2011 Liberal Party Race for B.C. Premier

January 5, 2011

Making avid use of the Internet and social media, 47-year-old Kevin Falcon has sought to define himself as a “new generation” of Liberal leadership.

First elected to the B.C. legislature in 2001, the former real estate investor and entrepreneur served as minister of deregulation, transportation, and health in the Campbell administration before making his bid for the premier’s office.

You worked in real estate for a number of years. Why do so many real estate people get involved in politics?

I don’t know (laughs). I can’t honestly tell you. I thought it was always lawyers getting involved in politics that was the big problem.

It wasn’t just real estate for me though. I have a background as an entrepreneur, not only in the real estate sector, on the investment side, but in operating a small business that was involved in corporate communications and polling and surveying, etc.

For me, I was driven more by realizing, when I graduated in 1991, that there wasn’t a lot of great opportunities for me as a recent graduate in British Columbia, at a time with an NDP government, the highest marginal income tax, personal income tax rate in North America, very high corporate taxes, and a very difficult economic environment.

If I had to ask you to describe your political ideology, how would you do that?

Results-based. Evidence-based. I like to listen and learn as much as I can from people, from experts and then lead and make decisions. I don’t have any hesitancy in making decisions, but I always try to make them evidence-based. So often, in the media in particular, they try to simplistically try and label people, because it’s easier. You know, this person’s right-wing or left-wing, or what have you. I think if people look at my record they’ll find it’s very difficult to do that.

So, for example, when I moved forward with the four-year, $48 million investment in HIV seek-and-treat program with Dr. Julio Montaner at the Centre for HIV-AIDS, that’s not about a left-wing or a right-wing issue, that’s about making a decision based on evidence. Dr. Montaner presented evidence to me that demonstrated not only could we save the lives of the most marginalized populations in our society, but we could stop the spread of HIV by doing that. And I’m proud of the fact that in making that decision, which was evidence-based, we were the first jurisdiction in the world to move forward with that sort of approach, actually going out into high-risk populations, seeking them out, and providing them treatment that they otherwise would never access, because they generally don’t access traditional hospitals or health clinics.

So to me that’s not left-wing or right-wing, that’s just right.

Do you think you will be a predictable leader? When people use labels like left-wing and right-wing they use them because those terms describe a sort of stable ideology. With a right-wing or left-wing person, you can put them in a situation and say, well I can anticipate how they would react to this problem or that problem.

When you say that you transcend all labels, do we really know what we’re getting from you? Issues will come where you will have to take a strong stance one way or the other.

Well of course. Look, most people have core principles they believe in. I certainly do, for sure, and that guides you as you go forward.

I’m certainly a fiscal conservative. There’s no question about that. It’s one of the reasons I ran for public office. Because, as I say, we had a government of ten years that gave us an economy that took British Columbia from a have province to a have-not province for the first time in its history. So obviously that motivated me to say, I don’t want to have to do business in other places like Alberta and Toronto, I want to do business in the province I was born and raised in. So that meant making sure that we had a government that reflected the kind of economic principles that I believe in, that I think will drive economic growth. I think that’s been borne out over the last 10 years.

What is the ideology of the NDP?

It’s sometimes hard to say, but fundamentally, I think the biggest holdback to the NDP, and the reason they’ve going to have a tough time getting into government, is that they haven’t matured as a political organization.

If you look at left-wing or labour governments around the world, most of them have adapted and recognized that the old sort of socialist principles and policies that they tended to historically adhere to are no longer relevant. So the Labour Party in England is a really good example, where Tony Blair and Gordon Brown moved them in a much more moderate direction. You’ve seen that with social-democratic parties in Europe, and you also see that in Australia.

Here in British Columbia, I sit there in the legislature and I listen to their speeches and frankly you could play the same speeches 15, 20 years ago and not much has changed. I think that’s that’s why they’re going to have trouble securing the confidence of the majority of the population to get elected and form a government. And that is increasingly the case now that they’re having their own sort of implosion and this bizarre leadership race they’re involved with.

Do we have a socialist health care system?

Some would accuse it of being that. Certainly a lot of American conservatives would accuse it of being that. But my counter-argument to them is that they may call it a socialist system, but I would say that we’ve got better health outcomes than they do in America, that our system is less costly than the one in America. Though it’s not a perfect system — I acknowledge that — I think we can make improvements within our public health care system, and make it better, without having to sacrifice the core tenants of the public health system that I think Canadians embrace.

Do you think that the BC government is too big?

No, I don’t think so. I think when I first ran in 2001 you could make that case. When I first ran we were facing structural deficits — and when we say structural, we mean the locked-in costs of government — that were going to ensure that we were going to have deficits for many, many years to come, as we did for eight of the ten years the NDP were in power during the 1990s. So we had some structural problems, but I think we dealt with that.

We went through a whole core services review and every single ministry of government refocused. Frankly, we had to eliminate a lot of civil servants and we did that. It wasn’t easy but we did it because we wanted to make sure that we had government that was not only focused on results and outcomes, but also was affordable for the taxpayer.

I think when you look back now, and you look at our record today, and you look at the outcomes that we’re getting in health care and any other ministry that you want to track, I think in many cases we lead the country, and I’m proud of that.

I still think we have lots we can do, but I think we’ve made some progress.

Are there realms where government doesn’t belong?

Yes.

What would be an example?

It’s not so much a question of where they don’t belong, it’s where they don’t do things as well as the private sector would. So you know, for example, in the 70s in particular there was a lot of ideas and efforts, particularly amongst left-wing parties, to get government into areas where traditionally the business community was involved. They were trying to operate companies, or get involved in dealing with the private sector, and generally speaking those experiments went extremely poorly.

Is BC becoming too ethnically segregated? There are a lot of communities in this province where people can live their whole life interacting with only with members of their own ethnic group, only speaking their own language, never learning English, not integrating into the larger community. I was wondering if this was a trend that troubled you for the long-term unity of the province.

It doesn’t trouble me. You know, I’m part Irish, and if you look at the history of the Irish in North America exactly the same things were said about the Irish. They tended to congregate together, they were heavily involved in politics, they were a threat to the status quo… all of those same arguments were used, and probably have been used with every ethnic group that’s come in historically. The Italians, the Irish, the blacks, the Hispanics, the Indo-Canadians, the Chinese, the Japanese, you name it. And I just think it’s part of a phase you go through, particularly with the first generation.

I’m from Surrey, we are a very multiculturally diverse community. I don’t even think about it, frankly, anymore.

Are the initial generation maybe a little bit tied to the community? Of course they are, because that’s their closest connection, and they feel more comfortable relating and socializing with people who speak their language and come from their home communities and home towns and can share common beliefs and customs and everything else. But their kids are just like any Canadian kids, from everything I’ve ever seen.

A contradiction I notice is that when it comes to our immigrant communities we want them to feel welcome and integrated, but when it comes to our First Nations communities it seems we try the opposite course. We want them to be as independent and sovereign and distant from the Canadian mainstream as possible.

Do you think that is a better strategy than promoting the idea that First Nations people should be integrated as full Canadian citizens?

Well, there’s two sides of that discussion. There’s people that could argue very effectively on both sides of that argument.

I think the First Nations communities have made clear that they don’t believe that integration is the way that they want to go for their people.

But have they made that decision? I’ve heard it said that 70% of First Nations people live off reserve.

Yes. I think that’s probably accurate, that’s consistent with what I’ve heard.

Is it the goal of the BC government that we’d like to see more First Nations people living on reserves?

No, I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s that we want to make sure that for those that are choosing to make that decision, that they have every economic opportunity to develop their communities and create the kind of future that we would all want to see for our own kids. And I think that certainly has been mixed results at best, historically.

In going forward, we’ve really tried to work on that relationship to make sure that they have the same kind of opportunities as you and I would expect and want to have for our own kids. We still have a long way to go.

If you become premier, will you hold elections for the Senate?

Yeah, I don’t have any problems with that. I’ve been long an advocate of trying to create more democratic accountability in the Senate. So I don’t have any problem with continuing to say that that’s something I can continue to support.

But you know, it’s one of those fights that you constantly have to keep pushing, because there doesn’t seem to be much of an appetite, does there?

If Queen Elizabeth dies when you are premier, will you support Canada becoming a republic?

Look, I don’t have any problem saying I am proud of the historic relationship we’ve had with Britain. I think it’s a long, proud relationship, but we are an independent country and I don’t have any problem maintaining the historical, ceremonial relationship that we’ve had historically with England.

I like the fact that we’re a parliamentary democracy. I think if you look at our system — imperfect though it is — it is far better than what I see happening down south, where it is almost ungovernable, and you have infighting, you have lack of progress being made, you have huge deficits and debt. And I worry about the America that I see happening today.

I look at our system and say, even as imperfect as it may be, look at the state that Canada is in, and British Columbia is in, and you compare that to the U.S. states, or countries around the world, like Ireland, Portugal, Greece, whatever — we look very good, and we should never forget that.

Are there any American politicians you admire?

Yeah, there’s a number of them. Historically, John F. Kennedy has always been one. I have a picture of him hanging in my bathroom at home. Ronald Reagan is another leader that I admire greatly. Those are two that come to mind immediately.

Do you think that Ronald Reagan would have governed British Columbia the way that Gordon Campbell has governed British Columbia?

Ah, no, I think he probably would have had a slightly different approach. He’d probably be startled to understand how our parliamentary system works, to be honest.

But the one thing I’ve always admired in public figures that I’ve followed, and looked at as examples of leaders, is people that have the courage of their convictions. I think that is a quality that is far too lacking today in public life. There are a lot of people who want to say and do whatever they think the public wants to see and hear, and I am much more inclined to try and be candid, even when it gets me in trouble, because I just think that’s the better way to go. I’ve always tried to be a principled politician and I’ll continue to be that going forward.

What is your biggest fear for the future of the province?

I’m not a person that is governed a lot by fear, but I really believe that one of the biggest challenges we face as a country is the fact that we have an aging population and an expenditure growth in health care. That should be a concern not just to our generation but the next, and it is going to require some real leadership for us to be able to — not reduce the cost of health care because we’ll never be able to do that — but to bend that cost curve down so that we can have a sustainable health care system.

There’s two ways that happens: one is by insuring that we don’t let the costs get out of control, and the second is by making sure that we have a leadership in the province that recognizes that we have to grow our private sector economy and generate the kinds of revenues that will allow us to continue to fund our health care burden that is going to continue to grow as we see our population age.

I don’t know if that’s a fear, I think it’s a reality, but I don’t think it’s a reality that a lot of politicians cross the country are facing as realistically as they should.