168. Kevin Falcon: Is the BC United Party Relevant?

Aaron Pete interviews BC United leader Kevin Falcon, discussing his return to politics, the controversial rebranding from BC Liberals to BC United, and the challenges of healthcare reform, addiction recovery, taxation, housing affordability, and First Nations land rights.

Learn more about Enbridge: https://www.enbridge.com/

When We Die Talks
When We Die Talks explores life’s biggest question: what happens when we die?

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Chapters

• 0:00 Political Career and Public Policy Discussion
• 10:16 Rebranding the Political Party
• 14:43 [Ad] When We Die Talks
• 15:24 (Cont.) Rebranding the Political Party
• 15:43 Political Branding and Party Politics
• 19:02 Political Loyalty and Free Votes
• 25:17 Political Accountability and Promises Made
• 31:41 Challenges in Addiction Recovery System
• 42:43 Healthcare Reform and Taxation System
• 50:43 Taxation and Housing Affordability
• 1:00:05 First Nations Land Act Concerns
• 1:07:55 First Nations Equity in Economic Development
• 1:14:08 Election Candidates and Political Accountability
• 1:19:16 Connecting With Kevin Falcon's Campaign

Transcript

Aaron Pete: 0:00

Today's episode is made possible in part by support from Enbridge, fueling quality of life in British Columbia for over 65 years.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 0:09

The reason I left politics was for my two daughters, because I wanted to go and be a present dad and be with my kids. The reason I came back is very similar to why I left it was for my kids, thinking about their generation.

Aaron Pete: 0:23

Affordability is, of course, always a topic, so I'm curious as to what your thoughts are on taxes and how we move forward. There was a name change from the BC Liberals to the BC United. Would you mind walking us through that decision? But how do you go about making the campaign promises and how do you make sure you hold yourself accountable?

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 0:39

Politicians will promise a lot of things. Look at our track record 25% across the board personal income tax cut. One of them was to reduce red tape by one third. In our first three years Exceeded the target. I'm very proud of it 42% reduction. You know I don't want to pretend that. You know we had a perfect healthcare system when I was there, but we were ranked the number one in the country. We're now at the bottom of the list.

Aaron Pete: 1:01

How do you go about making a decision to try and represent a whole population across a whole province where everybody's got so many different issues? Kevin, I have been looking forward to doing this for some time now. I'm very interested in getting to know you, your background and what's taking place in the political sphere right now. Would you mind first introducing yourself?

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 1:20

Sure, my name is Kevin Falcon. I'm the leader of the official opposition in British Columbia. We were an official opposition that has been formed government for much of the 2000s, from 2001 to 2017. We lost that election to the NDP a merger of the NDP and the Green Party and so they formed a minority coalition and then in the election of 2020, they won a majority government. I came back into politics just over two years ago from spending 10 years in the private sector, and I returned, ran for the leadership of our party, became the leader, and our party is now known as BC United, but it's the old BC Liberal Party with a new name.

Aaron Pete: 2:04

Can you walk us through your political career, being a part of it being a minister and then walking away and then returning. Can you just walk us through that period?

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 2:12

Yeah, sure. Well, you know I was a reluctant politician. To be honest with you, I didn't want to actually run in politics because I had a small growing business at the time that Gordon Campbell had asked me to run for the BC Liberals. And so, you know, at the time I was kind of reluctant. But I remember meeting with him and I just remember it like it was yesterday, and I was really clear with him. I said well, gord, you seem like a really good person.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 2:35

I didn't know him very well, but I said I just, if I'm going to do this, I have to know that it will be worthwhile, that it'll be time well spent. Because you know you don't make a lot of money in politics not that that should ever be a reason to go into politics, but it's a big sacrifice financially in terms of your time away from family and all the rest. And I just wanted to know that if I was going to spend that time, it would be worth it. And so I had a list of things that were important. You know, will he commit that we're going to reduce taxes, cut red tape, get the economy back on track, fix the labor code, all the kind of things that I could see had really set British Columbia back after 10 years of NDP government at that time, and he committed to doing all that and more, and he was good to his word and that's the basis on which I ran and so I first got elected in 2001.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 3:19

And my first job was Minister of State for Deregulation. So I was responsible for making sure that we met our commitment we made to the public. One of them was to reduce red tape or unnecessary regulatory burden, by one-third in our first three years. So that was my first job. I exceeded the target. I'm very proud of it 42% reduction in unnecessary red tape. That helped unleash the private sector and restore confidence and get people investing in BC again and things started to really move.

Aaron Pete: 3:49

Could we really briefly just define that, because I think a lot of the time when people hear red tape they think regulations around the environment, protecting things, that's what people I think go to. So would you mind?

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 4:00

just they do, and you know so. A good example of that is I'll use an example from this current NDP government they love regulation, red tape, but what the people, the public, really need to understand is let's use the environment, for example. So they have now are in a crisis because in BC we've got the most unaffordable housing in the entire country, in fact in North America, after eight years of this government. So people might say, well, why is that? Well, I'll give you an example America, after eight years of this government. So people might say, well, why is that? Well, I'll give you an example Seniors housing, seniors housing, affordable housing, whatever you want to call it. What happens is the NDP now have over 400 pages of requirements, many of them environmental requirements. They want to have the highest of this, the best of that. But what they don't understand is that adds to the cost 30% increase in the cost of that so-called affordable housing, and so you actually get to a point where you end up with no affordable housing.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 4:50

For what benefit? What we say is regulation shouldn't just be about volume and bureaucracy and paperwork that has to get filled out. It should be outcome-based. So in other words, you say to the developers of the private sector. Here's the outcome we want you figure out how best to get there, but you have to get there and if you don't, there'll be tough penalties. But there's also incentives to get to a good outcome. Good result, that's called results-based regulation and that's really what we focused on and that's important to do that, and so that was what I spent the first few years doing.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 5:23

Then I went from that and became the Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure. I spent six years doing that job. I was one of the longest serving in the Evergreen Line, the City Sky Highway, south Fraser Perimeter Road, pitt River Bridge, on and on it goes. But what I'm most proud of is the vast majority of those projects were built on schedule and delivered on budget. And today, you know, under a government where not a single project is on schedule or on budget, that's something that I take personal pride in, because at the end of the day, I really feel like government has lost we all governments have lost focus on how important it is to make those big investments for the next generation Not the next election, it's actually in the next generation and also to have the kind of leadership that understands it's really hard to get big projects done, even the Canada line, which you would think would be a project that everyone would want to get behind. You know, building rapid transit, getting 100,000 people a day out of cars and into rapid transit.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 6:32

No, there was all kinds of opposition to that. The mayors opposed it. I had, you know, environmentalists believe it or not opposing it because we were using concrete, like all these bizarre objections that people have. But at the end of the day you got to stay focused on the outcomes and today there's not a person I've met that doesn't say thank God, you guys went ahead and built that evergreen line or Canada line or what have you. So that's something I'm proud of. Then I was the minister of health for two years and my final ministerial portfolio was deputy premier and minister of finance, and so I sort of covered a lot of good areas.

Aaron Pete: 7:09

For health your record. If I'm not mistaken, you brought down prescription costs and helped reduce wait times. Would you mind talking a little bit about that? We'll get more into health care later, sure.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 7:19

Well, look, health care is tough and I always say to people you know, I don't want to pretend't want to pretend that we had a perfect health care system when I was there, but we were ranked the number one in the country. That's not me saying it. There's a group out there called CHIHI, the Canadian Institute for Health Information, and it was on the front page of the Vancouver Sun newspaper, bc, ranked number one. That's something I'm proud of. We're now at the bottom of the list, which is not a good thing, but really what I tried to do is just focus again on results, like how can we get improved results? We had escalating prescription drug prices and dug into that to try and figure out what was going on, and we came up with some solutions that saw a 30% reduction in many drug costs. Then we had wait times were a big issue for us at emergency departments, so we brought in patient focused funding where we had dollars be attached to patients so that instead of the system looking at someone coming in through the doors and saying, oh god, here's another patient, what are we going to do now? Right, let's just go wait over there for 15 hours while we deal with more important people. That's what would happen.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 8:20

You know they have to triage people, obviously, but you know, if you're a young mom coming in with a son or daughter that's got a broken leg or a sprained ankle or whatever, that's really important to you and being told you're going to have to wait 12 or 15 hours doesn't feel very good in our system.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 8:33

So we changed it to say let's reward the system for looking after those folks and if they get them in and out of there within two hours, a payment gets made and they get to keep that money in the front lines, not disappearing into the healthcare vortex of, you know, the black hole of healthcare spending, but actually keep some of those dollars up front for the workers so that they can, you know, make decisions on their own Like what more could we do here?

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 8:57

And they started to change things. They had big TV screens that would measure the time that people were, you know, as soon as they came in, they would monitor them and make sure that they were being looked after in a way that was, you know, benefiting them and the system. And you know we just were always trying to do things better and I think when you look at our system today I'm really concerned, and it's not just me saying this for politics. I honestly am terrified actually, because I hear from doctors and nurses and frontline staff all the time and our system is on the verge of collapse. It is very, very serious.

Aaron Pete: 9:31

The next question I have is around your decision to run for this specific role. Like I'm a counselor for my First Nation community, I'm trying to move forward on housing, trying to make sure people have a food bank, trying to make sure that life becomes more affordable and that they have the resources they need, and I feel a lot of pressure to 650 members and it has caused me to lose hair at points like the pressure that I feel towards these people because I want them to rise out of poverty. I don't know how you go about making the decision to try and represent a whole population across a whole province where everybody's got so many different issues and they'd like you to take a different approach. How do you go about making a decision to put your name forward for such a role?

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 10:10

Yeah, it's not an easy decision, candidly. You know, I've got two daughters, one's 11 and one's 14. And at the end of the day, you know, the reason I left politics was for my two daughters, because my wife wasn't public at the time but I didn't disclose it publicly. But I knew that my wife was pregnant with our second daughter and I was the deputy premier and the minister of finance and I was busy all the time and I thought, you know, I've done 12 years of public life. I feel like I've accomplished a lot. It's time for others to come in and do their thing, and so that's why I left.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 10:42

At the time I was still very supportive of my old colleagues at the BC Liberal Party, now BC United, but I wanted to go and be a present dad and be with my kids and get back into the private sector and try and support my family. And so that's what I did and it was the best decision I ever made. But the reason I came back is very similar to why I left. It was for my kids. Not them specifically, because this doesn't really benefit them. It was more thinking about their generation. Because during COVID I did have time to really think about things and I thought what is our purpose here on earth really? And I could go out and try and make a lot of money and that's great, but really, at the end of the day, I was more concerned about generational issues and I could see some of the struggles that people are having in this province. I could see, economically, where the government was taking us.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 11:27

I knew it wouldn't end well, because I saw this whole thing happen in the 1990s and that's why I got back involved and my whole thing is look, I'll go forward to the public and I'll say this is what I really believe in and they can decide whether they like it or not, and if they don't, that'll be fine too.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 11:43

But I'm going to work hard to go forward with a really positive agenda and try and unite people. That's the final thing I want to say. I really believe that we are entering a period where social media unfortunately has a downside. The downside is it can divide people and I think we need people in public life to try to unite people. That doesn't mean that we don't do our job as an opposition and point out the flaws and failures of the current government, because that's what we're actually paid to do. That's why I'm called the official opposition leader, but at the same time, I want to have positive solutions of what we're going to do differently, and that's why you'll see that we will lay out a platform that's very well thought out, very detailed, that responds to the big crises that we're facing in British Columbia.

Aaron Pete: 12:25

One of the things I don't like doing is asking questions. I'm sure you get asked pretty regularly, but I think this is important enough to kind of discuss. And it's the name change, obviously. A year ago there was a name change from the BC Liberals to the BC United. Now reports are coming forward that you're proposing that you have that old name on there. Would you mind walking us through that decision and how it came about to name it BC United?

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 12:47

Yeah. So for years we were named BC Liberals and for those of your viewers that are from British Columbia would know that there's also a federal liberal party and a federal conservative party, and the BC Liberals were not connected to either of those parties. In fact, we enjoyed support from members of both those parties. We were following up in the long tradition in British Columbia of coalitions that bring people together and unite people together. So it used to be called Social Credit Party and then became the BC Liberal Party and then now BC United. So why did we change your name? Well, I committed during our leadership race that I would bring that option to the membership of our party, because there's always been a strong undercurrent in our party that we need to have a name that gets us back to sort of those social credit days where the name itself isn't important. It's more like an umbrella that people can feel comfortable coming together and voting against the NDP on, whether they vote NDP federally or liberal federally or conservative federally, and so a strong majority of our membership almost 90% said we want to do that. So we did.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 13:56

Now the problem is that a lot of our own supporters 30% of them apparently don't still know that BC United is the former BC Liberals, and that's not surprising. The challenge we face is that the NDP changed the fundraising rules and we can only raise money through individuals, and so we haven't got the kind of budgets that we would have had under the old rules to be able to really impress the new name upon the public. And so one of the things we are looking at doing is making sure that at election time, when people go to vote, it'll say Kevin Falcon, bc United and, in brackets, formerly BC Liberal, just to make sure that people understand that connection, because we have a very, very proud track record in government as BC BC Liberals and we want to make sure that that connection isn't lost with the public.

Aaron Pete: 15:15

How do you feel about that decision now, because I do think that it might not look as strong to be requesting to have that name on there. How do you feel about?

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 15:23

it. Yeah, you know, and there'll be all kinds of you know, arguments that people can make. I mean our branding, the company that did our branding and made the case. You just flick the switch and go over into the new world and don't worry about the connection. I was always uncomfortable with that because I felt, well, wait a minute, there's a lot of people that need to know.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 15:38

I'm very proud of our record in government Not perfect no government ever is but we have a very, very good track record I'm very proud of under Gordon Campbell and later Christy Clark. So I wanted to make sure that wasn't lost. But, you know, at the end of the day, they convinced us that, no, just go to the new name and you'll be fine. You know, I think now we're like well, you know what? Maybe we need to make sure that there's a reminder there for folks. So, you know, we'll see how it all turns out at the end of the day, and if we get the support of Elections BC, I don't think that'll be a bad thing ultimately. Look, I think at the end of the day, politics is less about parties. This is one thing that I will tell you for sure. One thing I know for sure is that if you look at the parties right now, you know BC Liberals. You know if we had that name it would be a problem for a lot of voters because they would connect us to the federal liberals.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 16:23

Right now the BC Conservatives benefit because they're connected to the federal liberals, but they're not the federal conservatives, sorry, the federal conservatives. There's no connection between those two parties and yet they're trying to pretend there is to fool people, and a lot of people. There is a lot of brand confusion there too, where half their supporters think the leader's Pierre Pauliev. But a lot of that will get cleared up at election time. The way it gets cleared up is like so many elections it comes down to leaders. And if you look at the federal political situation most people look at you know, do you like Jagmeet, justin or Pierre Palliao? And provincially it'll be the same thing. Do you like David Eby, john Rustead, kevin Falconer, sonia Fursano? And I feel quite comfortable that you know at the end of that campaign people will listen to all the leaders and their ideas and their experience and what they've accomplished and they'll make the right judgment.

Aaron Pete: 17:12

How do you feel? You mentioned that the NDP changed some of the rules around campaign donations. Do you support those decisions?

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 17:19

No, I don't, Because when they said that, they promised that it would not involve taxpayer funding of political parties, and then, you know, sure enough, very shortly they broke that promise and now we've got taxpayers supporting political parties, and I think that's wrong. I don't think taxpayers should be supporting political parties. Political parties need to go raise their own money and you know they need to do it without having to, you know, have the taxpayer be funding parties. So you know that was another broken promise of theirs that I think has betrayed, you know the trust and support of British Columbians.

Aaron Pete: 17:57

Okay, this is a tough question. I read a piece by Adam Pankratz, who said that you've destroyed the BC Liberals and are effectively handing this election to the BC NDP. I'm curious as to what your response would be to that Well, obviously I disagree with that.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 18:06

It's an interesting comment, but I think, like he's trying to make a, I would argue that vote splitting is for sure not a good thing in our province. The BC Conservatives have not won a seat in British Columbia in 50 years. It's a party that has a lot of candidates that, frankly, are very fringe candidates that hold views that are not mainstream views in British Columbia. They've already had to fire at least four of their candidates. There will be more. I guarantee you that. You that. But I don't think at the end of the day, the public is going to support extremes, not the extreme left or the extreme right. They want mainstream common sense, conservative principles and values and policies that reflect people that are there to actually get the job done and get results. And I just I promise you this I'm going to prove him wrong. I'm going to prove a lot of people wrong because they spend too much time focusing on polls.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 18:54

Polls are notoriously wrong. I mean, my God, I remember the year I retired from politics, in 2013,. The polls were showing that we, the BC Liberals, were 23 points down in the polls behind the NDP and all the pundits and all the pollsters, and everyone agreed on one thing the NDP were going to win the election. Adrian Dix was going to be the next premier. No question about it. In fact, famously, the front page of the Vancouver province newspaper had a picture of Dix and it said this man could kick a dog and still be elected premier. It literally said that. And yet we want a majority government. The polls were all wrong, all the pundits were wrong, and I just say to people wait till the campaign. Nothing matters until the campaign. It's kind of like people don't plan what they're going to eat 60 days out. I promise you they haven't thought about how they're going to vote 60 days out. You wait till that election gets called and then we'll see what happens.

Aaron Pete: 19:41

How does it feel to have people leaving your party? Because it does seem like you do have to have some form of a team and you have a leader and you're all working towards a similar goal, but you have lost some party members and they've moved across the aisle. How does that feel personally and how do you look at that as the leader?

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 19:59

Well, it doesn't feel good, Frankly. It doesn't feel good for any party. I mean, the NDP didn't feel good when they had two MLAs become independent MLAs. It doesn't feel good for the conservatives when they have to fire for their candidates and lose people. And it doesn't feel good for us either. There's no question about it. But there's also a part of me that kind of understands. A lot of the people that leave are first-time MLAs or people that are panicking because of the polls and they worry, oh my God, I might not win re-election now because of the polls.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 20:31

And I understand that there's a part of me that really does understand. I just think it's a big mistake because I think principles are really important too in politics. I'm a very principled leader and I believe that you need to guide yourself as a party by principles too, and you know to throw those out the window. I mean, I've had colleagues that have gone to join the BC Conservatives that have told me things about that party how much they despise the leader and their candidates and their wingnuts and all this kind of stuff. And next thing, you know, they find themselves over there. I don't know how they do that. I personally couldn't. It would be like me agreeing to go over and join the NDP. I could never do that. It's just not possible. But you know, people have to live by their own decisions and I'm fine with that. But I think a lot of it is driven by their concern about their own situation, and I do partially understand that.

Aaron Pete: 21:21

Should voters consider that when they're looking at voting for these people? Because one of the pieces that I always worry about is that once you dive into politics, you're leaving maybe your business behind or your job, and so you kind of need this. Or maybe you don't have a second plan and so maybe people aren't making the decision based on principles. They're doing it to make sure that they can afford their life and so they can continue to doing the things they do, oh, absolutely.

Aaron Pete: 21:46

And there's big concerns around that federally, when we're talking about moving the election day and stuff, and some of that might be fear mongering, but some of it is that we do pay these people and this is a form of job, and so they're looking for ways to continue to stay employed.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 21:59

Oh yeah, no, there's no question. Look, a couple of our MLAs were very clear in talking to our staff in Victoria that they wanted to make sure they get a pension, and you don't get one until you've been in MLA for six years. So they have to get reelected and that's what they were looking at. And you know, look, I don't want to be overly critical about that. I'll just say this I didn't come into politics because there was any benefit for me. In fact, most people that know what I was doing before know that this is actually a job that is probably not the best thing for me personally, for sure, but it's because I really do genuinely worry about the future of our province.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 22:35

I worry about what I see happening across North America and around the world about politics and social media and the growth of divisions. I think bringing people together is also really important, and I think having a positive view of the world and an optimistic view of the future of British Columbia is really important too, and that's what I'll be reflecting in the campaign. I will be a tough critic and opponent of the NDP, for sure. I don't think any of them got elected because they're bad people and they're trying to destroy the province. I just don't think they know what they're doing and that's not a you know, that's just reasonable. They haven't got the background to understand how to manage a large, complex organization called government, and we need people that do know how to do that so that we can get the better results.

Aaron Pete: 23:17

The other piece that I want to kind of explore a little bit more and it's just from personal experiences I don't know if you know Daryl Plekis, but I've had him on the podcast a couple of times and he was also a former professor of mine and he talked about one of the challenges with the party system is that you kind of have to control viewpoints. You have to kind of narrow down what people are speaking about. You're not having everybody kind of give their own philosophy on how things are. You're kind of giving direction of what people are approved to say, what they're not approved to say, and that can stifle good ideas at times.

Aaron Pete: 23:47

And one of his examples was that he wasn't able to speak freely at some of these events where you're discussing caucus and how to run things, and he really disagreed with Christy Clark's leadership at the time because he didn't feel like there were free and open minds to discuss things. And that really makes me nervous, because I'm not assigned to one political party. I'm very interested in what everybody has to say, but I don't like that approach to the party system. I understand the arguments for it that you kind of need to get a message out, and it can't be everybody's different perspectives, but that concerns me. How do you process that as the leader?

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 24:19

Yeah, no, I think that's a great point and one of the things I've always been so proud of is that as a BC Liberal Party and this is one of the reasons I ran with our party, now called BC United, back in 2001, because part of our principles were that we would have free votes in the legislature for MLAs. And I'll tell you, that was very, very effective. And what we essentially said is to our caucus of MLAs, the elected people look, if you strongly disagree about a policy that we're doing or what have you, you've got the right to vote against it, because we don't want you to have to go to your communities and say, look, I'm sorry, I disagree with this completely, but I've been told I got to support it. How does that make them feel? And, frankly, their community. So that is still a principle that guides myself and BC United Party. For sure, free votes for sure. But you know, understand that in a caucus, you can.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 25:08

Let's use John Rustad as an example. John Rustad kept tweeting out stuff denying climate change is real. And I said to John John, you know, you and I, I mean he's been involved in elected politics for over 20 years and he'd been involved with the BC Liberal Party for many years. We brought in the first ever North American revenue neutral carbon tax. We've always been clear that climate change is real. We could argue about how it's happening or why it's happening, but it's clearly happening and so we want to make sure that we are being bold in how we deal with it. And when he started to tweet out stuff that was denying it's even real, I said to him look, john, I don't have a problem with you If you've changed your opinion. That's okay, because we've got a caucus full of very strong-minded people. And when we meet as a caucus and we debate issues, we have really strong debates and arguments. But we get to a place like a consensus where we say, okay, here's what we're going to do, and then we move forward. It's no different than any organization.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 26:01

Just think about your council. When your council gets together, you probably have some pretty good debates and then at some point you decide what direction you're going to go in and then away you go. But imagine if you walked out of that council or if we walked out of a government cabinet meeting and said everyone goes off in different directions, having different opinions about what we're doing. We'd lose confidence in the public pretty quickly. So I think the balance you have to strike is recognized in a parliamentary democracy. Part of it is you make those decisions and then you agree to move forward on whatever that direction is. It doesn't mean you can't have contrary opinions, it just means that they take place within the caucus room or in the private sector equivalent the boardroom or the council chambers and then you make your decision how you go forward. But you just can't govern anything if you've got, you know, 25 people walking out with 25 different opinions on what direction you know you should be going at as government. It doesn't. It wouldn't instill confidence.

Aaron Pete: 26:56

I'm sure you hear this as well, but when I said I'm going to be interviewing individuals like yourself and we're going to be exploring topics, the common trope is that campaign promises are not followed through. On.

Aaron Pete: 27:07

And there's a lot of lack of faith in what people are going to deliver on, and people always have their own examples as to how they get to that conclusion. But how do you go about making the campaign promises and reassurances that you're providing, and how do you make those decisions and how do you make sure you hold yourself accountable?

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 27:23

Yeah. So this is where I say and this is very, very important to me, and thank you for asking this question, because what I say to people and I say this in my speeches all the time don't trust politicians, including myself. You know, politicians say anything to get elected and they'll promise you. The NDP are a good example. They make promises and announcements and reannouncements. They get everything but actual results, and so what we have to do is hold people accountable. One of the ways you do that is by saying what's your track record? You know so, kevin Faulkner, you want to be a premier. What's your track record in government as BC Liberals? And I always say go back and look, google search.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 27:54

What did we promise in 2001? I'll tell you that we actually had 211 specific commitments. We had a long list of things we were going to do, but the key ones were we were going to make a significant personal income tax cut. We would reduce unnecessary red tape by one-third in our first three years. That's what we discussed earlier that we would balance the budget by year three and we would invest in infrastructure. Okay, how did we do Our first day in the legislature? We cut personal income tax rates 25% across the board. People can go look that up. The job that I had my first job cutting red tape. We exceeded the target 42%. People can go look that up the job that I had my first job cutting red tape. We exceeded the target 42%. People can Google search that and find out. Balanced budget we said we'd balance it by year three. We balanced it by year three. Investing in infrastructure we invested in more infrastructure, whether hospitals, schools, bridges, you name it, just like we said we do Levels we haven't seen since WAC Bennett days, which was one of the legendary earlier premiers of British Columbia. So I would argue you go through that list of the commitments we made. We followed through on them. Fixed election dates we brought that in because we said we would.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 29:05

Citizens Assembly, where the public randomly selected from out of the phone book, literally, where people would determine whether we should change our existing way that we vote for politicians. And they made you recall, they made a recommendation to the public. We think there's a different way to do it and the public got to vote on it and the public actually rejected it and said no, I think we like our current situation, but we followed through on that commitment. So we've got a whole list of things that we said we'd do and we did and I'm very proud of that. And one thing people need to know about me is when I say we're going to do something. When I make a campaign promise, you can take it to the bank, we will do it. Because I'm not doing this because I need the job. I am doing this because I care a lot about this province and the future of my kids and other kids.

Aaron Pete: 29:50

I don't know if you have any kids there and you look young.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 29:52

But not yet, One day maybe you will but for all of the next generations to follow, I think it's important that that's how we restore confidence in the public by doing what we say we're going to do, even if people disagree with it and a lot of people disagreed with our plan that we had in 2001. But I would argue it is why we got reelected three times.

Aaron Pete: 30:12

You came back into politics. What are some of the promises or some of the goals that you've set for yourself if you are elected?

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 30:20

Well, you know, one of my big passions is this might surprise some people, but the thing I really actually care most about the economic stuff, is important to me. I've been clear we will balance the budget within our first term. I've been really clear that we have to reduce costs for families. We've become the most unaffordable province in the entire country under this NDP government, and that's not me saying it, that's one of the major banks that pointed that out in a survey they did. 50% of British Columbians are less than $200 a month away from not being able to meet their family budgets. British Columbians are less than $200 a month away from not being able to meet their family budgets. Right, that's a very scary position for people to be in, and so you know I've got all kinds of solutions for that, you know lowering taxes, being more competitive, reducing red tape, et cetera.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 31:00

But what I actually care about a lot, I'm really concerned about the mental health and addiction crisis in this province. I've spent a lot of time. I spent 10 years on the board of the Street to Home Foundation, almost 10 years studying this issue, traveling around North America, meeting people, talking to people that have recovered from addictions, really reading a lot of books and I am convinced that almost everything we're doing is the wrong thing and that we have to move in a dramatically different direction, and I think that that may be, should I get the honor of becoming premier, may be the most important thing I can actually accomplish for this province.

Aaron Pete: 31:32

On that note, I spoke to I don't know if you've heard of him Dr Julian Summers.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 31:36

Oh yes.

Aaron Pete: 31:37

And we sat down, we had a conversation and one of his points that he made was that the NDP government had already committed a lot of dollars to their already implemented plan. Like they had a vision, they had dedicated the money to it, and so by the time he had comments on the different options they could look at, they were like we're already going down this path, so we don't need really any of your feedback. And he said well, we could track what you're doing. And his comment in the interview was I've become a liability and they shut down a lot of his research. They took away some of the studies that he had done and they weren't giving him access to that anymore because they had already chosen their path to go down.

Aaron Pete: 32:15

And the big fear I think that I walked away from not just the NDP, not just one government but is that you kind of you get inertia on a path and then you can't turn around and go? This was a bad call. We need to turn this around because you've started moving the train in a certain direction. How do you approach issues?

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 32:32

Oh, this is such a first of all, dr Julian Summers is. He's an amazing individual and you know, it's remarkable that somebody that was actually trying to help the government make data-based, informed decisions was rejected that way, and in fact, they insisted that he not share any of that information. They don't want to see it. I think they seized it from him. It's awful because I can tell you one thing in government I care about is results, but there's an old saying in the business world you cannot manage what you cannot measure. If you're not measuring everything you do, you have no idea how you're going to improve things. That's the problem with this government. I've tried to explain to them that what they are doing is every year, we are seeing the results in the mental health and addiction crisis get worse. The overdose death rates every year are the highest we've ever seen in the history of the province of British Columbia, and yet this government will continue doing more of the same, expecting to get different results, and they won't. And so, as an example, when they said that they were going to decriminalize drugs, we said to them hang on, don't do that. If you don't put guardrails in place, this will end very badly, and by guardrails. I mean this. You know we supported what the chiefs of police said. The chiefs of police said look, we don't want to charge people with small amounts of drugs. Who does? I totally support that, and the chief of the Vancouver Police Department, chief Palmer, will tell you that they charged maybe 10 people a year with simple possession Very rare and it usually was just to make a statement like don't bring drugs to a playground or to an elementary school. So that was never the issue.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 34:18

The issue was when the NDP decriminalized drugs, it took away the one tool the police had, which was to say to people that are using drugs in really inappropriate places like parks, playgrounds, beaches don't do that, move on, or we'll take the drugs away from you. And that was an effective tool the police had. Once the NDP stripped that away, we saw an explosion of open drug use take place in parks and beaches and playgrounds and public spaces and we warned them do not do this, it won't end well. Please look at what's happening in Oregon, where very left-wing progressive politicians Democrats said let's decriminalize drugs and it turned into a disaster and they've actually rolled back the entire program now because they said it was just it ended so badly. We tried to warn them For two years. I said to David Eby, what are you doing? Can you not see what's happening on the streets, like just how bad things are getting? And they ignored it up until the crescendo of opposition was growing so much by local councils, resolutions that were being brought forward. And finally they said I guess we better go back to the government and beg them to please recriminalize some of it. But you know it's trying to put the genie back in the bottle. It's very, very difficult to do.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 35:23

But the other thing is this it's their whole language and ideology around drugs. You know, safe supply. Well, safe supply sounds to children like it's safe. And I can tell you that a lot of the government handed out drugs like hydromorphone, which is two and a half times more powerful than heroin, that they, you know, give out for free to people struggling with addictions. Those get diverted and they get sold to our kids in high schools and colleges as safe supply. And you know, when you're or 14-year-old and you're at a party, you haven't got full brain development yet. So someone says, hey, don't worry, these are government drugs, they're all safe. They are highly addictive medical opioids and it's very, very worrisome what's happening. So that is the problem, whether it's safe supply or decriminalization. To young people, that can sound an awful lot like legalization. Drugs are legal. Hey, it's okay, and I think it's really important to understand that with young people especially, we have got to protect them from themselves and language matters, and so I am just very, very concerned about the direction we're going in.

Aaron Pete: 36:26

I agree I did my criminology degree. I got to think a lot about these issues through that time at the University of the Fraser Valley and then I worked as a native court worker for five years and I think the challenge is, how do we have these very difficult conversations with empathy and understanding? The talking points of other parties is very like. We need to understand these people, we need to meet them where we're at, we need to reduce the stigma, and that all sounds correct, that all feels correct. When you look at individuals and you're driving through Tim Hortons and you see people struggling, is you want to do something to help them rise up and reach their full potential? Cause I always try and remind myself like we are missing out on the human capital that these people can contribute through art, music, stories, experiences and like we're leaving people behind in this.

Aaron Pete: 37:19

But it seems like, from at least my studies, the goal was always let's decriminalize, let's remove the stigma, then let's put in treatment centers so there's no barriers, let's put in recovery centers so people can get better.

Aaron Pete: 37:27

And I can tell you, as a native court worker, I was sending people into recovery centers where I knew that a person struggling with addiction was the manager of the house and that that person had a track record of giving drugs to people or selling them to them, and then they'd fall back into addiction, not because they didn't take the necessary steps, but because the person running the house was irresponsible and I'd have to go communicate that to a judge. Hey, I don't blame the individual for this. They were offered something at a vulnerable point and that's not their preference. But a lot of these recovery centers are less than ideal because they're not being run by governments, who are accountable to the people. They're being run by nonprofits who are only accountable to applying for another grant and oftentimes their selling point is we served 5,000 people and then you go oh okay, well, you're helping people, I guess.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 38:13

And it's like are you though? Like. Is that the?

Aaron Pete: 38:16

metric that we're measuring. Is it how many people walk in the door or is it how many people are getting better that the metric we're using?

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 38:21

Exactly, that is the key and thank you. I love that you're as passionate about this as I am, because you're exactly right. What we should be measuring is the outcome. Who's getting better? The problem, I see, is that nobody's actually getting better in the system.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 38:34

And you know people say to me, if you look at our mental health and addictions plan which I announced two years ago, by the way, just to give you an idea, that was the very first major policy piece I came out with, and the key elements of it are that we would actually make a huge investment in treatment facilities and we would make treatment free. This is important Instead of free drugs for people struggling with addiction. Free treatment, because I never want cost to be a barrier for a family that's trying to get a loved one into care. And you know, the human waste, the waste of potentials, just saddens me. And I'll tell you a First Nations story because it's very relevant to this, because part of what I'm proposing is also controversial. And I remember I don't think the chief will mind me saying this, but I remember when I met with Chief Gabriel from the Penticton Indian Band and I was talking to him and said now, chief, one of the things that I want to do. Part of our program is also involuntary care, because I am convinced that warehousing people with severe untreated mental health and addictions into facilities like the NDP are doing now whether it's a motel that they buy in the downtown core and then put people in there and insist on free drugs and open drug use being allowed, they actually insist on that Is that nobody is actually getting better and in fact a lot of people are getting worse. And so, I said, one of the things that I support is limited use of involuntary care, and that's for those people that are unable to make decisions in their own best interest.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 39:58

I just saw a piece on CBC did an excellent story, a TV story on a young woman, 21 years old, living in Surrey, addicted to fentanyl, and you can see she's tearing apart her skin because she's convinced that there's things on her skin, et cetera the usual things that are happening. This young woman can still be saved, but she won't be saved by just giving her more free drugs. If keeping people breathing is the only measurement of success, that's not good enough. We have to help her and those like her get into care, where it is going to be a minimum, probably one year, two years of care that they're going to need to try and stabilize, get psychiatric supports and medical supports so that they can come out the other end and be contributing members of society again.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 40:45

And I said this to the chief and I said no, chief, I know, given the history of residential schools, that there will be some sensitivity around that, but I want you to know why I think it's so important. Because to me, whether a child is Indigenous or non-Indigenous, they all have the potential of a future ahead of them and we have to do everything we can as a government to say that we're going to do everything we can to try and help. And it is not compassion to leave people on the streets, to leave them in those kind of environments and pretend that we care about them. It is not right.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 41:12

And the chief said something to me I'll never forget. He said well, he said Kevin, I want you to know that just outside of this office here we were at his office on the reservation. He said just outside of the office here we have a cemetery and if you go visit the cemetery you're going to see a lot of recent grave sites. And they're all young people from our community that have died of drug overdoses. So my ask for you is just make sure it's culturally appropriate. But we do have to save these young people, and he's right.

Aaron Pete: 41:42

Okay. So I have a few kind of questions on that note. One of them is like this is where I think the rubber hits the road, as a leader, is that I think removing children from homes on reserve and putting them into foster care was always done under the argument that like this is what they need because their home life isn't safe. So we're going to put them in these other homes, away from the community, because things are going to be better and like that's the goal. Now we've done a long time of that. Things are going to be better and like that's the goal.

Aaron Pete: 42:11

Now we've we've done a long time of that and we're we've a lot of first nations are kind of retaking over their MCFD process because they see the results aren't actually better, the government can't do better, and so I think in this case, like you might have all the correct aspirations, your heart might be in the perfect place, but you're not running these facilities every day and it's those individuals who are ultimately going to make mistakes, like we've heard racism within healthcare. Like they're going to be the ones falling down or not maybe delivering on your vision, holding people too long, like those are the cases that you could just imagine arising when people aren't allowed to leave potential abuses? How do you make sure that you mitigate those risks where a person's like, hey, no, I'm really good, like I'm really ready to leave, and the people are like, no, you're not, because we're getting, maybe, a government subsidy to keep you here. So, like, how do you make sure things don't go off the rails and that people do it with empathy and compassion, because it's a big ask?

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 43:01

It is a big ask and so you know and that's the big issue that people say to me, they well civil liberties and all the rest. And that's true. And no doubt when we go to change the Mental Health Act, section 22 to 24, we will rewrite that in a way that makes sure that there's safeguards in place for civil liberties. But I want to also be really clear. There are folks out there that are dying on the streets because of our apparent compassion and concern about their civil liberties. I'm telling you, many of these individuals cannot this is important cannot make decisions in their own best interests. Okay, they are either a slave to the mental health issue or the addiction issue, or increasingly both, and we have an obligation as society not to just drive by and say, oh, isn't that sad to see that person lying out there with open wounds on their body because of the drugs they're taking that you know have got horse tranquilizer as part of the drugs and they're literally got open flesh wounds etc. They are dying right in front of us and we owe a better duty of care than to say we're just going to. You know, hope that somehow they figure it out. They're not going to. Many of them won't. Now I acknowledge that. Yes, I don't want to go back to the. You know the 1950s institutionalization model of Riverview, essendale and Tronquil, etc. But we do need a modernized version of that. Now we have got it at Riverview. It's called Redfish. It was started by the BC United or BC Liberals, then then government. It opened under the NDP. There's 108 beds.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 44:31

The problem is that they keep people there for a maximum of eight months, and the problem is eight months is not enough time for some of these folks to get through the severe challenges they face. Some folks, we also have to acknowledge, are gonna require total care for the rest of their lives. They've had acquired brain injury from so many repeated overdoses that they do require total care for the rest of their lives. They've had acquired brain injury from so many repeated overdoses that they do require total care, and that's our obligation as a society. We have to look after those folks, but leaving them on the streets is no answer, and so I do think that you know I get.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 45:00

These are tough decisions, but I can tell you, having spent time, a lot of time, on this issue, a lot of time visiting low barrier shelters, a lot of time seeing with my own eyes what's going on in different communities and a lot of time speaking to those in recovery. There is hope for many of them. The top psychiatrists in the province tell me, kevin, many of them can do well, but they won't do well unless we get them in a setting where they can be actually stabilized. That's what we're going to do.

Aaron Pete: 45:26

Okay. So just going back to the question about government inertia, how do you make sure, say, you follow through on this plan? Six months and all the indicators are saying this isn't working, this isn't the path you need to review? How do you make sure that you don't get into an inertia where you're like, well, we've already committed this and we've got to continue to build these buildings. You've got to see because I do. I'm very interested to see what Alberta is doing. I don't know if you've been following that approach, but it's very interesting to see different approaches kind of taking place, and I think that is, technically, the beauty of the provincial system is different provinces can try different things and we can compare and contrast them and figure out what's working and what's not working.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 46:02

Yeah, no, totally, I agree. Well, you have to measure everything you do, because if you're not getting good results, then you have to have the intellectual integrity to say wait a minute, this isn't working. I can tell you, that's how I'm wired, that's exactly how I'm wired. But what I won't do is I won't just accept the status quo, whether it's in mental health and addictions or in the health care system. The health care system is a great example.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 46:25

This government, the way they talk about the health care system is. Adrian Dix will say yes, but we've invested X, many billions of dollars more into the healthcare. Well, that's not the right measurement. It's not how much you're spending, it's what results are you getting and the results we're getting. I've seen BC go from the best in the country to the worst. You know we are sending cancer patients down south to the United States to get basic radiation treatment. That has not happened for well. You have to go all the way back to the last time the NDP were in power. That was the last time we were actually having to send patients down south to get radiation treatments.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 46:58

I would argue it's the common denominator. There is the government that was in place. Because they don't understand they're measuring the wrong end of it. It's not what we're spending, it's what we're not getting out of the system, and so that means you have to have the courage to change. You have to have the courage to say you know what.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 47:12

We're going to try things differently. That's why, when I announced our healthcare platform part of it I said we're going to look at private clinics delivering services. Why Not? Because I think there's any magic to private clinics. It's just that when I see people languishing in pain trying to get a hip or a knee surgical procedure done, I don't want to see that happen. I'm going to get them into a private clinic. It'll be paid for, publicly funded, but they're going to get looked after. Because what I care about is results, and the NDP will say, oh my God, they want a US style healthcare system. No, we don't. I'm just going to do the right thing to look after patients first, and to me that means you get rid of the ideology and you focus on the results.

Aaron Pete: 47:49

Will you get rid of safe supply if elected?

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 47:51

Not entirely, because what I think you need to understand is that for some people, as a transition towards treatment, they're going to need some, whether it's methadone, whether it's hydromorphone. As they connect to the treatment services. You can't just say to someone stop, you're no longer having any drugs, especially if you're addicted to fentanyl. You get them into a facility. You're going to have to have some transitory drugs to help them get to where they need to get to. There's anti-agonist drugs, which are drugs that help deal with cravings that you're going to need to use, but again, in a clinical setting. What the government is getting wrong right now is they're just handing out those drugs willy-nilly, and the problem is many of them are getting diverted, as we see from the police when they're making major busts now it's not just the cocaine, the heroin and the fentanyl. They're also finding thousands and thousands of government-supplied safe supply drugs that are also being captured in these raids too.

Aaron Pete: 48:42

Affordability is, of course, always a topic. Let's start, maybe, with taxes, and I'll just share a little bit of my own personal circumstance. I'm, of course, first Nation, so I can get some tax benefits going on reserve to buy my gas and TVs and stuff. But I'm experiencing I just bought my first house. I'm paying $27,000 in property transfer tax and then I'm going to have to worry about property taxes yearly. And then we experience, obviously, income tax and there's just so many different forms. The carbon tax that was argued revenue neutral, it's no longer revenue neutral. And so, on taxes, what is your approach going to be? Because I'm a first-time homebuyer ineligible for the benefits of the first-time homebuyer's exemption because it's over a million dollars. But that's where we are now. So I'm curious as to what your thoughts are on taxes and how we move forward.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 49:33

Very important question and again it goes back to what we discussed earlier. Track record Politicians will promise a lot of things. Look at our track record 25. Earlier track record Politicians will promise a lot of things. Look at our track record 25% across the board personal income tax cut.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 49:43

We got highly criticized. The NDP said it was so irresponsible. But the reason we did that is because we had the highest taxes after 10 years of NDP government in the 90s highest tax rates in North America literally and people were leaving BC for Alberta and other provinces, and so it was important we sent a message that we were going to be very competitive on taxes and we're going to do that again. And, by the way, within the end of our first term we were already collecting more personal income tax revenue at the lower rates than we were when they were the highest in North America. And the reason is simple Because when you leave more money in people's pockets, they spend it. They'll go out and they'll buy that car or they'll put their kids in those extra art classes or sports programs or, whatever the case may be, go out to restaurants, but they do spend it. That's something that we know intrinsically. This NDP government has added or increased 33 taxes in the last seven years. The most offensive to me was the carbon tax, because when we brought in the carbon tax in 2008, it was a revenue neutral carbon tax, meaning by law, it was written into the law. We weren't allowed to take that money into government and spend it as we saw fit. Every nickel had to be returned to the public in the form of lower personal income taxes and lower business taxes. So it was a tax shift, not a tax grab. But even with that, I, as finance minister back in 2012, froze the carbon tax because we'd just come out of a global economic downturn and I said, consistent with our philosophy, we've always had we are not going to use this to punish people even though it was a tax shift, and I froze it in place. That was at $30 a ton, which means about six cents a liter in the gas tank. The NDP got elected in 2017. We kept it frozen from when I retired as Minister of Finance in 2013, all the way through to 2017. Didn't go up a nickel. The NDP got elected in 2017.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 51:32

They did two things. The first thing they did is they got rid of the revenue neutral stuff. They took that out in the legislation so they could take all the money into government. And the next thing they did, they more than doubled it. And then last April they increased it a further 23% and we fought hard against it. We said don't do it, people can't afford it, you're hurting people and they're going to triple it again over the next six years. Well, I'm not signing on to that. That's an outrageous I'm going to say a bad word but bastardization of the policy we brought in and I'm not going to continue to support that. That's why I don't.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 52:06

And what we've said is that the one good thing is we still have a BC made carbon tax, and so I've committed to immediately take it off of home heating fuels, because people shouldn't be penalized for heating their homes, and take it off of the agricultural sector and the commercial fishing sector, because that's where our food comes from and we shouldn't be penalizing them and adding costs to food. So that's one thing I'll say. And so for john rastad, that has a simplistic we're going to ax the tax. He can't ax the tax. If you ax the bc carbon tax tomorrow, we're going to have justin trudeau's carbon tax immediately in place, because it backstops ours, and that would actually be the stupidest thing we could do, because then we'd be sending $2.6 billion to Ottawa as opposed to having it stay in BC, where we can actually do something productive with it. Now the NDP, unfortunately, are just taking it into general revenues and giving only a small portion back. That's unfortunate. But on the bigger tax questions, what I've said is we have to get back to competitive tax rates. I'll have more to say about that. You'll hear more in the near future about that, by the way but I will say what I've said publicly, and one of them is on housing.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 53:09

The NDP, when they got elected in 2017, said they were going to make housing more affordable. They promised 114,000 affordable homes in 10 years, which was laughable. I was in the private sector building homes, worked for a company that built more homes in the eight-year period that the NDP were in power than they did as an entire government, so when they announced that promise, I thought that's absurd. There's no even the entire private sector, you know to build that many homes every year as a government. There's not a chance they'll do that. But they also said they were going to make housing more affordable, and a lot of young people probably voted for them in the hopes that they would Well, again, let's look at the results.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 53:43

Here we are eight years later. We've got the most unaffordable housing in North America and the 114,000 affordable homes they promised to build. They built a fraction of them 16,000, you know, 20% of which were started under the BC Liberals, or now BC United. And just the other day you saw in the news how one of their so-called affordable housing homes that they built in Carisdale only 14 of the 68 units were so-called affordable, and even those came at a cost of 2.3 million a unit in financing that they provided to the developer. This is insanity because, again, they don't know what they're doing. And so I just want your listeners to understand something.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 54:22

I've been in the housing sector. I know a thing or two about housing. If you add a bunch of costs to housing, it actually doesn't make it more affordable, it makes it more expensive. That's what the NDP didn't figure out. So now they're in a panic in the last year and a half of their mandate when they realized we've got the most expensive housing in the country and indeed in North America.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 54:39

Now they've got all this flurry of policies that are coming out trying to show that they're doing something, but it won't work because they don't know what they're doing. So I'll just say this One of the commitments I've made is scrapping the property transfer tax for all first-time buyers up to a million dollars, because first-time buyers shouldn't be having to be penalized the first time they're trying to get into housing. The second thing I've said is we're going to take PST off of all new housing because that adds a lot of embedded costs. Virtually everything that goes into housing has PST attached to it, so that's millions of dollars on a typical townhome development, for example. That all gets passed along, and if we want more affordable housing, we have to make it less expensive. It's that simple. And they don't know what they're doing. We do and we will.

Aaron Pete: 55:23

Chris Sims. I don't know if you've heard of her.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 55:24

I do.

Aaron Pete: 55:25

She's the head for the Alberta Canadian Taxpayers Federation. One of her comments was that the NDP was actually against you on the carbon tax at the time because she thought they argued that it would be penalizing and it would cost people at the grocery store all these things. And just for her to pull up the article and go through it and explain how that was their position and how it switched, I think stands out. But also I feel like the conversation needs to be more consistent, that, like governments, when they're talking about affordability, need to be talking about the elephant in the room which is tax. That's what we can never remove it. We have to pay it as citizens and we have certain expectations.

Aaron Pete: 56:04

And I think that's where a lot of British Columbians, canadians, feel somewhat betrayed because we're spending more in taxes than we've ever had. I'm sure you know the history of the income tax. That was supposed to be for one war. It's continued on throughout history. It's never gone anywhere All these taxes have.

Aaron Pete: 56:25

But the challenge is affordability is the issue. And then we kind of go well, maybe it's the grocery store's fault or maybe it's this, and it's like the elephant in the room is so much of our money gets taxed, then retaxed, then taxed again when you're buying a home or something, and so the whole process. And then, when we look at results, we feel like what are we getting for all the money that we're pouring into the government and it's not efficiently spent? We're seeing mistakes with federal spending on like Arrive, can and all these different things, and we go like we're spending a lot of money and I think a lot of people feel voiceless and this would be the quickest way to make life more affordable. The day you're elected is to be able to say like hey, look it, life's going to become more affordable because we're cutting these taxes. And like just look at how you're going to have, as Pierre puts it, more powerful paychecks.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 57:06

Yeah, no, it's true and it's very true, and I'm fed up, frankly, with governments. I mean, I travel this province, people are really struggling out there and it's just frankly, totally unacceptable. This government has nickel and dimed us to death and the public is really hurting right now and and I could give example after example, and it's it's. It's one thing if, like, they have raised revenues 22 billion dollars in the eight years that they've been in power. But it would be one thing if I could point to good results well, at least the health care system's doing really well, or our streets are a lot safer, or something. Anything that I could, our housing, our housing's cheaper. But you can't. That's the thing that drives me crazy.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 57:46

They've doubled the provincial debt in eight years to over a hundred billion dollars. We're facing the largest deficits in the history of the province of British Columbia. We've had our credit rating downgraded multiple times and yet we're getting the worst outcomes we've ever seen. That's really bad news, people, and I just hope the public figures this out that they better start, you know, voting for people that not only are going to do something about it, but have a track record of accomplishment for actually doing it, and that's a lot of the message I'm going to be delivering to people and, by the way, I'll just say in healthcare is a good example. Why do we have 73 vice presidents in our health system, all earning over $350,000 a year for a population of 5 million people? Next door in Alberta they've got seven. What is 73 doing for us? You know what is all these bureaucrats and administrators doing in our healthcare system. They're not getting good results for people on the front lines. I could tell you that much.

Aaron Pete: 58:31

Can you tell us why having a balanced budget matters and why you've promised that?

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 58:35

Yes, because the thing people need to understand is think about government like your own family. You know you can't run your family and just say let's just take a bigger mortgage on our home and let's run up the credit card and not worry about, you know, payments down the road. I mean you can do that, but eventually you're going to hit the wall and you're going to have someone's got to pay the piper and I think it's irresponsible to do a ton of spending today and pass on the bill to the next generation. I just think it's irresponsible. But what people need to know is if we can just manage government the way we manage our own family finances and just be responsible. It doesn't mean we have to be cruel cutters.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 59:10

This is what the NDP always say oh, they're going to cut spending. Well, you know what? What I'm going to do is say, actually, all the spending they're doing right now is getting terrible results. So you're darn right, we're going to spend a lot differently because I'm going to be focused on outcomes and results and that means we're going to be a lot smarter with how we spend the current money. But this idea that every bit of spending is good spending is not true. We have to manage government the way you manage your own family budget at home, and if we do that responsibly, that's how we're able to reduce taxes. That's how we were able to cut personal income taxes 25%, tighten our belts fiscally to make sure we're responsible in spending, so that we can make sure that people have more take-home pay and that's what I want to do more powerful paychecks built on a reputation of actually delivering that in the past.

Aaron Pete: 59:57

The most controversial topic. I think we'll cover your perspectives on the Land Act.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 1:00:02

Sure, yeah, tell me about that. Well, again, it's founded on principles and you know a lot of people talk about reconciliation. For reconciliation to really work, we need to walk down that path of reconciliation together. And that means you know for governments being really honest about what we can do and what we can't do. And this is what frustrates me about politicians.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 1:00:23

I was part of a Gordon Campbell government that entered into over 450 economic development agreements with First Nations. We said to the First Nations look, yes, we have to try and develop treaties et cetera, but in the meantime let's do business and create economic opportunities for your nations. Now. That creates a win for everybody and I've never been more proud than when I go to different First Nations and see the excitement and the opportunities that are happening. That's why we fought so hard for LNG, because I can tell you LNG, with the massive investment that was made, the work that the Haisla and Ellis Ross, one of my colleagues that's now going to be running federally for the Conservatives but what that did to lift up the Haisla Nation was unbelievable. But not just the Haisla, it's Indigenous and non-Indigenous. There's not a single person working on that entire pipeline project or at the facility, the Kitimat facility that's not making over $100,000 a year is a lot of money in small communities like Kitimat, and you know Lakswalaam or Haisla or you know wherever it may be, you know Terrace and Prince Rupert. These are huge opportunities and so, but when it comes to land act changes, what really concerned us is two things.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 1:01:34

One government was doing it very sneakily, and whenever government's doing something sneakily, you have to really have your antennas go up. They were engaged in consultations, but consultations that didn't involve the broader public. We only found out about it through an obscure website that had consultations underway and had this discussion that they had going on there about land act changes that would involve shared decision making. And so we looked at that and said, well, what does shared decision making make? Because we've got 204 First Nations across the province and they represent 5% of the population. But if shared decision making means that every one of those First Nations is going to be involved in shared decision making going forward, what does that mean for the 95% of the population? We've got to really think this through, and this is where the principle comes from.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 1:02:24

My principle is democratic accountability. This is really important. You're held accountable as a council member for your First Nations and if you do something wrong, they know exactly who they have to go to right and say you know what? I really disagree with that decision you made. So too in government, as the minister responsible for the Land Act. That minister is responsible for making decisions in the public interest. It literally says that in legislation and the public interest means both Indigenous and non-Indigenous we have to adhere to our Section 35 responsibilities, because that's clearly laid out. We should be proud to be one of the only countries in the world that our constitution says in section 35, we have to consult and accommodate First Nation interests, as we will always do. We have to do that.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 1:03:07

But the concern we had is government. What are you talking about here? On the shared decision-making, because that sounds like it could be a veto. And the thing about a veto is that if one of the partners and it could be government or it could be the First Nation says, no, we're not going to go ahead with whatever the decision is, then 95% of the population will say, well, wait a minute, government, I'm really mad at you and I'm going to vote against you, falken, because I really disagree with that decision. But what if it was the First Nation that said no, they don't have a recourse there to the local First Nations because they don't get to vote for the local First Nations. So that is a big principled issue that we have to come to terms with Now.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 1:03:45

I would tell you that there's a way that we can achieve that by making sure that if we're going to do shared decision making, it's making sure that it's with First Nations that have the capacity, the capability, the experience to do that. And in those cases we will bring the public along with us. But we have to bring the public along with us. And where we're not doing it, and they're doing it wrong, is by doing it secretively. And then, when we raise these issues and we, by the way, just wanted to have clarity what exactly are you saying government? And what they did is? They said oh, you guys are just trying to, you know, fear monger, et cetera. Okay, well then tell us what you're trying to do. But look what they did. They suddenly pulled down everything that was on that consultation page. Suddenly new documents came up, said nothing to see here, it's really nothing important. And then they said actually, we're going to back away from this land act changes to have further consultations and then we'll deal with it after the next election. Well, that tells you already that there was something they weren't prepared to have a public discussion about it. That's not right either.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 1:04:39

The final thing I'll say is this, because I think it's important to First Nations when the Haida, when the government, brought forward changes to a piece of legislation that would have Haida responsibility over private property in the Haida Nation, we again were concerned because it wasn't part of a treaty. It was being brought in as a standalone piece of legislation, no prior consultation with any of the broader public or even the opposition. And you know they brought the Haida in. And, by the way, the Haida are amazing people. If there's ever a First Nation that has, you know, a history of, you know with the, you know the whole Haida Gwaii, it's the Haida Nation, for sure. And I was very proud to be part of the government that transferred a lot of the land over to Haida so that they could create their own opportunities in the future, et cetera. Great history there, wonderful people.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 1:05:29

But when this was brought in, we said, as an opposition remember we're the official opposition we said, okay, well, hang on. We do have some concerns about? What are the implications of what you're bringing in government? Could you please answer that? And that wasn't easy to do in legislature, with the Haida there to celebrate this, because they brought the Haida there as they introduced the legislation, not celebrating it after the fact when it was passed, but as it was introduced.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 1:05:51

And so we frankly had to and we spoke honestly and said we have some concerns about this, and we were very clear about what the nature of those concerns were. John Rustad, leader of the Beasts of Conservatives, you know what he said. He said this is a great piece of legislation, should be an example for all the other. That's what he said in the legislature when the Haida were there. But guess what happened the next day? He came out and said actually, it's a terrible piece of legislation, I'm totally opposed to it. But that's the kind of two-faced response that First Nations have frankly seen for too long 150 years of it. And I can tell you this this is what I love about the Haida.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 1:06:27

We later myself, my critic, michael Lee had a call with several of their counselors and we said to them look, we're really concerned about the precedent this may set and we need to have an understanding of what this means, and so we want you to understand that our opposition is not about the Haida and making sure that you have every tool you need to be a successful First Nation. Not at all. But we want to be honest with you about what the nature of our concerns are, and God bless them. They're amazing people and they said well, we appreciate that you're being straight up with us and you're not, you know, double dealing with us, and I do think that that's important, because one of the things and I'm sorry this has been a long answer I just feel it's so important for reconciliation to work, we have to have most of the province walking. We'll never get everyone, but we have to have most people walking down that path together with First Nations, and unless we do it the right way, we're going to get the wrong outcome, I promise you.

Aaron Pete: 1:07:23

It's interesting because I do see that there's an uptick in negative rhetoric towards First Nations people right now, because there is an energy out there right now that we're getting too much or we're getting too many benefits and it's a very difficult issue to kind of thread the needle through From my personal perspective I don't live on reserve. I work as a councillor supporting my community members on reserve but, like from my experience, the Indigenous Housing Fund through BC Housing is going to result in, hopefully, 31 new units for our community members that are actually affordable. We're getting more voices and more consultation than I've seen before and the general energy is that we are moving in the right direction, at least from a First Nations perspective. And the money is there, like the Declaration Act To me. That money allows us to make more broad decisions, start to build our own mandates in a way that didn't exist before. Almost all of the projects I'm working on are grant-based, so I have to fit my vision into other people's metrics in order to get funding for things. The Declaration Act frees me to be able to go okay, what is actually the community's priorities and can we start to do research here or work there, and then, when the funding does come around, then we can apply for support to follow through on that.

Aaron Pete: 1:08:40

But the challenge I see when you start to have the public involved in decisions, they just don't know much about how First Nations work. They don't know, like I hear all the time in the comment section like, oh, first Nations just get like a bunch of money put into our accounts and stuff and it's like, well, we're like a municipality but we're not. And to your earlier point, like I am an elected official but a lot of my community members don't understand the issues or what potential solutions are, and so I think a lot of communities are still rising out of this issue of voting based on their family members rather than the issues, and I tried to change that. When I ran, I did an all candidates meeting, I put my ideas forward and hoped that I'd get support based on that, but we don't have that proper accountability that I think is appropriate. I've written about how we need more journalists covering First Nation communities so we are held accountable and that we actually do have mandates.

Aaron Pete: 1:09:29

But the long-term goal seems to be supported a lot by some of the investments this government has made, and I do just look at the results we're seeing, and I say this is really good for our communities right now. Now, whether or not it's feasible for the next 20 years, whether or not it's the perfect goalpost, I'm not sure, but I just I see the progress we're making, investments in food banks, housing, all of these things that we've never seen before, and I see it with this government currently, and the concerns you're raising, I think, are valid. I think we want to do this properly, but I don't know if there's a. Do you have other ideas on how we support? First, Nations.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 1:10:04

Oh, absolutely, in fact, when I was and thank you, by the way, because you said a couple of things that are really important Transparency, accountability. That's so important for governments, all governments, first Nations, non-first Nations. That's how you actually get the better results. There's nothing better than you know, frankly, the transparency of saying, well, this is how we did, right, good or bad Because then people say, well, I think he can do better and you're right, yeah, you know, as a counselor, I'm going to try and do better, you know, or whatever, right. So I thank you for that because I think that's so important.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 1:10:34

Just before I get to answer that question, one of the things that chiefs often say to me is they say you know what, kevin, we will say this One thing we liked about you guys is you got stuff done, like you actually made things happen, and that outcome is important in itself. It's got to be about more than just talking and saying all the right things and all the rest of it. I care about making sure results. I always say to chiefs, chiefs, I just want people to. I want your own people to say you know, this has been the most fantastic council we've ever had. I can't believe the stuff they're getting done with the province, and it's good to hear that there are some good things happening, and I'll salute the government when that is happening, because I want to see more of that for sure. Now your first point oh, I got to make sure I got that right. So it was oh yeah, what are we going to do? What we announced?

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 1:11:17

So, when I was at the Northern Resource Forum, we brought forward something that I thought was really important, and it was a policy that we're going to have, working with First Nations, to provide First Nations access to equity so that they can be full partners in economic opportunities in their respective nations, because one of the things that I don't want to see happen is when there is a mine or a pipeline or some sort of economic development opportunity that may happen on traditional territories of First Nations. I don't want to have the First Nations having to come forward as supplicants or say you know, give us a piece of it, or whatever the case may be, or some sort of you know consultation that it's kind of murky and foggy and everyone's trying to figure out the private sector is not sure. Well, what do you want and what exactly have you got to offer. I want the First Nations sitting down as full partners, and that means they sit down as equity participants say. You know what? We come to the table with money because if this is going to be good for our community you explain how it's going to be good for our community and if we like it, great, then we're going to be equity investors here.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 1:12:14

Now think about just how that changes everything For the First Nations. It changes everything because now they're sitting down saying we're going to be part of this pipeline and we're going to be equity participants, so there's going to be a long-term benefit for our community and for the business that comes to the community. Suddenly they're like I can't wait to sit down with the First Nations because they can be partners too, and they bring something to the table that's really important, which is dollars and equity and their experience and traditional knowledge and all the rest of it and environmental insight that the companies won't have. That's how you create a marriage where you align interests, and what I mean by alignment of interests is where we're now focused on something that's going to benefit both parties, and so that's something that I'm very proud that we announced and had a lot of good, positive feedback from First Nations by the way up there, because, again, to me that's about getting to results.

Aaron Pete: 1:13:04

My last question is is there anything we didn't cover that you feel like is important to discuss?

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 1:13:09

Well, you know, we covered a lot of great territory, and, first of all, I want to thank you for this opportunity, because I'll tell you what I think is missing in public life today, and that is exactly these kind of discussions where you know someone that takes the time to watch or listen to this. I thank them, too, because it shows right away that they're individuals that are trying to find out a little bit more than just the kind of bumper sticker slogans that politicians often get away with, Because I think it's important in this election. What I'm going to say to people is I'm not going to say vote for BC United, or even vote for Kevin Falcon, because I don't want to insult people's intelligence. What I will say to them, though, is, when you vote, think about the track record of the people you're voting for. What did they do while they were in government? That means us as BC United. What did we do while we were BC Liberals? Go back and look at our record good and bad, right, Because we didn't get everything right.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 1:13:59

I'm sure lots of criticism people have. Some people will say oh well, they were too tough on getting to balance budgets, and yeah, they lowered taxes, but still, maybe they should have done more for welfare people or whatever the case may be. Those are all legitimate concerns, but at the end of the day, focus on the results and look at the candidates that are running. Look at their experience, the caliber. What have they done in your community? You know what is their background and their biography. Because I can tell you one thing I'm so proud of is the caliber of candidates we've been able to attract. I'm here in Chilliwack right now where Dr David Menez is one of our candidates. He's an ER physician right at the Chilliwack General Hospital. I've got Dr Michael Humer, who's the former head of surgery at Kelowna General, Dr Claudine Stornas-Bliss in Surrey Cloverdell, who is OBGYN and co-department head at Surrey Memorial Hospital. They are running not because they need the job by God, they're all taking a financial hit but it's because they're so concerned about what's happening to our healthcare system. But we've also got union members, teamsters and locomotive engineers and we've got teachers and entrepreneurs and lawyers and a broad mix of British Columbians. But I do ask people, look carefully at your candidate and then look at the policies of the people that are asking for your vote and if it's just slogans, be careful, because you may get changed. That don't actually you know, that don't actually know what they're doing.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 1:15:23

We had a great discussion today on mental health and addictions and I thank you for that. It is a huge issue, not just in British Columbia but across North America. But we can do, we can be leaders in showing how we can look after people and get better outcomes. And we can do it working with our First Nations friends, because I can tell you, a lot of First Nations unfortunately are victims of what's happening out there on the streets right now and it breaks my heart to see that happen.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 1:15:48

And we've got to end that cycle and working with First Nations and making sure that we've got, you know, really culturally appropriate treatment facilities where people can feel good about going and visiting their loved ones and see them getting better and just change the whole conversation about recovery and hope and a bright future again, Because I can tell you, every young Indigenous, non-Indigenous person I see, I just want them to have a bright future and to feel hopeful about British Columbia. And I look at you and I think to myself my God, you give me hope Because you're the next generation that's going to help us change the future. So change is about what we're doing today, so thank you for giving me that opportunity. It means a lot.

Aaron Pete: 1:16:28

Well, I appreciate you being willing to sit down. I think I hope the podcast and long form interviews are the way of the future, because I think it's the only way to discuss so many of these issues. It's not through soundbites and people might agree with you, disagree with you, but you've clearly articulated what your perspective is and how you arrived at some of those positions, which I think is what all good faith politicians should want. And it shows a lot of character to sit down. There were no talking points, there were no slogans here. You really went through the issues and kind of described how you arrived at them, why you ran, and I think that's admirable.

Aaron Pete: 1:17:06

And in a time where, to me personally, I feel like there's a lack of admirable leaders out there right now that are willing to look in a camera and say I was wrong and I apologize to you Canadians, to you Americans, to you British Columbians, to you Albertans, and like I own my mistake and like hold me accountable at the next election or we can do some sort of interim measure, but like holding yourself accountable to the people and making sure that's always what I've wanted to do as a council member and again, I don't imagine the pressure that you can be under when you're trying to represent such a diverse group of people.

Aaron Pete: 1:17:35

I have 650 and I just I feel that weight every day of like, how do I make sure that I make sure they're better off? Because every person who dies of an addiction during my reign, every person who struggles, it's to me, it's on my shoulders, and I think that's an incredible weight to agree to take on and to push forward for. So I appreciate you being willing to make the trip out. I think we've had a really productive conversation and I look forward to hearing your views in the future. I wish you the best of luck on your run and just thank you again.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 1:18:03

Well, thank you, and I'll just say, as a final point, one thing I've tried to do, and I really enjoy doing, is I actually go on whole town hall meetings where anyone can attend and ask me any question they want. And, believe me, I've been asked all kinds of questions from all kinds of interesting people. But that's what politics should be about and one of the things that concerns me. You know, we saw the UPC Okanagan wanted to do a debate with all the leaders and David Eby and John Rust they both said no, that's too bad, cause I can tell you this I'm going to be available for debating anytime, anywhere with anyone, because if we're afraid to stand up in front of people and make our debates and let the public listen to our, because a lot of people disagree with a lot of the things that I say, and that's okay too, but they're going to know what I stand for and what I'm going to do as a leader and as a premier of this province, and I just think that, the more we have these opportunities to engage in these kinds of discussions, get asked the hard questions, because you ask some great questions, which I think is fantastic.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 1:18:57

All leaders need to be asked these tough questions and not just be able to come up with slogans. They've got to answer and demonstrate that they've got a grasp of the issues and genuine solutions. So thank you so much. I appreciate your time. Thank you. How can people follow you? They can follow me on Facebook, instagram, twitter. Obviously, kevin Falcon. If they go to VoteBCUnitedca, they can go to our website and look at the policies that we've laid out and if they have any questions, email us and email me and I'll get back to them.

Aaron Pete: 1:19:30

Brilliant. Thank you again.

Kevin Falcon, BC United Party Leader: 1:19:32

All right.

Aaron Pete: 1:19:32

Thank you. Today's episode is made possible in part by support from Enbridge, fueling quality of life in British Columbia for over 65 years.