June 19, 2007
Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre
Thank you Shirley. You know Shirley has done really an exceptional job for us in caucus, as Deputy Premier, and as Minister of Education. I just want to thank her for the incredible work she's done for all of us, thank you Shirley.
We are sitting here tonight on the traditional territory of the Coast Salish First Nation. And today was one of those days, actually one of the first days this spring, where you could look across that water and see two mountains called the Lions, or the sisters. Those two sisters look down over this province and they said, according to their history, traditions and customs that those two sisters were going to look over British Columbia and create and secure a place of harmony and peace for people to live in. In British Columbia today we are clearing singing from the same song sheet, we have harmony, we have people working together, we have an economy that is thriving, we have a province that is leading, and that is all because of you and I want to say thank you to all of you for your commitment to our province.
I want to thank Shirley for recognizing Nancy. You know Marty mentioned that we've been having these dinners for more than two decades now, and for more than two decades Nancy been with me day-in-day-out. She's taken me for the good and the bad, and actually there's probably more of the former than the latter, but she looks by that. She works very hard in her own career, and she asks very little from Nicholas or Jeff or I, but she is always there for all of us and I want to say thanks to Nancy for all the exceptional support she has given me for my entire career. Thank you very much. I actually got to say hi tonight and she tried to kiss me with her mouth full.
That's what happens when one of the partners lives in Squamish and one lives in Vancouver.
You know as I stand here tonight, and as I walk and talk with some of you, and I felt the energy and the enthusiasm in this room, I can't help but reflect back on just six years ago. And really in six years this province has shown what the power of citizenship can do. This province has shown that the power of individuals, working for a common good and a common objective, can do. This province has reminded us of how fortunate we all are to live in this country. Because for all of our faults and all the challenges we face, this is a country that says to each and every one of us, you decide, you shape, this place's future.
Here is British Columbia, six years ago we said we were going to shape a new future for our province. A future that created opportunity, a future that created hope, a future that reached to every corner of British Columbia and said you dream your dreams and we'll try to give you the power and the opportunities to pursue them. And today, six years later, we have a province that's recognized across this country for its leadership, for its strong economy and for the goals that we set for ourselves. And we have been a province that has actually transformed ourselves in just six years.
We've gone from being a have-not province to a have province. We actually did in this province because of the power of individuals making choices, and we've actually created more jobs in British Columbia in the last six years than any other place in this country, over a third of a million new jobs right here in British Columbia.
And the reason I wanted to mention that tonight is because when we started, if you go back to when we began this journey, there were a lot of people that said to us, it won't happen, you can't do it, it's too ambitious.
Remember when there were people around British Columbia that said tax cuts didn't work? They said it when we made the first significant tax cut on the first day we were elected, they said it in the second year, they said it in the third year, some of them are still saying it, and they still haven't figured it out. We've had 68 tax reductions in British Columbia, and today we have the strongest economy in the country with more investment, more opportunity, more jobs, stronger communities, more sustainability, it gives us the tools we need to pursue the goals we've set for ourselves.
Today, if you live in British Columbia, you are paying thirty-three to thirty-six percent less in provincial income tax if you're making $30,000 or more. If you're making just $20,000, you're paying sixty-six percent less in income tax, and if you're earning less than $15,500 you're paying zero.
And today in British Columbia if you earn $108,000 or less, you're paying the lowest personal income tax rates of any jurisdiction in Canada.
So as I talk to you tonight about some of the challenges we face, I hear people talk about the challenges we face and recognize there are still lots of challenges out there, but there are way more opportunities.
One of the challenges is human resources. Where would you rather be attracted to if you're a worker? Would you rather go to a place that pays the lowest personal income taxes in Canada, or a place that pays the highest personal income taxes? We picked lowest, we're attracting people, we're driving an economy and we're going to keep leading this country in to the Pacific Century with your help.
One of the things that I think is important for us to note today is that as I travel the province, as most of my caucus colleagues do, there is a pretty good feeling out there. We've got the most optimistic small business community in the country. Rick Thorpe goes out and works with small business round tables. I was part of a group with young entrepreneurs last night and one of them came up to me and said he had attended a small business roundtable with Rick Thorpe. He said to me 'you know I listened to the last budget and he listened to us'.
We have listened to small business. We've reduced their tax load, we've reduced their regulatory burden by over forty percent, and that's why we have businesses being creative in British Columbia and starting up in British Columbia, and growing in British Columbia and thriving in British Columbia. The most optimistic small business community in the country. We have to keep that going.
We have to keep communities feeling optimistic about what they can do, what they can accomplish, and here's one of the challenges we face. There are a lot of people who forget what it was like in 2000 in British Columbia.
There are some people who forget what it was like in 1999 when young people were leaving the province, instead of coming back home.
One of the things we have to do is we have to look at the world we live in today and say we have to keep thriving, we have to keep striving, to be better, better, and better. Because if we don't, if we don't try and catch up and keep up with the changes taking place, we're going to watch as we start to fall back again. Quietly.
Complacency is our enemy. Complacency is what will hold us back. What I want to talk to you about tonight is the world we live in, the real world.
Not the world we think we might live in, or wish we might live in, but the real world we live in. We talk today about change as if it's going to happen. Change has happened. We are all living it, and if we don't open our eyes to that change and look as a province at that change with new lenses and see the opportunities that are there, we're going to lose the opportunities that are before us. And I can tell you this, British Columbia and our people are ready to take on change, to embrace those changes, to drive opportunity across this province as we look to the future.
There is no province in Canada, not one, that I would rather be Premier in, than British Columbia. Because in British Columbia we have local leaders like Herb Pond who's here, the Mayor of Prince Rupert, who has a vision for what he wants to do. He wants to open up Prince Rupert as a northern port, and we're going to open up Prince Rupert as a northern port that will benefit everybody in British Columbia. Because we have people who are willing to lead.
I just want to use a recent example. In January of this year we discovered we had the highest level of snow pack we've had in a long, long time. We were pretty concerned about it. John Les and Barry Penner said to us, "we've got to act". And so there's sort of a way in the past these actions used to take place. There would be an argument about who should be investing, where they should be investing, what would the cost sharing be, and so on. And we said you want to know what, we can't wait. We have to act.
We said as a Province we're going to put $33-million in to working with municipalities to try and assure we can protect those municipalities as much as possible from what may happen. We decided we were going to act, we decided there was not going to be a limit on what we were going to invest, except we said this, we have to be investing in things that can get done in time to protect communities. It wasn't simply a matter of 'please send more money', it was a matter of what are we going to build and where are we going to build it, what are we going to protect, how quickly are we going to get it done, where are we going to get the people. We decided we were going to act, and we said at the time we were hoping the federal government will join us and share in the expenditure which is $33-million.
I want to give the federal government kudos here, because normally, I don't know how many of you know this, when you go ask the federal government for $16.5-million dollars, you can take up to 16.5-million years to get those dollars. So what we decided was we were going to ask them.
We said think about this you guys, this could cost us billions of dollars, or we could do this quickly, upfront, and save us billions of dollars. And I take my hat off to them because they did something that was unprecedented.
They stepped up and said we're doing it, and they shared 50/50 with the Province.
And then some local governments said they'd like tens of millions here, or fives of millions there, but the local governments generally said we're working with you. Here's where you can do the most benefit for what we can do in the shortest amount of time so we protect people. And that's the world we live in today.
It's a world where you cannot wait, you must act. It's a world where you have to collaborate, you cannot act just alone. And it's a world where you have to decide what's important to you and then embrace it and drive for it.
And that's what British Columbia is going to be doing.
I can tell you right now, and I'm not meaning to be critical of anyone in particular or anything in particular, but we're not waiting for the rest of the country to catch up to British Columbia any more. We're going to move ahead. We're going to move ahead, we're going to look at the world that we live in and we're going to take advantage of the opportunities that presents us because there are a huge numbers of opportunities out there for us.
Tonight I'm just going to talk to you about three to highlight for you what I mean by this - aging, Asia and the atmosphere. All three of those things are huge currents that are sweeping the world and we can take advantage of them. We can sit there and wring our hands and say 'oh we're getting older, what are we going to do about Asia and I don't know what we're going to do about climate change', or we can say 'look at what's happening and let's take advantage of it'.
So what happens because we're aging? It's not simply a question of our health care system having additional costs. That's one of the issues.
There's a whole series of other issues we have to deal with. Human resources, people, we're getting older, and people are starting to retire.
We're starting to deal with that, we've removed mandatory retirement in British Columbia. We said if you can contribute we want you contributing.
But you know, people do change their jobs, they do decide to move on, they do decide to move out. We look at the number of nurses, the number of teachers, the number of doctors, the number of wiremen for BC Hydro, the number of engineers, guess what's happening to all those folks? They're getting older. They're thinking of maybe moving out of the workforce. Over the next twelve years, we're expecting a million new jobs in British Columbia. We're going to graduate 650,000 young people in our education system. That's a 350,000 person gap. It's what we call an inevitable surprise.
We know it's happening, and if we know it's happening, why don't we take advantage of it? But if we're going to take advantage of it, we can't do what we've been doing the last ten to twenty years, we have to think about what's going on in 2007, and we have to figure out where we want to be in 2020 or 2030 and then we have to act.
So here are just some of the things we have to do. We have to change our cities. We have to change their shape to reflect the needs of older people.
Nancy and I, not that we're older, we used to have two kids at home both of whom have left. We don't need as much space as we used to have. We want smaller space. Most older people think about having smaller space. My mom wanted smaller space after her kids left, but no communities were built around my mom's needs. We have to start building communities around our parents needs, or just so we're selfish about this particular item, we're going to be building around our needs.
We want to live in the communities we were brought up in, we want accommodation that meets our needs, we want to be relatively close to where we have to go for whatever it is, shopping or interaction, we want to live in our neighbourhood long term. We want to live where we are, but that requires us to change. And we can change, and we're going to change.
We're going to change working with communities, working with civic leaders, like Sam Sullivan, who's talking about what he calls EcoDensity, where we actually improve on the densities, and build smaller units in cohesive compact communities where we can walk about. All this is about responding to aging.
Another thing about responding to aging is that we have to deal with is immigration. For too long we've said we don't need it. I can tell you, I've talked to people tonight from the tourism industry, from the agricultural industry, in the mining industry, in the construction industry, and all four of those industries have told me 'we need people'. We want to attract people with skills, but we also want to attract people who are ready to work. Who are ready to work like those many who came before us who said, let's get to work, let's put our shoulders to the wheel, let's build a country together.
We need immigrants to help us come and put this country together, and what better place to encourage immigration and ask immigrants to fully participate in our life than in Vancouver and British Columbia and in Canada. Right now in Vancouver, we're the fourth most international city in the world. In twenty years, we're probably going to be first or second.
We have people coming from Asia to British Columbia. Remember I mentioned Asia, human resources, bringing people here who are comfortable who can contribute? Well, one of the things about being Canada's Asian Gateway is we want this to be a place where people are comfortable contributing.
We have a huge number of people in our province, 400,000 at least, who have a Chinese background. We have seven percent of people who have an Indo-Canadian background. We have a growing population of Korean people, we have a growing population of people who are moving again from Japan, a growing number of people from the ASEAN countries, from the Philippines.
All of those people are ready to contribute to our society, to make it stronger, to make it healthier, and to make it more vital. And here's what's great, they create a human bridge back to the fastest growing opportunities in the world. And that bridge can be complimented by significant and important investments in transportation.
We have to invest in transportation. I can tell you Kevin Falcon is here tonight and he has been a relentless proponent for expanding our transportation infrastructure in this province. And as we think of that what we are really doing is opening up a world of opportunity to the entire country.
When I talk about the Pacific and the opportunities that the Pacific
presents, it isn't something that might happen, it's happened. The fastest
growing economy in the world is China. The fastest growing middle class in the world is India. Japan, who we have a very strong relations with, actually today has a larger economy than India and China combined. In twenty years, China is going to surpass Japan. In twenty years, China is going to surpass the United States. And this is what we know today. We're expecting about a three hundred percent increase in the amount of container traffic that comes from Asia to North America over the next fifteen years.
Just so you know, a few months ago I was in Los Angeles. Yes, I was visiting with Governor Schwarzenegger, but I was also visiting Los Angeles and Long Beach. And actually it was an eye opener for me, because it was really the first time I understood this. You take all the potential growth for Los Angeles / Long Beach, which is a substantially larger port than Vancouver, all the potential growth for SeaTac, all the potential growth for the Port of Vancouver, all the potential growth for the Port of Prince Rupert and we don't have enough space, we don't have enough logistics, we don't have enough capacity to deal with that three hundred percent increase.
So instead of thinking about competing, why not work with those ports to establish common environmental standards up and down the coast. Why not work with those ports to establish, for example, reliability standards where we're all working together. I'll tell you what's going to happen if we don't do that. We're going to watch as that economic opportunity transfers to the Atlantic coast because North America has an insatiable appetite for growth and Asia has an insatiable appetite to deliver manufactured goods to North America. Yes, we're going to be delivering resources and opportunities to Asia, but opening the Asia Pacific Gateway means investing, working together, thinking differently, and acting now.
So I can tell you what we have been saying to our federal colleagues. It is time for a massive investment in transportation infrastructure in British Columbia. We're not just going to twin the Port Mann and watch as we alleviate the flow of traffic back and forth there and actually reduce the environmental impact because finally we're not throwing literally thousands of pounds of greenhouse gases in to the environment while they're congested.
Over a billion dollars a year is lost in our economy because of congestion.
In fact, when we put together our new standards for greenhouse gases you'll see a dramatic reduction in the impact of an improvement to our transportation system. But it's not just there. It's investments in Vancouver, it's investments in rail, it's investments in roads, it's investments in Prince Rupert, it's investments in the Yellowhead, it's investments in goods movement in and out of our province and in to the heart of the interior and heart of our continent.
When you think about the Port of Los Angeles in Long Beach again, just as an example for you, we think of our goods coming in to Vancouver and going for literally thousands of miles to marketplaces. The vast majority of goods that come in to Long Beach in Los Angeles are actually delivered within 600-miles of that port. There are huge opportunities there for us, but they're only opportunities if we act.
It's very similar to what the St. Laurence Seaway was 50-years ago. Canada has got to have a national vision to say we're ready to work with British Columbia, we're willing to work with British Columbia and is ready to create opportunity in British Columbia not because we're a province, but because we are on the Pacific. And because we're on the Pacific, we open up enormous gates of opportunity to Alberta, to Saskatchewan, to Manitoba, and I can tell you this, in Alberta they totally get it.
In Alberta they are saying yes we want to work with you. They are saying let's take down trade barriers. In Alberta they are saying let's have the free flow of people and goods, that's called TILMA, and they are part of our Pacific Gateway as we look to the future. That is a very strong, important, and vital partnership as we move ahead.
Colin Hansen is here tonight. Colin Hansen actually orchestrated and moved us through what we call the Trade Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement with Alberta. And here's what I want you to think about. There are people in Canada who are opposed to that agreement. Now when you hear they're opposed, think of what they're saying. In British Columbia, we need people to fill jobs. In Alberta, they need people to fill jobs. Doesn't it make sense to you that people should be able to go across this country and find a job and get to work to build a stronger country, regardless of what province they're from?
We have people that say there should be a barrier there. We should stop people. We have people that actually say if you're trained as a teacher in Manitoba, you shouldn't be able to be a teacher in British Columbia. I'll tell you this, we need teachers, we want teachers, and if you're trained as a teacher in Canada you should teach in British Columbia and you are welcome to teach in British Columbia.
And I'll tell you this too, if you're in another part of this country and you want to come to British Columbia and take advantage of opportunities, fill jobs, and make a better life for your family, you're welcome to British Columbia because this is a province of opportunity and it should be open to all Canadians.
Asia creates enormous opportunities for us and each of these opportunities is connected. As we get older we need more immigrants and that could be a major issue for Asia. As we need skills, we need to bring them in. We also need to recognize that the world has changed. One of the biggest issues we have to face is the issue of climate change.
If any of you in the room are wondering if that's an issue, just think about this. Fourteen years ago in British Columbia, a little known infestation of a thing called the pine beetle popped up in Tweedsmuir Park. And the Mayor of Vanderhoof came to us and said you know we better act on that pine beetle issue in Tweedsmuir Park, that could be a real problem. And that particular government of the day, and I'm not sure any other government would have decided differently, and this isn't a political comment, it is a comment about how we see the world, the government of the day said let's just wait because all we need to kill the pine beetle is a really cold winter. And they waited. And the next year all they needed to deal with the pine beetle was a really cold winter. And they waited again. And we waited, and we waited, and we waited, and we waited, and we've now had the ten warmest winters on record. And we now have eighty percent of our pine forests infested with pine beetle.
And we are going to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to try and stabilize not just the environment, not just the water systems, but to stabilize those communities so they have the kind of future they deserve.
Now we're lucky, because the world we live in as we respond to the challenge of greenhouse gases, we have a whole new source of opportunities for British Columbia, alternative energy.
We've said this as a province, and we've been clear about this as a government, we're going to have a thirty three-percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020. Big target, and that isn't far out. By 2010, we're going to be carbon neutral as a government. We're going have goals set, working with industry groups, working with non-profits and saying here's the goals for 2012. We're going to act now, because we have to act now if we're going to benefit long term. We're going to set goals for 2016 and we're going to reach our goal by 2020.
And for those who tell you we can't do it, I would tell them this, you're wrong we are going to do it. And as we do it, we are going to build economic opportunity in this province. In California they've estimated the economic opportunities alone of the shifts that's been announced by Governor Schwarzenegger to be in the order of $60-billion.
We live in a province where ninety percent of our energy is clean. We live in a province that has enormous wealth in alternative energies. Whether it's geothermal energy, new bioenergies, we have enormous wealth and great technologies that we're building and working on right now with Alberta with respect to coal sequestration. We're leading the way with regard to fuel cell technologies. By 2010, when we host the world for the Olympics, we'll have a Hydrogen Highway that will go from Whistler, through Vancouver, through Washington State, through Oregon, and all the way through California down to San Diego. California's committed to it, we're committed to it, and we're going to make it happen.
And for the people who say it can't happen, or it can't be done, I just want you to think about this. One hundred years ago this year, the first automobile gasoline station was opened in Vancouver, British Columbia at Cambie and Smithe. I know there were people at the time who said this new automobile stuff, it's crazy, and it's not going to happen. We've got a whole industry built up around buggies. Okay, so the horses pollute a little bit, no problem, we can clean that stuff up. How many of you actually wish we had invested in the automobile in 1907 instead of buggies with horses? A lot of folks.
We're investing in the Hydrogen Highway. We're investing in alternative energies. Right now, Westport Industries, major industry, very clean burning fuels, big trucks that are available, big orders in Los Angeles Long Beach, so far no orders in B.C. It's time for big orders in B.C., it's time for big orders in Canada, and it's time for us to encourage our alterative energy sources so we become known as an alternative energy powerhouse. We can do that in this province, and we're going to do that in this province.
I've been fortunate enough, and thanks to all the support you've given to me and members of our caucus, to have this opportunity to serve as Premier for six years. In that period of time the one thing that I am completely confident of is the strength, the imagination and the creativity of British Columbians if government will just give them a framework in which to act.
We've seen that happen time and again.
The mining industry which was supposed to be moribund is back in this province in spades as we've got investment, we've got exploration, we've got new mines that are opening up in this province, that's because of British Columbians. When you look at the energy industry we've watched it as its expanded, expanded, and expanded some more, that's because of British Columbians. When you look at the improvements we're making in infrastructure, in the road building that we have in this province, in the technology infrastructure we have in this province, we're making record investments, that's because of British Columbians.
Every generation has got one day to look themselves in the eye to say what are we going to do, and here's the question we're asking ourselves. Are we willing to ask more of ourselves, than we ask of others? Are we willing to actually act today for the benefit of people who we may not know and to the benefit of a future generation?
You know our parents did that, our grandparents did that for us. They often faced challenges that they called wars, and they went off and they fought them and they gave us the gift of our democracy and the strength of our citizenship. They went through a depression, and they worked their way out of that depression, and they invested in our future. And they didn't do it with debt, they did it with hard work and they did it thinking what they were going to do for their kids and their grandkids.
Today in this province, today in this country, we have to ask ourselves this question. Are we willing to act on behalf of our children and our grandchildren? Because many of the things we're talking about doing today, whether it's reducing greenhouse gas emissions, whether it's changing the way our communities work together and fit together, whether it's major investments in public transit, all of those things are going to be huge benefits a generation away.
It's not unusual for people in our life, public life, to be told from people, I want you to think long term, but in my particular case I want you to act and do this thing for me tomorrow. What we have to ask ourselves now is if we're willing to embrace the opportunity that's before us. We have an aging society, we have the challenge of climate change, and we have the huge global shifts that are taking place in Asia. There is no better place to live than British Columbia, Canada. There is no place that offers up those changes in a way that says to us, this is your opportunity. This is our opportunity.
Twenty years from now, I want my grandkids to look back on what we've done now and say we made the right choices. And I want you all to know this is going to be an exciting time, because in this province, with the tools that we have, with the people we work with, the imagination individual British Columbians have all across this province, we can accomplish anything we set our minds to. We might not be able to do everything, but we will be able to do anything we set our minds to. We've done it before and we'll do it again.
So tonight, again I say thank you for coming. I say thank you to many of you for the years and years of commitment and support, and thank you for making public life so enjoyable for myself and my colleagues, and thanks for caring enough about the province to do something.
But as you go home, I want you to think of this quote, and then I want to ask yourself what you will do. Here's the quote. "Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."
You've got the magic, we've got the power, let's lead Canada in to the Pacific Century together. Thank you very much.
