Gordon Campbell

That’s great.  Well thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you very much.  Thank you all.  Thanks for coming.  Thanks for being here.  Okay, I’m willing to go with this instead of the Canucks for a just little while.  Thank you all very much for being here.

Let me just start by saying a big thank you, not to just all of you, but to all of these folks on the stage.  Thank you.  I can tell you this, and there should be no questions about it, we have the best MLA’s, the best legislature we’ve ever had in the province of British Columbia and these people are all part of it.  When you think about real leadership, when you think about real progress, think of the BC Liberal caucus and what they’ve done in the last three and a half years.  So on behalf of all these people, on behalf of all the people of British Columbia, let me say thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to the Caucus and thank you to the great candidates we have that are running on May the 17th that are going to be elected for the first time as MLA’s.

Because make no mistake, every riding in this province is going to have to decide the future of British Columbia.  Every riding in this province is going to have to decide who’s really best to lead this province forward and to keep our economy going strong and it’s the BC Liberal candidate in every single riding of British Columbia.  Thank you guys, very much.  Thanks for being up here.  Thanks.  Thanks a lot.  Thanks a lot, Cathy.  Thank you.  Thanks a lot.  Thanks, Dave.  It’s okay guys, you can disperse and be with your people. 

Thank you.  Thank you.  I also want to take a moment to say thank you to the leader of the Campbell caucus. Mom, thank you very much for coming tonight.  Thank you.  Boy, can she run a caucus meeting. I’ll tell you she was good. And of course I want to say, where’s Nick? Here’s Nick and here’s Nance.  I want to just say, you know, I stand before you and I thank the caucus and they are a big family.  They have been incredibly supportive. But I have a smaller family who are the people that I get to go home to and be supported by literally every single day and I just want to say thanks to Nance and to Nick for all that you guys are doing.  I really appreciate it. Thank you.

You know it’s great to be here tonight and it’s great, you know, it is great and it’s something that’s really important for all of us to remember each and every one of us asked to be a MLA first.  And each of every one of us depend on our constituency, our riding executives and a whole bunch of people that are friends and volunteers that spend countless hours without any real thank you.  So I want to say thanks to all of the people that have been in my riding association who have worked so hard for me.  Particularly the president Anna Wright, Maron, and Marina and Mark and all of the volunteers that are there day in and day out not just through campaigns, but month in and month out in between campaigns when the real work goes on. I just want to say thanks to all of them and all of you for being here tonight.  Thank you very much.

And I want to thank Cathy for being here tonight.  Thank you, Cathy, for coming.  Stand up Cathy for just a sec.  Just come on over here Cathy for a minute.  I don’t know if you guys know this but Cathy has been like a huge supporter of mine for years and I used to say to her, “Cathy put everything aside for me, everything.”  She’s decided to break her tradition.  I don’t know what it is but she’s due on May the 17th.  Now what’s that about?  Thanks for coming here.  So Cathy, just remember there’s a thing called advanced polls that you can go to, okay?  So every vote counts Cathy. 

It is great to be here tonight and it’s great to be back close to my riding.  Actually this is a pretty big hall as you know we decided to have a relatively large hall.  I was born in Vancouver.  I was brought up in Point Grey and Point Grey is big….it’s just been my life.  Whether it’s playing little league baseball at Trimbell Park and looking over one of the truly great views that you have in the world.  Playing in games in what we used to call the endowment lands and exploring through there.  It’s now the Pacific Spirit Park.  We were fortunate to get that dedicated as a park when I was mayor of Vancouver.  Whether it’s just enjoying the incredible ambiance of Spanish Banks and Kits beach and all of those incredible neighborhoods that are part of my constituency.

You know, I often say that we live in the best province, in the best country in the world.  And for each of us who are fortunate enough to be elected for each of us I know we feel this way but I know this.  We live, I live in the best constituency in the best city, in the best province in the best country in the world.  In fact, you know I think, I think I live in the best place on earth.  And you know, although we’ve always known we live in the best place on earth there was a time not too long ago when we didn’t always feel that way.  It didn’t always feel like it was actually reaching its potential.

As we went through the 1990’s we lost a lot of that sort of pride, that spirit that used to drive British Columbia forward.   We all took such great pride in being from the province of British Columbia and what British Columbia could do.  And you know what I’m really pleased about as I look over the last three and half years? And yes, we’ve had to make some tough choices, but I’m really pleased about this.  I love the fact that we’ve created more jobs in British Columbia than any other province in the country.  I love it.  I love it that we’ve got the lowest level of unemployment that we’ve had in over 20 years in British Columbia.

And tonight as I was watching, by accident, Global Television (I think it’s called BCTV Global Television) and I saw a little vignette on what the economy is doing and actually the leader of one of the other parties said, “You know, the rest of the province isn’t feeling this economic activity.”  This is the same person that said she’s going around the province.  Has she not been in Prince George where it is booming?  Has she not been in the Okanagan which has had the fastest growing economy in the province?  Has she not been in the Northeast?  Has she not been in the Peace in the northern Rockies where they can’t find anyone to work anymore because they’re all so busy?  Has she not been in the great city of Prince Rupert where they are thinking about their future again?  Every region of this province is doing better because of the work they’ve done and the commitment they’ve made to the future of British Columbia and that has been for British Columbia and it’s where we’re all going to go together.  That’s what’s important.

This election will be pivotal to our province’s future and I want to say it’s going to be pivotal in two ways.  One of the things that I think that every single member of our caucus should take the most pride in is the fact before the election in 2001 we made a commitment to the people of this province.  We would ask people, not politicians, not pundits, not people that were supposed to be smarter than all the rest of us, citizens, to think about how they wanted to elect a legislature.  And we were elected with a pretty good size majority.  I personally would have liked to have done a little bit better but you know, it is pretty good.  We were elected with a pretty good size majority and you know it would have been easy and actually a lot of people said they’ll never do it.  Well you know what we did?  We lived up to our word.  We did something that has never been done before in a parliamentary democracy.  We said to citizens, “You decide.”  One hundred-eighty citizens from every constituency in this province came together and they worked hard.  They worked hard thinking about how people should be elected to our legislature.  There’s no perfect answer but you know the exercise that they put in, the work that they put in is important.  It’s important because we do live in a democracy.  It’s important because we do live in a place that says to citizens, “You decide.”  And that Citizens’ Assembly is going to bring to the people of British Columbia have brought to the people of British Columbia a question.  They’re making recommendations for change in the way we would elect British Columbians and as you know I’m not going to take a position on one side or the other of that question but I do take a position on this: One of the most valuable gifts we’ve been given by our mothers, our fathers, our grandparents and those that came before us, one of the most valuable parts of our culture is that we say to individual citizens, “You decide.” 

May the 17th, 2005 history will be made. Citizens are presenting a question.  Citizens will answer it and regardless of the answer the BC Liberals will put that answer into effect in the benefit of all British Columbians for British Columbia.

We did something else.  I agree with you. Thank you. Thank you.  We did something else, which hasn’t happened before in Canada.  We were elected and we said the next election, what I like to call the set election date as opposed to what some people call the sixth election date, the set election date was set for May the 17th, 2005.  They said we wouldn’t do it.  We said we would do it.  We’ve delivered on our commitment to the people of British Columbia and that’s a reform worth applauding.  That’s for British Columbia.

And so tonight I want to announce that in 36 days we’ll have an election and you will decide.  You will decide who is best to lead this province forward.  Voters will decide who they want for their children and their families and their future.  Voters will decide what’s best for their community.  Voters will decide what’s best for British Columbia.  Thirty-six days.  May the 17th, 2005, I need your support.  My colleagues need your support and British Columbia deserves to have a future we can all be proud of.

The choice has never been as clear.  People can select a party that’s come forward and says, “Here is our agenda for your future.  Here are five great goals that we want to pursue together in every part of this province.”   Or they can select a party that has kind of a peek-a-boo platform.  A sort of a, well, we’re not sure if it’s a platform but it might be a platform, and maybe we’ll tell you after the election.  Well, you know, I’m not sure peek-a-boo is where we want to go.  I didn’t think it was that funny actually.  I know where we want to go. We want to keep building a province that’s known for financial discipline and a plan that works for the people that live in British Columbia. 

Think of what we’ve been able to do in just three and a bit years, three and a half years.  For the first time in 15 years we had credit rating agencies from across the continent, (it was really good, wasn’t it Linda?) credit rating agencies from across the continent give British Columbia an upgrade in their credit ratings.  That’s sort of one of those technical things and you say, “So what?”  So what has that saved taxpayers? It saves you millions of dollars as we build the future of our province.  So what is because it says to people you know you can have confidence in British Columbia again.  When British Columbia tells you they’ve got a plan you can count on it.  When British Columbia says they are going to do something it’s going to happen and I’ll tell you when we made those choices, we made them for one reason: we made them for British Columbia.

What does a strong economy really allow us to do?  Well a strong economy enables us to do all of the things that are so important to us.  A strong economy enables us to invest an additional 1.5 billion dollars on top of the other billions of dollars we’ve invested in healthcare to make sure we have the best healthcare system in the country for the people that live here.  A strong economy allows us to provide for funding for transition houses for women and families that are escaping dangerous situations and violent situations.  It allows us to fund them more than they’ve been funded and increase their funding more than they’ve had for 10 years in British Columbia.  It allows us to add over 150 million dollars a year to our education system so our kids know they have the best possible public education because that’s how they’re going to have the best possible future right here in British Columbia.

It allows us to improve the quality of care facilities that we allow our seniors to live in and to provide them with the support they need and that’s something that needed to be done.  It allows us to make sure that as we look forward we invest more in our universities and our advanced education institutions.  It allows us to provide for more police officers and more funding for police officers to make our communities feel and be safer than they’ve been for 20 years in this province.  It allows us to provide for the lowest level of provincial income tax for medium and middle-income and low-income earners of any province in the country.  That’s what a strong economy allows us to do.

And you know the interesting thing is our opponents were against virtually everything that we did that required us to create that foundation for the future that’s so critical for British Columbia.  Our opponents have been opposed and opposed and opposed.  Ask for their plans for the future.  They don’t, well, we’re maybe starting to know a little about their plan.  And so far, I don’t think they match up.  Think of where we’re going.  Think of what’s happened so far.  We’ve got an economy that’s ready to go.  We’ve got services that are expanding across the province. We’ve got a golden decade ahead of us in this province if we can move through May the 17th and make sure that British Columbians think of their future and what they can do if they reach together for that future.

2010, the Winter Olympics and Paralympics Games.  Everyone came together to ensure that that happened.  We’re already seeing the activities take place around that, the new Trade and Convention Centre, investments in transportation infrastructure, investments in a future and an anticipated million additional jobs in British Columbia within the next decade.   A million more jobs in this economy.  Every sector in this economy is doing well.  There’s investment.  There’s a 100 million dollar investment in Quesnel in the forest sector.  There’s an 82 million dollar investment in Prince George in the forest sector.  We’re watching, listen to this, mines open in British Columbia again.  And this is what’s important when they open they provide support to families.  To families that were abandoned through the 1990’s.  One of the two people that depended on mining for their livelihoods lost their jobs throughout the 1990’s, one out of two.  At last we have people’s exploration up again four times the explorations for mines that are looking for mineral deposits that we had in 2001. Four times.  We’ve got new mines opening up.  We’ve got new shipments going from here across that incredible ocean of opportunity, the Pacific, and that’s just going to keep on growing.  We are Canada’s Pacific province.  We are Canada’s only Pacific province.

And when we take the strength of our diversity and the strength of our cultural diversity in this province and think of that, building bridges across that expansion of the Pacific to those new economies in China, in India, in South Korea, in Japan, there are huge opportunities for people.  And we are in a position where we can take advantage of it.  If we have a government that frees up human initiative, that encourages the development of human talent and that says first and foremost, “We want to free people to pursue their dreams, their goals and objectives.”  That is for people and their families in this province and that is for British Columbia.

We’ve set for ourselves five great goals. Five great goals that challenge all of us to strive for something that reaches beyond each of us as individuals or each part of our province as a region that says this is what British Columbia can do.  We can become the best educated, most literate jurisdiction on the continent and within the next 10 years we will do that if we work together.  We can lead.  We can lead North America.  We can be the most physically fit, healthiest jurisdiction in North America if we decide we’re all going to take some responsibility for doing it and if we all work together. 

So I have to tell you this.  It’s my job as Leader.  You have to have five servings of fruits and vegetables every day.  My mom made me say that.  Five servings of fruits and vegetables every day and 30 minutes of physical activity.  Now I know you guys have been pretty physically active tonight.  Pretty good.  Now everyone stand up.  Stand up.  Physically active.  Put your arms above your head.  Wave your arms.  Put them at your side.  And now bring them together like this, good.  Now do it really fast.  Thank you very much.  Thank you.  Thank you.

You know people joke about this but this is important.  If we want to have a sustainable healthcare system we all have to be part of that sustainability.  We all have to be willing to take some responsibility for how healthy we are in our lives.  And I can tell you this.  When the BC Liberal government is elected on May the 17th, we are going to be recognized around the world for Act Now BC and what we do to become the healthiest jurisdiction in the world.

And you know, we all know this but it’s important to say this, the best preventive healthcare tool that we’ve ever found is goal number one.  Ever think of that?  It’s goal number one.  It’s education.  So when we became government we said let’s try and expand education opportunities.  Let’s try and expand opportunities for our kids.  Let’s try and expand choices.  So we have launched the largest single expansion of post secondary opportunities in British Columbia in the last four decades in this province.  25,000 spaces.  When you hear true you should think Thompson River University, British Columbia’s newest university in Kamloops, British Columbia.  When you hear UBCO, you should think of the University of British Columbia Okanagan where they are expanding opportunities for every student in the southern interior.  When you hear about job opportunities you should think about the fact that in the last year alone we have increased the number of apprentices in this province by 29 per cent and we are going to keep on building on those successes.

And we’re going to keep on building because that’s what’s important for young people.  It’s important for all of us.  When we give people educational opportunities and training in the advantages of skills development in this province we allow them to think about their future and build a better future for themselves, their families and for British Columbia and that’s what we’re about.

We’ve set the goal for ourselves to provide the best support that you can for people in need with disadvantages.  The strong economy we’ve got has allowed us to increase the support we give for people with disabilities on income assistance by the largest single amount in history.  And we’re going to be able to expand on that.  And we said, as Carole mentioned earlier, we all said, “It’s wrong when we know there is something that is so important to a young person’s future and it just isn’t convenient to do it.”  So we decided and I can tell you this: There was a never a question about this.  When we heard in September that we might do a little better than we expected we immediately said, “How do we deliver on this commitment to young people?”  If you can touch a young person’s life and discover they have a challenge with a visual challenge.  It’s like a seeing-eye problem.  Or discover they have a hearing problem.  Or discover that there is a challenge for them dentally and you start not just diagnosing but dealing with it, you open up new opportunities for that child.  And those are opportunities that allow that child to lead the most fulfilling life possible.  Just think of this.  It used to be that we didn’t diagnose kids with hearing challenges until they were two years old.  Now for those of you who have had kids just think about how much your kids have picked up in two years and there’s something that interferes with that child who has a hearing challenge from picking that up.  There are language challenges.  There’s learning problems.  There are cocular challenges.   When we find out, though, early, there’s something we can do about it.  So if we test every child in British Columbia we’re not just going to diagnose we’re going to deal with it.  And if there is a problem that looks right there we’re going to deal with it in one year, in two years, in three years until we get it right and that child knows and that family knows that they have a future in British Columbia that will allow them to fulfill their dreams and that’s what’s important.

As we think about healthcare we have to think about what’s the core of healthcare.  The core of healthcare is our physicians and our nurses and our medical technologists.  There’s no question about that.  There’s a difference between us and our opponents.  Our opponents were elected.   They cut the number of nurses.  They cut the number of nurses that were being trained in British Columbia by 1600 nurses.  They cut them.  And then, you know, this is what I find so amazing, they were then surprised that we were starting to have a nursing shortage in British Columbia.  Well, if you cut the number of nurses you train there’s a good chance you’re going to have a nursing shortage.  We didn’t do that.  We were elected and within two months we were committing the resources necessary to expand the number of nurses that we have in this province so that today I can tell you this in less than four years under a BC Liberal government there are 25 times more new spaces created under our government than were created under the NDP.

So if they care about that why didn’t they do anything about it in the 90’s?  They aggravated it.  They didn’t solve it.  They created a problem and we had to solve it.  Well, you know what?  We’ve spent three and half years solving the NDP’s problems.  Let’s build British Columbia’s future now for the people of British Columbia.  We want to live in a jurisdiction that is recognized.  It is recognized in leading the world for sustainable environmental management with the best air and water quality and the best fisheries management bar none.  And we’ve taken steps down that road.  And I’m proud of the accomplishments we’ve made.  We’re different from the other guys.  We know that.  They thought it would be a great idea to put a little shopping center on Burns Bog.  We thought it would be great to save it.  We thought it would be great to save it.  We saved Burns Bog just like we said we would.

We said we should bring people together.  You know, they seem to be opposed to all these partnerships.  I’m not quite sure why because when you bring together the private sector, you bring together volunteers, you bring together the resources of government, you can accomplish things.  We saved the Cod Wetlands.  Ken’s here.  Ken Stewart’s here.  We saved the Cod Wetlands, which are an incredibly important natural resource for British Columbia. 

Go to the Kootenays.  Go to the Kootenays and drive up Highway 95 and you know what? You’re going to see this incredible sight.  They’re called the Hoodoos.  And they are spectacular.  And because we were willing to work to bring people together and bring in focus into those volunteers we’ve saved the Hoodoos forever in British Columbia.  Thirty-seven new parks.  Thirty-four expanded protected areas.  Species at Risk legislation for the first time ever in British Columbia.  Any Species at Risk legislation of the NDP?  No.  Who put it in place?  The BC Liberals did because we recognized the importance of a sustainable economic and environmental future for everybody in British Columbia for British Columbia.  An unprecedented water quality partnership that we’ve developed between the province and our local government.

The RAV line.  The RAV line, I know is controversial, but we should remember this.  It is one of the largest investments in public transportation ever in British Columbia.  It will clean up our environment like thousands and thousands and thousands of tonnes of CO2 emissions.  So when people talk about worrying about the environment they have to act on that action and that’s what we’ve done in building the RAV line and improving public transit to Coquitlam with a new transit line to Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam and Port Moody. 

And we want to be sure that we have an economy that produces more jobs per capita than any other economy in the country.  And you know, I talk about the power of a strong economy and what it enables us to do. How it enables us to remember the values we share as communities.  The things that we can do together to make the lives of our families more secure.  To make them more fulfilled in terms of what they want to do and accomplish and make them feel like they do live in the best place on earth.  But you know the economy is more than that and I can remember telling you prior to 2001 that one of the things that I wanted to try and do was to create an environment that brought our kids home.  Create an environment that kept our kids at home.  And you know, I’m pleased to say that that’s starting to happen.  We have people moving back to British Columbia.  Families moving back to British Columbia. Mike de Jong was visiting in Campbell River on the Island and a person said to me, “You know I was in Saskatchewan.  I found out that the forest industry was happening again in British Columbia.  I’m back at work here.  This is my home.  This is where I want to be.”  I talked to a man in Merritt the other day.  He was driving his son to Thompson River University to think about courses he was going to take and the story he told was that if four years ago his son had asked him what to do he would have said, “Go to the oil patch in Alberta at least you’ll get work there.”  You know what he said to him this time?  He said, “You know what I got to say to him?  I got to say to him this: In British Columbia you follow your passion.  You’ll find a job and you’ll find a future right here in our province at home.”

So, you know, I’ve seen… we know what’s coming.  We’ve heard from the BC Feds.  BC Feds says they’ve had enough.  They’ve had enough of a strong economy.  The BC Feds have evidently had enough of thousand and thousands of IWA workers, sorry, they’re now called fuel workers, going back to work.  It’s one of the anomalies of modern life, steel workers at work in BC’s forest industry.  Nevertheless, evidently the BC Fed doesn’t like those folks with their jobs and their security and their thinking about the future again.  They evidently don’t like the fact there’s a whole bunch of trade unions that are at work in our mines again in British Columbia.  Evidently they don’t like the fact that we’ve never had a construction industry that is so full of opportunities for young, old and people that have been around for a while and even people that are coming back.  You know, I don’t quite get that.  Because I would think that the first thing they care about is their workers.  But then I thought to myself, well, what does the leader of the New Democrats say?  Well, she’s evidently not as keen on workers as I would have expected because she thinks that you should take away the right to a secret ballot for a worker.  That’s a right that we’re going to keep.  That’s a right we’re going to maintain and that’s a right to every worker in the province of British Columbia deserves.

We have this sort of pretty long process where the leader of the NDP said we’re going to get a platform.  We think there’ll be a platform.  I’m sure there’ll be a platform.  We’re going to develop a platform. And then she said to us, I think it was just a little earlier this year she said the platform will be out on when the writ is dropped.  Well, we knew when that day was.  Then it was at a little later than that. And then we discovered that actually some of the platform, maybe she wasn’t going to tell us, and then we heard that actually she had already announced most of her platform.  So what do we really know?

We know that the NDP are opposed to Fair Pharmacare.  They are opposed to the fact that 290,000 British Columbians are paying less for their drugs and for the first time ever low-income families are getting support in the Pharmacare needs for themselves and for their families.  They are opposed to that.  They’re against the Abbotsford Hospital and Cancer Center.   Something they’ve promised for year after year after year and now that we were elected and we’re delivering the Abbotsford Hospital and Cancer Center they’re against it.  They’re against the Academic Ambulatory Care Center, which is being built here in Vancouver that will serve 600,000 patients every single year.  They’re against the workers’ rights to their pensions.  Remember when they tried to take those away from workers and we fought them and we restored those rights when we were elected.

We know their platform.  They’re against any potential for offshore oil and gas.  Their leader said quite clearly, not now, not ever, and I can tell that we have a responsibility to look at opportunities that are dealt with in an environmentally sound and scientifically secure way for everybody that’s living up and down the coast of British Columbia.

They’re against open tendering.  They’re against open tendering that provides you as a taxpayer with the best possible value for every single dollar you get.  They’re against labour stability, I guess, because over the last three and a half years we have never had a time where we did better in terms of making sure that people stayed at work and we resolved issues between Labour and Management and moved this province forward.  They’re evidently against that kind of a strategy.  They’re against making education an essential service.  They’re against… and imagine that.  Sorry. Calm down.  Imagine that.  Imagine that.  We have a responsibility to those children.  Our children have rights to a public education.  It’s not owned by….  that right to a public education isn’t owned by one group or another.  It certainly isn’t owned by a union.  It is owned by the public, so we want to hear from teachers.  We want to hear from administrators.  We want to hear from elective school trustees.  But most important we want to hear what is best for students in classrooms in British Columbia.  That’s our goal.  That’s our objective and we are sticking to it.

They’re against the budget that says to people who are earning 15,500 dollars a year or less, you don’t have to pay provincial tax.  They’re against a budget that says to low and middle-income British Columbians, “You pay the lowest provincial income tax in the country.” Evidently, they’re against the pay down of the largest pay down of debt in the history of the province of British Columbia under this budget because they voted against that, too.  They’re against. 

You know, when I think about the NDP it just seems to me that they’re negative and they’re destructive and they’re pessimistic and we should not go backwards to negative, destructive and pessimistic in British Columbia.  So let’s decide tonight.  Let’s decide tonight that we’re going to move this province forward.  That we’re going to build on all of the hard work that every single one of you in this room has done and so many thousands of British Columbians have done.  We’re going to build on that and we’re going to reach for something that is really important.  We’re going to reach for a future that is second to none.  But make no mistake - May the 17th, 2005 is a pivotal election where there’s going to be a lot of people that are going to be working very hard.  We know already that the opposition is paying for organizers to come from out of the province to organize in riding after riding after riding.  We know already.  My constituency office today was getting these regular calls from an Ontario number who evidently were fascinated with Point Grey.  I can understand it if they want to move here but they just wanted to hear where the nomination meeting was.  You know, we know already they’re trying to quietly keep everybody, you know, sort of stable.  Say no, there’s not a problem here.  It’s just, you know, I think they said the other day, “Oh, we don’t have a chance.”  Make no mistake, there’s a chance.  In every single riding there’s a chance.  Not because they have the best candidate.  Not because they have the Party that’s best to take the province forward but because they’re going to deliver their vote and this is what is really, actually both great and important for each of us here tonight. 

You know, as I look to the future of the province I know that I, as a citizen, have one vote.  Nance gets one vote.  I’m working on it.  I think I’m going to get it.  I’m not positive but I’m, you know, I’m kind of counting on it.  One vote.  Each of us, each of us in this room, each of your family members, each of your friends, each of the people that live in your communities, they each have one vote.  And you know, one of the great things about a democracy is these decisions are very seldom unanimous.  I’ve noticed that.  And there’s going to be an awful a lot of people that work awfully hard - they’ll say whatever they want to say.  They’ll do whatever they think they have to do to try and make sure that the BC Liberals and the candidate in your riding doesn’t get elected.  So let me tell you this with confidence.  In every single riding of the province the BC Liberal MLA, the candidate for MLA in each riding is the best person to elect for British Columbia.

This is an exceptional team of people.  This is a truly exceptional team of people and they’re ready to go to work.  They’re ready to take us forward.   They’re ready to build on the success of the last three and half years but everyone’s got to make a choice.  So tonight let me ask you this: I need your commitment for 36 more days.  I need people in British Columbia to think about the future that they want.   Who is really best to lead our province forward and keep our economy going strong so we can do the things that are so important to the future of British Columbia?  Who do you really want to lead this province to the future, to the decade ahead in which we will surpass all of our expectations and we’ll all enjoy the excitement of surpassing those expectations?  Who do you really want to lead you and your riding and take British Columbia to a golden decade?  And who do you think will work for British Columbia to provide the leadership and the progress that every single citizen deserves in this province? I believe in the work and talents of my colleagues.  I believe in the strength of our team.  I believe in the future of our province.  I am excited about looking ahead.  I’m excited about what we can do together.  I’m excited about what we can contribute to our country and the example that we can set for the world and I ask you to help me as we go toward May the 17th and elect a British Columbia Liberal government for British Columbia.  Thank you.