry of rural development if you want to go okay like

01:53:53.780 what's the number one step forward to actually start addressing these issues you need to have

01:53:58.100 people that are focused on addressing these issues and that ministry in my opinion in the party's

01:54:03.700 opinion, should be located in Prince George, not in Victoria. So that is a pretty clear and

01:54:11.580 easily addressable step. I was shocked that the government didn't form a standalone Ministry of

01:54:18.380 Rural Development after the last election, given the report from John Horgan's former Deputy Premier

01:54:24.780 suggesting that would be a good idea, and also from John Horgan's own statements after the

01:54:30.940 election when he said we have to do better in rural bc and yet here we are and that's not

01:54:36.920 happening to my uh knowledge or or by appearances um and then going beyond that step uh we have a

01:54:45.800 list of things that involve health care education funding icbc infrastructure revenue sharing these

01:54:54.380 are all different things that we've already identified that need to be looked into we need

01:54:59.820 to do the the studies and assess the data and establish where we're standing and then we need

01:55:05.540 equity and that is a big part of it and then for certain things we've talked a bit about agriculture

01:55:11.460 when we talk about health care we know that you're not going to have equal health care in every place

01:55:17.040 telco is not going to have a st paul's hospital but we need to actually figure out a better way

01:55:22.520 to address the disadvantage of not having that because the reality is is that people in rural bc

01:55:27.980 actually pay more in taxes than the people in the urban areas and in a way

01:55:35.080 that's good fortune that means that on average we have a higher overall average

01:55:40.100 income but that's not even evenly distributed and so there are many people

01:55:45.200 that you and I both know are really struggling in rural BC that then when

01:55:49.740 they have to take a trip to Vancouver and they need support from a spouse or

01:55:54.680 you know whatever it is and they're they end up out of pocket for whether it's

01:55:58.640 accommodations or travel or all these different things meanwhile someone in

01:56:03.260 Vancouver just catches a bus right so we need a sign train yeah that's it so or

01:56:09.500 the 1.7 billion dollar SkyTrain right and yeah I have a whole other show on

01:56:14.660 infrastructure Nathan but you know really what it is is you know we need to start

01:56:20.400 looking at the details and i continuously feel like our government is is you know just completely

01:56:27.600 stuck in a rut of trying to do surgery with a bread knife and we need to start getting out

01:56:32.980 the scalpel and doing the details on how we manage our province and i think you'll see a lot of

01:56:39.120 benefit for the urban areas once we do that as well it's not just all about you know the the

01:56:44.620 rural bc area is getting a raw deal i know that's not the case but we need to do better across

01:56:50.340 the board and i believe that uh we'll benefit from it and the urban areas will benefit from it

01:56:56.420 and the province as a whole be stronger and in a better position to move forward into the future

01:57:02.820 well that i think is an excellent resolve uh resolution rather for uh for any party

01:57:09.460 and for anyone who lives in british columbia or in any of their local districts i think it's

01:57:14.180 very important that we feel a sense of belonging and i think it's very important that we feel a

01:57:18.260 sense of loyalty and and and for that matter the sense that the future could

01:57:22.220 be brighter if only we did the work today I think that's all very good thank

01:57:26.480 you for that inspiration Darcy awesome yeah no we've been happy to have you on

01:57:35.480 again I do hope we get to have you on again soon and thank you so much for

01:57:39.800 sharing your thoughts today awesome thanks again and enjoy your afternoon

01:57:44.780 Absolutely.

01:57:45.280 Thank you.

01:57:46.860 Well, that's been our show then today.

01:57:49.420 We had, of course, Cliff Graydon on and we had Darcy Reppin on.

01:57:52.620 And we talked a lot about those rural issues and that divide that's there between our rural parts of the country and our more urban parts of the country, which, in my opinion, still very much reflects the Western versus the rest divide when it comes to Canada, particularly our constant battle with Ottawa.

01:58:09.500 In any case, I'm just thankful for your views.

01:58:11.780 I'm thankful for your comments throughout the show.

01:58:13.620 Sorry about the sound earlier.

01:58:15.060 We got that sorted out eventually.

01:58:16.980 And just stay tuned.

01:58:18.800 We'll be back tomorrow at 9 a.m. Pacific or Mountain Standard Time.

01:58:43.620 Thank you.

Western Standard - April 15, 2021

Mountain Standard Time - April 14, 2021

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