CAROLINE ELLIOTT: We're being governed by a highly ideological government that is far removed from the values of everyday British Columbians

Last night I, along with 40 or so others, had the opportunity to hear from BC Conservative leadership candidate Caroline Elliott.  For those who have yet to hear her speak, this is what she had to say:



Thank you everyone for being here. I know you have a million other things you could be doing with your evening and the fact that you're here, means that you understand the situation this province is in, and how crucial this moment actually is, because it truly is a crucial moment in our province’s history.

Look, I'm doing this for a very simple reason. I'm a lifelong, born and raised British Columbia, and I have two small kids. They're six years old and eight years old, so they're pretty little still. 

I look at them and I want them to reach the point that I'm at in my life and say, ‘I'm a lifelong British Columbian and there's nowhere else I'd rather be.’, just as I do today. And my worry is that they will find themselves like one of the 70,000 British Columbians who left our province last year to go to other jurisdictions for better opportunities.

I think what we saw with those 70,000 is they're looking around and they're thinking, "BC is beautiful. I have roots here. I have family here. I want to be here. But you know what, if I go a little further east, I'm going to find cheaper housing prices, bigger paychecks, and lower taxes."

And that's a pretty hard thing to say no to, when you're wanting to build a life and start a family and contribute to your community.

Unfortunately, that story is becoming more and more common under this government. And the thing that I find probably most frustrating is the fact that British Columbia should be the place where all those other jurisdictions in Canada are looking to and saying, "We want to be there because they have the most opportunity." 

We should be. 

We have an absolute abundance of natural resources that other countries would kill for. We have a talented workforce. We have an incredibly educated population. We have a skilled population. We have a location relative to the biggest markets in the world, that is the envy of many places in the world. 

So, we have so much opportunity here. We have every reason to be that place where other jurisdictions are coming to with their best and brightest. And instead, we have a government that is just hell bent on setting up roadblocks every step of the way -- finding new ways to say no every step of the way. Constantly.

And I think the reason for that is we're being governed by a highly ideological government that is far removed from the values of everyday British Columbians. 

One that is not even interested in measuring the outcomes that they're getting, for the amount that they're spending, or the actions that they're taking.

They've been saying no to wealth generating projects, no to opportunity, even as they spend like crazy, growing the public sector by over 30% since they came into office. I doubt everyone here or anyone here has seen a 33% increase in the services they're getting -- chances are they've gotten worse. 

So why are they doing that? I believe it is truly ideological. An ideology that says more government is always the answer. An ideology that says we can spend more and not have to deal with the bill when it comes to be paid at the end of the month. A bill that my kids, and maybe even their kids, are going to be stuck paying off.

But we're also paying for it today, don't forget, with the interest that we're paying.

The biggest government spend right now is healthcare. The second biggest is education. We probably all agree with those things. 

The third, you might be thinking public safety. You might be thinking mental health and addictions. You might be thinking post-secondary, or maybe the forestry ministry. 

No, it’s just plain paying interest -- that is the third biggest line item -- and it is unforgivable in my mind that we're spending the equivalent of two or three hospitals worth of interest every single year.

When this government walked in, or actually I should say the Eby administration walked, there was an almost $6 billion surplus – now it’s racked up a $13 billion deficit in a very short period of time. 

Look at the issue of what they call reconciliation, which I believe has been a highly ideological approach that's not actually achieved the outcome they're looking for. 

Reconciliation to me means coming together and building a bright future together. What they've done is highly divisive and toxic. They have set reconciliation back by probably a decade or more when they stand up in the in the legislature and an NDP MLA says, "Non-Indigenous British Columbians should refer to themselves as uninvited guests and as colonizers and settlers", to the applause of their colleagues. 

That's not right. 

We are all British Columbians; Indigenous, non-indigenous, and we have to build a bright future together and stop with this divisive rhetoric.

The approach they've taken is very counter to building prosperity. It's causing all kinds of uncertainty on the land base that is threatening investment in our province.  

BC-based companies are worried about investing in British Columbia. They want to invest here. They've grown up here. They believe in our province, but they don't want to invest here anymore because of that uncertainty on the land base. Uncertainty that comes when your private property rights are threatened, and you can't count on that very simple principle to build our economy.

I believe the ideology around reconciliation has led to divisiveness, and that is the exact opposite outcome that we would actually hope for, when really we want to see ourselves as common citizens building prosperity that benefits all communities.

Another example that I would give of ideology over outcomes is on the public safety front. We have a government that has constantly put the rights of violent re-offenders ahead of the rights of regular British Columbians to feel safe in their communities. And again, this is completely out of alignment with what I would say are very everyday British Columbian values.

Everyday British Columbians really do understand that violent re-offenders belong in jail, not neighborhoods. It's just a very simple principle. But they are, again, determined to place those rights (of repeat violent offenders) ahead of what regular British Columbians would want or expect for their communities. And it's costing us a lot in terms of the social disorder that we're seeing. 

In everyday towns, people think it's confined in Vancouver, they think it's confined to the downtown east side. It's not. It's in every single community I've been to. And it's one of the top concerns people have. And it's not that complicated. Violent re-offenders belong in jail. 

The people who are struggling with addictions, they deserve to get well, not just a constant supply of free drugs.

And the people who are suffering from severe mental health challenges deserve treatment, and care, in a compassionate way that we would give to anybody in our lives that we care about. 

No one can look around our downtown centers and see the people struggling with addictions and think this is working. No one can look around and look at the people struggling with severe mental health issues, and say this is compassionate.

It's not actually fundamentally the right thing to do. It's not the humane thing to do. And we have to start acting if we're going to actually restore a sense of order in our communities.

And I'll give one more example of where I see ideology taking a front seat, and outcomes taking a back seat, and that's education.

And I care very deeply about this because my kids are going to school and they're coming home with all kinds of questions because the school system is teaching them to denigrate our history. They're teaching them that the land they stand on doesn't belong to them. They're teaching, and they're showing parents, that they aren't the foremost advocate in their children's lives. 

I look at this and I think that might be one thing if our outcomes were doing well in terms of the reading and writing and arithmetic –- that we actually send our kids to school for -- but those things are actually suffering too. 

So again, outcomes. Our numeracy rates are falling. Our literacy rates are falling. Our science rates are falling. If you look at where kids are at, relative to a decade or two ago, they're years behind. And so any normal person would say, well, let's get this back on track. Let's focus on those core basics. Let's set our kids up for success in whatever it is they choose to do in life.

But the NDP's answer is to stop measuring, to get rid of letter grades, to reduce standardized testing, and to leave kids and parents unable to track how they're doing, relative to one another, and relative to how their peers are doing in other systems. So, it's a really big issue. 

We're seeing the same thing in healthcare, we're seeing the same thing in advanced education, and we're seeing the same thing when it comes to the management of our economy of this province, whether it's the forestry sector where we're seeing mill after mill after mill shut down and people out of work who've been in the business for generations.

I hear about that when I go around the province. I hear about the absolute impossibility of building anything in this province.

It is part of that overall question of the opportunity that I think all of us want to see for ourselves of course, but for our kids and for our grand-kids.

We've got to do better. And this is why I think we're all here because there's such an opportunity right now to make the change that will take that trajectory from constantly downwards, under this government, and sharply turn it upwards. 

So we're actually looking at how we can build things again, how we can reduce the burden on people who want to create jobs in this province in a responsible way, and how we can actually send people home with better equipment to actually make the decisions they want to make for themselves and their kids in their lives. It's a huge part of what I want to do and, frankly, it's why I'm in this race. 

And I know I'm in this race with others as well, and some of them you may know, some of them you may not. They're good people. They're competent people. They're nice people. And we share a lot of the same ideas, I think. 

Not all of them. There's a little bit of, there's, I think, some important differences between us. But we do share some of the big ideas around fiscal responsibility, and economic development, and public safety and so on.

The real question in this race is, who can actually keep the party together? Who can actually broaden our base of support so we can get, not just a little bit over that finish line but, strongly over that finish line with the mandate to do the hard changes and the big changes that we're going to need to do to get our province back on track.

I'm here because I am that person, but I do need your help and I really do. I think you're all here again because you recognize the moment we're in.

And the next step is taking out that membership so that you're able to actually vote when the time comes in May. 

I taught political science at SFU for some time and when you lay out the elections one after another you become very quickly aware of just how significant the course of history is, that we're on right now. It makes this leadership race probably one of the most important in modern, busy political history.

It is a crucial election. It is a crucial leadership election, but there’s a crucial provincial election ahead of us.

We can change that course. We can change the trajectory.