Tackling Challenges, Providing Opportunities: Premier Campbell

Transcript: Premier Gordon Campbell Address to Annual BC Liberal Party Premier's Fundraising Dinner

June 10, 2010

Premier Gordon Campbell: Thank you. Thanks very much and thank you very much Mike for that introduction.

It is actually pretty incredible to be here tonight, to be not only on the traditional territories of the Coast Salish First Nation, but to be here in a facility that showed the world British Columbia throughout the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, this exceptional new extension to our convention facilities.

And you know, it is very nice what Mike said, but one of the things that both Mike and I know is, nothing is done by one person, everything is done by a group of people working together and there is one person here tonight who brought together British Columbians, trades people, architects, engineers, financiers, and actually made this happen in a way that everyone is talking about how great it is and that’s David Podmore and we should say thank you to David for his exceptional contribution.

It’s hard to believe isn’t it. A year ago today, we swore in the new cabinet. Just a little over a year ago, we swore in all of the new government MLAs. It’s been an incredible year when I think about it. It’s been a year of ups and downs. You know, it was kind of up, when we won the election on May the 12th and people were saying things like, ‘oh, a third term’? Nice peaceful, relaxing third term. Take it easy, put your feet up, look at the sunset. That was really quite an up. Two days later, I heard that our revenues were collapsing – I can’t even say that word anymore it’s so upsetting - were collapsing. That was a little bit of a downer, two days after an election to find out that information. My popularity started to slip just a smidge then. Near the end of that month, Colin came in – Colin Hansen and I – it’s amazing that he’s agreed – or I agreed, to let him be the master’s of ceremonies. He’s not one of my favorite people to have meeting’s with anymore, I can tell you that. About the end of the month he came and said, “by the way Gord, we just got our first notes in from the CRA and we’re going to lose another, about $800 million in income tax, both personal and corporate income taxes that we counted on.” My popularity slipped a little more on that.

About three weeks later, we announced we were going to take a significant step to improve our tax regime, to make us more competitive to help the forestry industry, the mining industry the energy industry, small businesses across the province, to really be in a position where we can come out of this economy even stronger. My popularity slipped a little after we did that. I thought, ‘it’s going to get better. It’s going to get much, much better.’ We had the Olympic Games. The World came. They celebrated. Canada celebrated. Everything was great and! …popularity just edged down a little bit then. Then we just heard great news, great news. The Canada health information people have told us that British Columbia has the best cardiac services in the world, the best cancer treatment in the world, world leading HIV/AIDS treatment, we’ve reduced our wait times for hip replacements and knee replacements and I thought, this is finally really good news…popularity just edged down a smidge. And you know, one of the things that I noticed was, while there are ups and downs in this business, there’s been quite a few downs for my popularity lately. But let me tell you this, the one thing that keeps me up, is I have a great caucus, I have a great cabinet, we’re in a great province, we’ve got a great future, and British Columbia is going to lead Canada in the 21st century.

I couldn’t help as I’ve gone through a couple of these last few months to remember my friend Jack Poole. Jack was just a truly exceptional British Columbian, as you all know. Jack used to joke that he gave me my first job, paid me $284 an hour, I gave him his last, paid him a buck. That was for seven years, or eight years or nine years. Anyway, Jack came in one day, and it was one of those times when people were saying, ‘you know, this Olympic thing is a bad idea. We shouldn’t have ever started it. Campbell should cancel it. I don’t know what’s the matter with him. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. We’re never going to do what we said we’d do.’ And Jack walked in - and if you come into my office, there’s a little hallway before the office. And he walked into the office and there were all these celebratory notes about we had just won the Olympics and my friend Jack looked at me and said, “Gord, how do you put up with all the adulation”? You know, I think it’s one of the things I learned from Jack Poole, is that as you go through this life, if you have a vision, if you know what you want to try and do, there’s really nothing you can’t accomplish if you’re willing to give other people credit for doing it. As we put together the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, Jack was a Chair, as you know, throughout.

One of my favorite days was July 13, 2001. Do you all remember that day? You don’t probably. I had been Premier for about five weeks. The IOC was meeting and they were deciding, who was going to get the 2008 Summer Games? And I was glued – I was watching my television, I got to admit that – glued to the set - and the announcement was made. The winner is, Beijing! A lot of people in Toronto were very, very disappointed. But I was sitting in my office, and even though I’m a Canadian, and even though Canada hadn’t won, I said, “yeah”! Because I knew that if Toronto had won we were out of luck for the Winter Olympic Games. I knew then, that we were in the running for the Winter Olympic Games and from that day on - and I can remember chatting with Jack about that when he took this on – and from that day on, we decided they were going to be Canada’s Games. They were going to belong to all Canadians. We were going to use them to introduce British Columbia and all we had to offer our country, to the country. We were going to introduce the country and British Columbia to the world and boy, did Jack Poole and the VANOC team and John Furlong ever deliver on that vision.

In measure after measure and after measure, we exceeded expectations; we exceeded our own expectations. First Winter Olympics in the history to have all of the venues completed a year early, on budget. First Winter Olympics in history to have every sports venue packed to the brim with spectators cheering and enjoying the sport, whether it was outside in a snow storm, outside on a beautiful sunny day, inside in the curling rinks - they learned whole new cheers in curling because of the British Columbia Winter Olympic Games and Canada’s Winter Olympic Games. And who will ever forget, that day when our hockey team won that gold medal? And I’ll tell you one thing, we have a great women’s hockey team in Canada. They - we challenged ourselves, we outperformed expectations.

Do you remember at the beginning of the Games, we hadn’t won any gold medals yet and people started, some people, started saying, ‘do you think we should have said we wanted to Own the Podium’? Of course, we should have said we wanted to Own the Podium. How do you do well if you don’t strive to be the best that you can possibly be? So what happened because we had this program? Because the federal government said, “yes, we’re there for Canadian athletes, who have given their time, their effort, their energy and their families who have supported them. We’re there to support them and see if we can actually exceed our expectations.” And so what happened? The largest number of gold medals ever won in an Olympic Games, was won by Canada here in 2010. And every one of our athletes, I know, I’m sure you all watched our athletes, but our athletes were truly exceptional. I was so proud of each and every one of those athletes. The one’s that got on the podium and the one’s that didn’t. The one’s who were excited and the one’s that were disappointed. They all made me proud to be Canadian. I remember when Jennifer Heil won her silver medal, and the classic question was from one of my friends in the media was, “well, how do you feel about losing the gold”? And Jennifer Heil said, “you know what, I’m proud that I won a silver medal for Canada.” I’m proud of what Canadians do and how Canadians act and I’m proud, equally, of what British Columbians did to reach out to Canadians and we have with us tonight, the Federal Minister who is responsible for Sport who I can tell you, travelled with that torch from town to town, from province to province, from region to region, from the far west to the far east, from the far North to the far South. Gary Lunn is here and I want to say thanks to Gary for the incredible job he did on behalf of all Canadians.

Make no mistake about this, the largest, single partner we had for the 2010 Winter Olympic and Parlaympic Games was the Government of Canada. They embraced the Games, they embraced our athletes, they embraced our cultural activities and boy, did we ever hit those Games right out of the park. They were Gold medal Games. And all of you’ve got memories. All of you can remember what happened. All of you have something that’s special in your minds that took place at the Winter Olympics. I mean, who will ever forget, the red mits? We thought we would sell 600,000 red mits. We sold 3.5 million. I love those red mits! It took Nancy three weeks to convince me not to wear the red mits to bed! Something about I’m not a mevolist [?] anymore, I don’t know. The fact of the matter is, each of those initiatives were done because we had a group of people come together and they were called Canadians. 25,000 volunteers. Canadians to welcome the world. You wanted to take care of them and make sure that their experience of their country was beyond belief. And boy, did those blue jacketed volunteers ever do an exceptional job for all of us.

About 150,000 people in the evening were downtown Vancouver. They were joyful, they were wearing red, they were waving their flags. They were singing Oh Canada. And this is one of my favorite stats of the Games – crime went down. This is a memory that all of us will share, and what’s most important is, our kids will share it. It will have touched them in ways that we will never know. But I know it touched them. I had a friend who drove down, he was driving down to the closing ceremonies after the hockey game and he was with his 8 years old son and his 5 year old daughter. And as they drove down to the Games, his 5 year old daughter looked at him and said, “daddy, these people are crazy out there.” And he parked his car about eight blocks away and his 5 year old daughter walked from the parking lot to the stadium – to BC Place – and she sang Oh Canada all the way. Well, there are some 5 year olds who will sing Oh Canada all the way. But very seldom, in my memory, would a five year old be signing Oh Canada, stop at the pedestrian light, and have everybody who stopped with her join in with her and sing Oh Canada. These were Canada’s Games. And, we shouldn’t forget that we decided to make them Canada’s Games. You were all successful in doing that. Jack Poole and John Furlong and his team were successful in doing that. Premier’s from across the country were successful in making them Canada’s Games. And people said, it wouldn’t happen. Well I think one of the things that we know is, we’re actually kind of used to people telling us what can’t happen and we’re used to as a caucus, as a government to saying what do we want to happen, what’s the right thing to happen and let’s get on with making it happen.

Just ten years ago today, our province lagged behind the rest of the country. We were a have-not province. We were losing jobs. Our kids were leaving British Columbia. For the first time we watched as our population started to shrink and we were elected, and as a government we said, one of our primary objectives is to put more money in people’s pockets. Because we knew when people made their own decisions about what they were going to do with their hard earned paycheques, it would help fuel the economy and move it forward. Wrong, said the Opposition. Wrong, said the critics. We’re going to do it we said, and we did it at a 25% reduction across the board to every British Columbian, and we were right. The economy started to fire itself up, it started to encourage investment, it started to encourage hard work, it started to encourage productivity and we today, have one of Canada’s strongest economies. Since 2001, we’ve created almost 400,000 new jobs right here in British Columbia and believe me, we’ve begun, but the job is not done. There are thousands of jobs to come in the province of British Columbia as we move into the 21st century.

People said that we’d never be able to train doctors outside of the lower mainland and we said, “yes we will” and now we’re training doctors in Prince George, in Kelowna and in Victoria. They said we’d never be able to create new universities to train tomorrow’s skilled workers and now we’ve created seven new universities, over 35,000 new spaces for young people who want to go and get advanced education, in colleges and universities and institutes and we are continuing to provide resources to create the talented work, the talented pool of human resources that are the strongest natural resource that we have in this province. They said we would never succeed. And moving forward, with the tax shift that would actually start to deal directly with the challenges of climate change and we did it, and we stuck with it, and we got elected, and we are leading North America in terms of dealing with that on coming, on rushing challenge that we all face.

People said to us, we couldn’t get a container facility in Prince Rupert, we couldn’t have a container port there. We said, “yes we can,” and we worked with the federal government, we worked with the private sector, we worked with the community and today, we have a container facility in Prince Rupert, that is driving jobs, that is driving the economy and I can tell you this, over the next ten year you’re going to watch as it expands and a great northern transportation corridor is created from the closest port in North America to the Asia Pacific, right through heart of this great continent. That’s because of the vision of Prince Rupert and because we said we could. And we did, and there’s more to do.
It’s – I think we all know this: change is difficult. There is no end of people who will tell you what you should do. It’s a lot less likely that they will say, this is what I will do. And one of the things that we have to do is when we look at the world we live in today and think of how much it has changed in ten years. And think of how much it is changing right before us, right now. It is pretty incredible. The Chinese have a curse – may you live in interesting times. These are pretty interesting times. They also have a symbol, and the symbol they have for crisis is the same symbol as they have for opportunity. And while we are going through this time of turmoil and change in the international economy, in global economies and global situations all over world, I do think it’s important for us to recognize that we are in one of the chosen places. There is no place in Canada that is better positioned to take advantage of the changes in the world that are taking place today, than British Columbia. And with that opportunity, goes an obligation. And that obligation is not just to you and to people that are my age, it’s actually an obligation to the children, the young people, the next generation and the generation that follow us. I just want to read you this quote:

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must act anew, and think anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.”

That was Abraham Lincoln speaking to the second congress of the United States. We must disenthrall ourselves. We must not be tied to the past. We must not be tied to what was. We have to think of what is and what we imagine we would like our province to be like.

Over the last few years we’ve been served by some pretty exceptional leaders, who have disenthralled themselves and looked to how they can actually solve problems as opposed to talk about them. When we said it was time to deal with mental illness, addiction services and homelessness, Rich Coleman did something that was unprecedented. He saw the people that we were talking about, not the problem that we were talking about. He opened up shelters for 24 hours a day to make sure that we weren’t pushing people out onto the street. We can create some stability for them so that they can get the care that they needed and be connected to the services that should be available to them. He bought over two dozen single room occupancy unit hotels to stabilize 1500 units. He worked in partnership with the City, with the private sector, with non-profits and through that partnership we have created thousands of units. In fact today, we have 14,000 more affordable homes for people in British Columbia than we did in 2001.

We’ve begun the job, but it’s not done. In British Columbia, we know that in a Province like British Columbia, it’s unacceptable for children to live in poverty. Mary Polak, the Minister of Children, Family and Youth has proceeded to work with children, family and social workers, first nations and non-first nations in every corner of this province. We’ve managed to reverse the trend that has continuously seen an increase in children with poverty in this province throughout the 1990s. We’ve seen a 33% reduction in child poverty, the lowest level in almost 2 decades. But we should know this, there are still thousands of children in British Columbia who are living in dire circumstances and that is not good enough for this province. We have begun, but I can tell you, we are not close to being done.

Pat Bell, Minister of Forests, we have been hammered by the economy of the United States, sub-prime activities, by the reduction in housing starts. We have huge dependencies on American markets in 2003, saying that we have to change those dependencies and move to other jurisdictions and make sure there is more trade there so that we weren’t just dependent on the American market place. Pat Bell took that on. And Pat Bell has focused with the private sector, people in China, with people in British Columbia, looking to make connections and today in British Columbia, there is 6 times more trade and lumber between British Columbia than there was in 2003. And there’s going to be 2 times more in the next year and that’s more than a few sticks of wood. That’s 3500 more people at work in British Columbia because of the work that he did to increase trade in China. We weren’t doing that before and I can remember talking to some folks and they said that that’s quite far away and yes, it is quite far away but I can tell you this. And I can tell you this, there are literally enormous opportunities there and we’re saying there are 3500 now and we hope there will be 10000 forestry jobs connected to China by 2013, directly connected to China and just imagine what it could be by 2013.

Pat Bell is a leader that saw an opportunity. He disenthralled himself and he said, let’s get on doing what we need to do to keep people in the forestry industry at work. We sit here in British Columbia and we take for granted that we are Canada’s Asia Pacific Gateway. We are the front door on Asia right here in British Columbia. The largest proportion of people with Chinese background live right here in British Columbia. When I go to the smallest city in China, there will be people in British Columbia who have a direct connection. It is a huge opportunity for us. But, it’s only an opportunity if we act on it.

Shirley Bond has led the opening up of this gateway with literally billions and billions of dollars of investment in rail infrastructure, road infrastructure and airport infrastructure so that we can open this gateway for Canada. And as we open this gateway for Canada, we are opening the door for Alberta so that we can open this gateway for Canada. And as we have worked to open this gateway for Canada, we have decided to work with Alberta to take down all of the barriers between British Columbia and Alberta and that generated jobs and economic opportunity. And now, we’ve expanded it with Saskatchewan for the New West Partnership. We have the largest intraprovincial trade area in the country. And Stockwell Day, Brad Wall and Ed Stelmach and I just came back from a trip to China and Japan and they are hungry for our resources, they are hungry to make real partnerships with us because they are hungry to create an economic future that will benefit Canada, that will benefit British Columbia, which will benefit China, Japan and Korea and I can tell you again, it’s that partnership. The leadership that we saw from Minister Day the other two premiers are going to make an enormous difference. Almost 250,000 jobs we’ll have as we open the Asia Pacific Gateway and we are going to do that together.

When Shirley Bond builds the Port Mann Bridge in the South Fraser Perimeter, when she opens new bridges and transportation infrastructure, when she opens the Canada Line, which already, within less than a year, is exceeding the expectation ridership is there for almost 5 years and almost 100,000 people today, you can count on this – when Shirley Bond says that we’re building the Evergreen line, we are building the Evergreen Line! We’re going to create jobs and opportunities and transit for people all over the province. And finally, not finally – in terms of this – finally – we all know that the single most challenging task in front of us is maintaining a sustainable, top quality health system not just for us, but for our children and grandchildren. Health sustainability is going to be essential if we’re going to have the quality of economy that we want, the social infrastructure that we want, the social services that we want.

Kevin Falcon has moved in as the Minister of Health and he has said that it’s time for hospitals to be paid for the services that they deliver, patients. It’s time for us to provide incentives for the quality of care, timeliness of care, it’s time for us to think about the patients and not the institutions and he has now led one of the most significant changes in healthcare that we have seen in the country. Not much fanfare, not much noise, but I can tell you that every young British Columbian and most in Canada are going to follow the suit that Leader Kevin Falcon has actually provided in healthcare and I can tell you, we should all say thank you for the leadership that you are showing. And all of those initiatives can open doors can only take place if we have a strong economy.

You know, one of the great dichotomies of British Columbia is that there is still a huge proportion of British Columbians who don’t understand that without a strong private sector economy, we don’t create the jobs that we need. We don’t create the revenues that we need in government to support essential public services. That we all expect everything from policing to sport, environmental sustainability, to transportation infrastructure requires a strong private sector economy. But, there are those who don’t believe that, nor opposition has never believed that. If you look at the significant steps that we have taken, even the steps that we have taken in the last year, which said that we could secure long term advantages for British Columbia and clean energy that said we would provide for 93% of our energy will be clean, that says that we will provide for conservation, the future needs some conservation with 66% of conservation strategies to be used. It will keep our energy costs amongst the lowest in North America. The opposition votes against it.

If you’re a family of 4 in British Columbia, making $90,000 per year. If we had the opposition, the government would be taking $2700 more out of your pocket per year. With us - $2700/per year in your pocket. You decide. 200 Plus for everyone. Dozens and dozens of tax cuts that we have proposed that provide for a healthier economy, the opposition has opposed. By 2012, small businesses in British Columbia, will pay no small business income tax. A small business with income up to 500,000 will pay no income tax. That will make us the most competitive small business regime in North America. You can’t get lower than zero. The opposition opposed that. Get rid of the corporate tax rate, which is exactly what you need to create jobs and we got rid of it. Opposition opposed it. And now, here we are – 2010.

In 2009, we were faced with a choice. I’ll tell you candidly, it was one of the most challenging choices that I have made in over 20 years of my public life. So, here’s what happened. We were elected on May the 12th. On May the 14th, Colin and I got a briefing from our Finance officials because they did a final run of all of our numbers, of what was taking place with our budget. We saw a significant drop in provincial revenues. I said to Colin and to the Deputy Minister of Finance that we’ve just come through an election. Just two days ago, I was telling people that we were going to meet our budget of 495 million dollar deficit to figure out how we are going to do it. I knew what people would say. I knew what the punditry would say – we were trying to hide something, we were trying to do this. None of that is true, but it doesn’t matter. That’s what they would say, so Colin went out to try and figure it out. About 10 days later, Colin came back and said “you know, our finance advisors told us this is what is taking place in Ontario with the HST. And there has been a lot of big changes. Now, for those of you who wonder, we have had it recommended to us that we have an HST for many years. The Chamber of Commerce had recommended a harmonized sales tax since about 2003. We’ve always looked at it. We said, “Look, we can’t do it.” Why can’t we do it? It was unflexible. The federal government said “this is how we’re going to make you do it, we’re going to have a national fixed rate. There’s not going to be any flexibility. And if you want that rate, you don’t want that rate, then you’re out of luck. We didn’t want it. But when Colin came to me and said “I think I should tell Jim Flaherty that I want to talk about what they’re actually doing in Ontario, and seeing what’s happening, I said “maybe you should find out”, so I went to find out.

So, there’s a number of things that have changed. First thing was that there is now flexibility, we could set our own rate in British Columbia, we didn’t have to set a 13% HST rate as they’ve got in the rest of the country or 15% as they’re talking about doing in some provinces. We could set our own rate. Not only that, we could set our own rate and we could change our own rate when we wanted to change our own rate after 2 years, as long as we told the federal government that that’s what we’re doing. And, there were some benefits that went with this because the federal government, frankly from the 1990s, always said that they wanted us to go to the HST. The benefit was that there was 1.6 billion in transition funds that were available. Another benefit, was that there were 5% of the money that you could take from the HST so that you could actually tailor that to the things that you were concerned about in the province. So, for example, in Ontario, the HST is going to go to apply to motor fuel. In British Columbia, it is not. In British Columbia, it is not going to apply to home heating oil. In British Columbia , unlike Ontario, it is not going to be applied to children’s sized clothing. It’s not going to be applied to books, but we did have room for British Columbia to set our own goals.

So, Colin came back in June and said to cabinet, “should we consider this”? And here where it’s tough. We knew that we had said during the campaign that it was not part of our platform and we weren’t considering it and it was true, that was true. So we knew if we actually did consider it, we could be subject to political blows, but here’s the choices we faced. We were watching as our revenues were falling dramatically and they fell even more dramatically at the end of June as I mentioned by almost $800 million at the end of June. By August 1st revenues in British Columbia had fallen by $2 billion: natural resources revenues, income tax revenues, personal and corporate income tax revenues, natural gas revenues, $2 billion. You know we are a government that doesn’t like deficits and we were facing a significant deficit. And we had gone through and February and we said we’ve done just about as much as we can to reduce the support that we can give to Health Care or Education, the two critical ministries that we’ve got. And that $1.6 billion would probably help us get through some of that, and more importantly would help us reduce our deficit over the long term. And here was the thing that was critical, we had to make the decision quickly. We had to make the decision quickly because this is a major tax initiative that the federal government has to work through. And as they work through it, if there were in the middle of doing Ontario’s, the chances of them getting British Columbia, as they probably wouldn’t get to British Columbia for two years. So let me say this, I understand there are a lot of people that would have not made the choice that we did. But when they decide not to make that choice, they do have to decide whether the deficit will go up by another $1.6 billion or whether they’re reducing services, we felt that neither one of those was an appropriate step. And so we acted. And we acted in what was I think was the best interest of the Province.

So let me ask you a question, who in this room tonight cares about the forestry industry? If you care about the forest industry, you want us to adopt the HST, because it’s the single most important competitive thing we can do within the confines of the Softwood lumber agreement to make our forest industry more competitive. Who here cares about the mining industry in British Columbia? Mining industry have said, that this is one of the most important steps we can take to secure their jobs and their industry, encourage investment in their industry and encourage trade in their industry. Who here cares about construction? This will make a difference of about $800 million in costs to the construction industry, make them more competitive, make them more productive and help us create more jobs in the construction industry. Who cares about technology in this room, anybody about technology? Who here cares about small business in this room, anybody about small business? The HST is the best thing we can do for all of those initiatives, when we have the flexibility built in that we have, and the opportunity to actually create a made in British Columbia rate. Remember we have the lowest HST in the country, we could have gone to 13%, we went to 12%. But here is what’s I think is important, I actually think, that part of the discussion about the HST is no longer about economics. And for those people who think we had this planned all along, can you really imagine a worse way of communicating the benefits of HST than we have managed to provide you over the last 10 months. I am the first to admit that we have not done a very good job of that, and there can be all sorts of reasons why, but it’s not relevant. What ‘s relevant is, we haven’t done a particular good job, I can tell you this starting July 5th we will do a good job. We will be doing a good job because this is important for British Columbia. This has nothing to do with Gordon Campbell or the BC Liberals or Colin Hansen, this does have to do with British Columbia. We are a small open trading economy and we have to do everything we can in the world today to make our businesses and enterprises more competitive. Because I tell you this when their competitive, when their successful, they generate investment, when they generate investment they generate jobs, when they generate jobs they help families. And this will help families in every single region in British Columbia, not just today in 2010, but 2011, 2015, 2020 and for years to come.

I think it is important to say this, you have to always think to yourself why do you even run for office? You know, I look at my colleagues. And I’ve got a number of colleagues here today from the far north, from the Kootenays, from the Caribou. They’re down here they’re not at home with their families. I know how often Nancy and I get to have dinner together. I know how much time and effort they spend. Why do you do that? Do you do it so you can get a card that says you’re an MLA or a Premier. I can tell you that has never motivated me. You know what motivates me? We live in the best place on earth. We have huge opportunities here. We live in a democracy. Where people are allowed to disagree and people are allowed to sort of have their own dreams and we have the tools in place that allow us to pursue those dreams. I can’t think of how many times I’ve listened to people talk and say now ‘Why don’t we ever have a politician that thinks long-term. What’s the matter with these people that run for office. They never think about what’s best in the long term.’ I can tell you this: there isn’t one of us that thought last July when we decided to move forward with the Harmonized Sales Tax, that this was going to be a political homerun. We knew this was gonna be tough. But you know we also knew it was right.

If you want people to run for office because they know how to tap into what’s expedient or what’s popular. Frankly I think you’re supporting the wrong group. If you want people that are going to listen to what the goals and objectives are of British Columbians and try and help families and create investment and create jobs and open opportunities and help our country move forward and do what’s right, what’s right for others, not necessarily what’s right for us. You want to keep supporting the BC Liberal Party, cause I’ll tell you this we are always going to put British Columbians at the head of our list in making this a better place for them to live.

The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. Imagine a world where nobody wanted to stand and say this is where we should go. This is what we believe in. This is our vision for British Columbia or even broader, for Canada.

I've had the great opportunity of working with not only great cabinet and caucus but great elected people from across the country. When Gary Lunn and Stockwell Day come to work, they are working on behalf of British Columbia and of Canada, and I can tell you this - when British Columbia's elected officials go to work, they go to work on behalf of British Columbia, and Canada. Our future is so full, and we are on the verge of shaping an entirely new century. And as we look at what we can do - we look at opening that vast Asia Pacific Gateway, we look at becoming a clean energy powerhouse that encourages private sector investment and jobs throughout this province, as we look at dealing with the exceptional challenges of climate change that confront us all in ways that we often can't even imagine, as we look at cleaning our water and protecting our oceans and making sure we have a fishery, as we look at making healthier livable communities where all of us can live and walk and enjoy ourselves in safety and in freedom, as we look at creating an education system that meets the needs of our students, not of our institutions, not of our, not of our, politicians, of our students, who taps into our students and gives them every tool and every opportunity they can to be the best that they can be, to actually dig in and find what they're passionate about and then give them the tools that they need to pursue their passion.

As we look to what we can be in British Columbia its good for us to challenge ourselves, it's good for us to ask ourselves, to disenthrall ourselves, and help to shape our future. So tonight you join me on the tenth dinner that I've had with all of you as the Premier of British Columbia. The world has changed. I can tell you this: it's no longer just Super Natural British Columbia. It is super smart British Columbia with companies like Electronic Arts. It is super clean British Columbia with companies like BC Hydro and Terasen. It is super competitive British Columbia with companies like Telus and small business people throughout our province that are actually shaping new opportunities and creating new wealth. It is the super people in British Columbia that are going to drive this province forward. It is their dreams and their imagination that will create the quality of life that our children and grandchildren deserve. I can tell you this: the dogmas of the past are inadequate for the stormy present. Our case is new, so we must think anew. And we must act anew. Let's act anew together. To give the next generations the foundations that we've enjoyed. The foundations for the future that will be clear, to one and to all, first nation and non first nation alike, young children of the Haida Nation and young children from the Dunbar in Vancouver, young children from the Kootenays and from the Cariboo, from the Northern part of Vancouver Island and to the North, let's tell them that just like those Olympic athletes we're behind them, in partnership. We can do this. More importantly, they can do this. Because they live in the great province of British Columbia and the great country of Canada.