Kevin Falcon reflects on B.C. United's rebrand — and what's ahead for the party in 2024
Despite drops in the polls, party leader says he's confident as the next election approaches
The B.C. United party's rebrand placed it in the eye of a perfect storm in 2023, as it trailed the NDP in polls and competed with the re-emerged B.C. Conservative party for votes and name recognition.
But opposition leader Kevin Falcon says polls aren't the numbers he's watching as he prepares the party — formerly the B.C. Liberals — for an election year in 2024.
He says financial support for B.C. United is strong because the party's attacks on the NDP's housing and climate policies are resonating with British Columbians, even as others accuse him of flip-flopping to keep the social conservative voters B.C. Conservative leader John Rustad is courting.
Falcon sat down with Stephen Quinn, host of CBC's The Early Edition, about B.C. United's rebrand, affordability policies and his busy year ahead.
The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
How are things going to play out between you and the B.C. Conservatives? Have you talked about whether you can co-operate in the next election?
No, we haven't had a conversation about that yet. I've always said I'll work with anyone that wants to help us get rid of the NDP government, but it's too preliminary for that.
Firing John Rustad created an opponent that appears to be really hurting you in the polls, though the NDP seems to have a comfortable lead. How much of the support that we are seeing, apparently for the B.C. Conservatives, has to do with confusion over the federal Conservative Party, which is riding a wave of popularity right now?
I would say the vast majority of it, and you can check easily by just looking at the fundraising numbers. We're right behind the NDP, we've raised almost $2 million, and the B.C. Conservatives have raised about $150,000.
To be honest with you, I think, polls are almost useless nowadays. What matters in politics is members, money, message. We've got lots of time to make sure people know who we are.
Well, that's exactly it. Do people know who you are?
They may struggle a little bit with B.C. United. But I think there's a growing number of people that do know me. And as we get closer to the election, I feel very, very comfortable that ultimately people are going to say, listen, we live in the most unaffordable province in the country. It's become that way after seven years of this government. And they can decide whether that's a direction they want to keep going in.
Real estate has always been overpriced and overvalued and I recall when Christy Clark was premier, she said she wasn't going to do anything to jeopardize the hard earned value that people had in their homes. Was that a mistake?
In hindsight, I think that's probably not the best way I would put it, frankly. But she did bring in a foreign buyer's tax, which I think was an important step. Now we've ended up with the highest housing prices in North America and highest rents in Canada. That's not a very good record and what I care about are results.
That's not the government though, that's the market.
No, I know it's the market, but the government here made it worse. David Eby and the NDP misdiagnosed the problem. They introduced all these taxes, but what they forgot to do was actually deal with the supply challenge. Admittedly, they've now realized, 'oh, maybe we should have dealt with supply,' and now they're bringing in a flurry of legislation. But the problem is we've now got seven years of doing nothing on the most critical part of that equation.
I want to talk about climate change because you turfed John Rustad out of caucus for his views on it. But have you aligned yourself with the B.C. Conservatives when you say you're planning to scrap CleanBC, B.C.'s climate plan?
CleanBC is a disaster. John Rustad ran in four elections supporting the revenue neutral carbon tax that we brought in as B.C. Liberals in 2008, which I was very proud of because every penny had to be returned to the public. But the NDP said we're going to now take all that revenue into government. Then they more than doubled it. Now they want to more than double it again over the next six years. And I'm not buying into that, because that's hurting families.
So where is the balance for B.C. United? We hear this argument all the time that climate action will bring down the economy.
I care a lot about the environment. I have two young daughters and I want to make sure that we get results. We could shut down everything in B.C., park every car, turn off every light and it would be less than two days of emissions out of China. So why wouldn't we use LNG to help the Chinese get off of dirty coal-fired power into a greener, cleaner product, reduce emissions globally dramatically and still make a great contribution without killing our economy?
You have not said you would scrap the carbon tax, would you?
You can't scrap the federal carbon tax, but we can control the B.C.'s proportions. We would scrap the carbon tax for all home heating fuels in British Columbia and we would also take it off of farmers in the agricultural and ranching sector.
You have been accused of playing both sides of a few issues this year, particularly on teaching sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) in schools. John Rustad has promised to remove SOGI, which is a resource online that the B.C. Liberal government introduced, but you haven't committed to keeping or abolishing it either way.
I was just up in Fort St. John and Dawson Creek talking to folks directly about SOGI and I said to them, is there anyone in this crowd that really wants to see kids be bullied and harassed over their sexual orientation? I certainly don't. And I'll tell you, no one in that crowd did.
But what I'm finding is that if you actually really dig down into it, there is no curriculum. There are some teachers apparently that are talking about things that frankly are age-inappropriate. We have to have the same kind of fundamental principles that we brought in with sex education curriculum with SOGI, and that is teachers and parents have the right to have transparency about what's going on in the system and be involved.
The parental rights framing is the way John Rustad talks about this and we know that's a dog-whistle and you're saying pretty much the same thing right now.
No, I disagree. With sex education parents get a notice and if they have real concerns, they can contact the teachers or they can pull their child out that day and they can explain it in their own words, consistent with their own cultural or religious values. That's worked beautifully for 23 years and it should be no different on any other subject.
Sounds like you've got a busy year ahead of you.
Oh, I'm excited about it, though. I really am. Everywhere I go in the province, people are really struggling. And I think we've got to have some people in government that are actually thinking about how we genuinely reduce costs for taxpayers. That's what I'm going to be doing.
With files from The Early Edition