POLITICS – BC Conservative leader talks recall, decrim, housing, reconciliation

By MEL ROTHENBURGER
ArmchairMayor.ca

Recall legislation isn’t the way to sort out the chaos plaguing several municipalities including Kamloops, says the leader of the Conservative Party of B.C.

John Rustad was in Kamloops on Monday for a pre-election campaign rally and meetings with party supporters. While most of the attention during the past several days has been on a failed merger between his party and BC United, ArmchairMayor.ca sat down with him to talk about issues specific to Kamloops.

Many residents feel the best way to resolve the conflicts at Kamloops City Hall would be a petition process for recalling civic politicians similar to what’s available for the removal of MLAs from office. Rustad, however, sees problems with that idea being applied at the civic level.

“I don’t think we can make it work,” he said, pointing out the historically low turnout for civic elections. “It’s very challenging to shape some sort of recall that is actually achievable when you have that little turnout,” Rustad said, adding that the threshold on petitions would be higher than turnout in some communities.

He suggested revisiting the length of terms of office instead. A return to three-year terms for municipal politicians would make the pain of dysfunctional councils more bearable.

“I think that might help in dealing with this situation that has come up in a number of communities where you’ve got people who are dissatisfied with various services or dysfunctional local governments.”

On the issue of decriminalization versus recriminalization of illicit drugs, Rustad said decrim has clearly been a failure. “People doing drugs in hospitals, people doing drugs wherever they want, basically. Hard drugs should not be allowed to be done in public.”

He said there’s an obvious need for more treatment facilities and for ways to connect people to them. He elaborated on his support for mandatory treatment, saying, “We want to make sure that there’s a range of treatment available, everything from doctor-prescribed treatment, to voluntary short-term recovery, to voluntary long-term recovery, to involuntary recovery, to long-term care.”

One example of where mandatory treatment might come in, Rustad said, is when a drug user is brought back to life but is at risk of harming themselves by doing it again.

With respect to the housing shortage, he is not a fan of the NDP government’s approach, which he calls “an utter failure.”

“The idea of coming in with an authoritarian approach, and overriding local governments, is not a recipe for success. What’s actually needed is government needs to step to the table and help with key infrastructure like water and sewer because all communities need these kinds of upgrades in order to approve and go forward with densification or new housing.”

However, he said, municipalities have to be accountable mas well to make sure housing permits are approved in a timely way.

The day of the interview marked three years since the announcement that ground-penetrating radar had found anomalies in Kamloops Indian Residential School grounds suspected by the TteS Band of being unmarked graves. Asked about his party’s stance on the path to reconciliation, Rustad said a big part of the answer is in what he calls “economic reconciliation.”

“What I’m seeing is, there’s reconciliation from government to government but we’re creating friction  between people to people, and that’s not what reconciliation is supposed to be about. Reconciliation is supposed to be about reconciling people and governments. So one of the things I look at is we need to be focused on economic reconciliation where we aren’t taking from one people to give to another but we’re adding to opportunities so they both can prosper.”

He said TteS is an example of one Band that is successful in economic development but it’s “an exception to the rule.”

The party leader is optimistic about BC Conservative chances in Kamloops Centre and Kamloops-North Thompson. He said incumbent BC United MLA Todd Stone has “a ton of vulnerabilities,” including on decriminalization, and Peter Milobar “has done a good job” but has to wear positions taken by his party on a lot of issues including the carbon tax.

“But I also look at it just from a polling perspective, we’re polling very, very strong through all of rural B.C., not just in this area but in many other areas of the province as well. But we’re strong through this area so I think our candidates (Ward Stamer in Kamloops-North Thompson and Dennis Giesbrecht in Kamloops Centre) are going to be very competitive.”