John Rustad talks Policy, Politics and Possibilities.

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Program Conservative Party day leader John Rustad Sham Alhorene. Mister Rastad, a very good morning to you. [00:00:08] Speaker B: Good morning to you too. Thank you for having me on. [00:00:09] Speaker A: Thank you for taking the time to visit us in studio Tenali. Studio devich Sadhana Al BC Conservatives day fleetwood the seat riding to another candidate, Hanaftar Gelji, studio Shaman Satsri Kalviji. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Mister Rosstad. Your political journey, especially in the last two, two and a half years, is almost like a folklore. You see this kind of stuff in movies where the kind of meteoric rise that you've experienced in the last little while, that got an even bigger impetus when BC United Kevin Falcon decided to withdraw his campaign and said that we're going to endorse BC conservative candidates. I do want to ask you that when you were kicked out of the caucus in 2022, on the day of your 60th birthday, I mean, hindsight is always 2020. Now we know how things have panned out, but was there ever a moment of doubt in your mind that whatever you had to endure, that things would have been, things would be difficult? Was there ever a time when you thought that maybe you should just give up and retire from politics? [00:01:20] Speaker B: 2022 was actually a very tough year for my wife and I. My father passed in January and my father in law passed in February, end up having shingles in April, and my mother passed in July. And so I was looking at it from a perspective, and I was talking to my wife about whether I should just leave politics and retire, move on to doing something else. And then, of course, along came getting kicked out of the BC Liberal caucus or BC United Caucus in August of 2022 on my birthday. Thats what really got me thinking about if they cant win, we need another option in this province. We need a party that can be a true coalition that can bring the people together from across the spectrum. And my wife was very insistent that I actually go ahead and do this. I had these long talks with her about whether I should leave or what else I should do. Ultimately, though, between us, we came to the conclusion that I should stay in politics. So thats when I started exploring what's the vehicle to use to have an opportunity to be able to build something in this province that could challenge David Eby, that could replace these very destructive policies that are being implemented by, quite frankly, a very weak leader? [00:02:37] Speaker A: Were you very clear, even at that time, that there could be a possibility of you gaining the momentum, the kind of which you have in the last two years? [00:02:46] Speaker B: I think right from the beginning, through this process, more and more people were losing confidence in government, losing confidence in government institutions, losing, quite frankly, support or confidence in political parties. And people were looking for change. They were looking for that common sense change. And so I could feel that around and talking with people. And so I knew that was under the surface and the feelings that there were out in British Columbia. And so I thought there was good potential to be able to tap into that, to be able to bring this together. However, it has come together faster than I had anticipated it would. [00:03:26] Speaker A: The tension that some people had, or the disbelief that some people had in the government was simmering in some of the groups who are often called the fringe elements. And some of those individuals who believed in those ideologies made their way into your party. I mean, recently we had this dossier that was released about the executive director of your party, Mister Angelo Edisorvu, about his leanings towards the mega movement and white supremacy. And there have been certain candidates which you've now gotten rid of, who were accused of by the opposition, of not only believing in, but also propagating some conspiracy theories. Do you think that it's a part of your natural evolution that you've had to get rid of some of those candidates or some people accuse that BC conservatives, that ideology still stays very much within the party, especially with the information that's come to light about. Mister Isuduru, you're executive director of the party. [00:04:28] Speaker B: Yeah. So look, I mean, look, lots of people have different ideas and thoughts. At the end of the day, when you look at our candidates, when you look at what we stand for, it's pretty clear. And what the NDP is trying to do with all of this is trying to distract from their failures. I mean, you've got, think about this. You've got a government that's running, that has created a crisis in housing, a crisis in affordability, that has destroyed our healthcare system, a crisis in our education system, whether it's drugs, free drugs, out to people, and decriminalization, the damage this sort of thing has done to our society is remarkable. And yet they're looking at us and saying we are, we are somehow fringe. No, we are just the average everyday person in this province. These people are the people who quite frankly, have been very, very destructive to this province and need to go. And people just see that. They know that there's a desire for change. Because one in two youth are thinking about leaving BC. One in three people are thinking about leaving this province because they're looking at it saying it's hopeless under the current regime. They're looking for hope. [00:05:36] Speaker A: The announcements that you've made recently and some of the things that you've been slamming the government on, we've now seen some announcements and some movement on those policies. Last week we heard premier saying that he would be willing to scrap the provincial consumer carbon tax if the federal government clears the legal backstop. You've been an opponent of the carbon tax for a long time. That was, in fact, one of the reasons why you got kicked out of the caucus by Kevin Falcon in 2022. What's your stance on the carbon tax? Would you eliminate it entirely, or would you only eliminate it, the consumer portion of it, or would that be eliminated for the producers as well? [00:06:17] Speaker B: What I find interesting is David Ebe is coming out and quite frankly, showing very weak leadership by saying he wants to remove it from the consumer, but then he wants to double down on the tax on industry. So that means that your trucking, your agriculture, your forestry, all the products that consumers need are going to have this tax. Well, guess what happens? They're just going to pass it on. The companies are just going to pass it on to the consumer. So David Eb is not really going to get rid of the tax. He actually just going to hide it from people so that they don't see it right away. That's weak leadership. That's not true leadership. What we are going to do is get rid of the carbon tax straight out. You will see it in our first budget in terms of it being removed from the province of British Columbia in the process. Now, we still have a federal government in place that would just implement a federal carbon tax. So what we will do is when the writ is dropped federally to create an election, that will be the first day that the carbon tax will start to be removed from British Columbia. [00:07:14] Speaker A: While we talk of carbon tax, we also know that British Columbia is facing its fair share of climate events, and we've had these record floods, which caused a lot of devastation, the wildfires. What's your plan to address the climate crisis that we face? [00:07:30] Speaker B: So David Eb's plan is to tax you into poverty in some vain attempt to change the weather. And I think that, quite frankly, is just ridiculous. And it shows through in terms of the weak leadership that we're seeing from David Eby, what we are planning to do, quite frankly, is, first of all, on things like wildfire, we have to manage better on the landscape. And so we've got plans to do that. We released our forestry plant on how we fight our fire, we're going to change the way we fight fires. We're actually going to reintroduce fire on the landscape as a management tool. So this way, we're going to be able to minimize and reduce those impacts of wildfires that will happen and have happened naturally in our ecosystem. Same sort of thing with floods. We would have been able to manage those floods, quite frankly, if government had done the infrastructure that was needed. Where we really had trouble was a flood coming from the us side into the lower mainland. Now, there's lots of infrastructure that was unable to sustain the high waters. We need to make sure that we do a better job of our infrastructure, being more resilient to weather events, these types of things. So we need to make significant investments there. But really, the big thing you need to think about with climate, with our changing climate, is British Columbia only procures one third of the food that we consume. From BC, two thirds of our food comes outside of our province. So we need to be thinking about how do we protect our people from these changes, whether it's climate or government policies, from outside our borders. If there's food reduction somewhere else, we're not going to be the first place people send food to. So we're vulnerable. We need to be actually looking at how we double our food production, how we better manage water and water, manage water storage, investing in research and water. All of this is about how you adapt to a changing climate, which is what we need. If we've got time, we should actually touch on the energy side of it, too, because it's a big piece of how we adapt to our changing climate and how we actually have an opportunity to move away from using hydrocarbons. [00:09:22] Speaker A: Right now, all the electricity that is produced in British Columbia is a major chunk of it is hydroelectric, some tidal. We've also got some windmills and all, but it is all. It is all from clean sources. What's your plan to make sure that the electrification that we want to implement in the coming years, that's also going to increase the demand on our grid. So I believe that you proposed the idea of using nuclear power, nuclear reactors, to produce energy in British Columbia. Would that be a straightforward thing, or will you have to make changes to the Clean Energy act in order to bring about nuclear reactors in the province? [00:10:02] Speaker B: You know, it's interesting, and when we think about our electricity, which is only 16%, one, 6% of the energy we consume, 84%, is hydrocarbons. And out of that electricity that we consume as a province last year, 20% of it came out from outside our borders. That's 20% that came from coal fired or natural gas fired power. So when we say that all of our power and electricity in British Columbia is clean, no, it's not, because we are reliant on our neighbors. We are not energy self sufficient. And even when Site C comes on, Site C will only add 10% of our electrical capacity. And that means we are still net importers of electricity from outside of our province. And so this, to me, once again, is leaving people in this province vulnerable, especially when you've got a government that is trying to push things like heat pumps and electric vehicles. I love the idea of doing those where they make sense to work, but we don't have the electricity to provide it. If every household in the province and every business like this in the province were needed to use a heat pump, we would need to build the equivalent of six or seven more sightsee dams. And we're not likely going to build another major dam in BC. So we have to have this conversation about where is our energy going to come from? What is the mix? Wind and solar can be part of the mix, but they're not base load, they're not. They're not reliable. So it means we need to be able to significantly increase base load in this province. So we're planning, our plan is to be able to go out and have an open and honest conversation with people in the province about where our energy is going to come from, what that mix needs to look like, what those options are, what does it mean for rates? What does that mean for affordability? What does that mean for competitiveness? And I think nuclear obviously has to be on the table as a mix. Right now in British Columbia, nuclear is being banned from being used in this province. So we're going to have to change that from a perspective of having that conversation, small margin reactors and other types of nuclear technology, and talk to people about, is this where you want to go? Because if it isn't, then we have to be looking at what the alternatives are. Are we going to produce electricity from natural gas? Are we going to look at other types of sources which are much more expensive and have significant impacts on affordability in this province? But it's a conversation that needs to be had in this, as opposed to just the virtue signaling we're getting from David Eby, whose weak leadership, quite frankly, is leaving us vulnerable. [00:12:12] Speaker A: Mister Rushard, one of the other issues, I mean, energy security is one thing, climate is another issue. But the other major issue that is facing the residents in the province is healthcare. NDP is accusing you that you are going to cut $4.1 billion out of healthcare. There are attack ads running that amplify that narrative. What's your response to that? Are you going to cut upwards of $4 billion from the provincial health care system? [00:12:39] Speaker B: Absolutely not. We've actually said that we need to expand healthcare funding as part of the transition. But this is once again weak leadership from David Eby. And he's just outright linking up rules. He's just making up lies. He's lying, saying that we're going to cut 4.1. We're not cutting 4.1. He's lying, saying we're going to bring back MSP. We're not going to bring it back MSP. He's lying, saying we're going to put in bridge tolls. We're not going to put in bridge tolls. We've never said any of this. But they can't defend their policies. And so, as any weak leader does, they just make things up about their opponent to try to confuse the voters. I think the voters are smart. They're going to see through this type of thing. But when it comes to health care in this province, our health care system is collapsing. It is in a crisis. The model that we are using in British Columbia cannot be sustained. So we are looking at models from Europe, for example, which are universal healthcare, just like us, but delivered by both government and non government agencies. It allows for more innovation. It allows for better utilization of our healthcare professionals. It will help us to retain our healthcare professionals and stop the losses that we've had. But most importantly, it allows us to be able to have the funding follow the patient as opposed to the system. And by doing that, it allows us to work on things like wait time guarantees and many other types of innovations that can be very, very helpful for our healthcare system and get stability back to what's needed in it. [00:13:57] Speaker A: So when you say that there will be timelines established for wait times, so would it require legislation? Or is it something that can be done in a very simple manner wherever those timelines are prescribed? And what if those timelines are not followed? What would be the accountability for the health authorities, or the hospitals or the healthcare provider concerned? [00:14:20] Speaker B: I mean, the first thing on the accountability side, and I'll get to the times in a second here. Germany has twice the population of Canada. Canada has ten times as many administrators. Close to 40% of our nurses today are administrators. We need actually to significantly reduce that administrative burden. And we need to get these people back delivering services for the people that need it on the ground. And when it comes to wait times, I mean, the important thing to think about is we're going to do everything we can to have those services available here in BC. But if, for example, critical things like cancer treatment, where a person cannot be waiting beyond the recommended time, if we cannot deliver those services, we will purchase those services from another jurisdiction, whether that's within Canada or whether it's outside of Canada, so that people can receive the services that they need. That's where the money follows the patient, as opposed to funding a system. And part of this comes from a phone call that we received in our office back over a couple of months ago from a very concerned husband. And he was in tears. And he said, my wife is just being diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer. She needs surgery and she needs it right away. And she's being told she has to wait at least two months. And to me, that's wrong. When you need those services within that recommended time, government needs to be able to react. A person I know up in my own riding, for example, his diagnosis was missed. He almost died. He was actually lost weight, got down to 110 pounds before somebody finally diagnosed him properly and through a process, and he went through five years of suffering before they put the finger on the right thing. Part of that was just the lack of ability to be able to have the diagnostic services that are needed. [00:16:04] Speaker A: We can take a little break. [00:16:05] Speaker B: Good. [00:16:06] Speaker A: Okay. Iswali. John Rustad, BC conservative party. The leader, Rigalba Sanjeev Karani. The question that often comes up with regards to healthcare and the policy and all the things that you've announced so far is that will BC conservatives bring in privatization to healthcare in British Columbia? Can you clear the air on that? [00:16:27] Speaker B: Sure. So, first of all, when you look at the european models, the models that we're looking at, the services are delivered by both government and non government agencies. And so whether that is nonprofits, whether that is private, like, for example, most of our doctor clinics, they are general practitioners. You go to your family doctor, that's a private operation. So what we're looking at is, I don't really care where the service comes from. We just need the services. We need it focused on making sure that professionals are being able to provide services. And I'll give you an example. So the top vascular surgeon in BC, he's retired now, but he was working out of Vancouver general. He could very easily be doing 2030 or even 40 hours of surgery in a week. He was given 8 hours. That was all the time that he would be able to do. And he would go in for a shift starting at 08:00 in the morning. Often there'd be delays. Sometime as late as 09:00 or even 930, he'd be working through his surgeries. Over the course of the day at 130, an administrator would come by and say, you're going to be done by four, right? That's all the time you have available to you. You have to be done by four. So he would then wrap up his surgery and look at the next one and say, okay, if there are any complications, can I get this completed by four? If the answer was no, that was the end of his day. Because to this government, the system is more important than patient suffering, and that's what we need to change. It has to be focused on the patients and delivering for people. [00:17:45] Speaker A: In BC, when you say that you don't care where the treatment comes from and the main focus has to be about the patient, is that not going to escalate the costs through the roof? So it almost sounds like it's easier said than done. [00:17:57] Speaker B: So British Columbia and Canada in general is currently the second most expensive health care system in the world. The models that we're looking at in Europe are actually far more efficient. They actually are much lower cost per capita than what we are currently doing in British Columbia. And so I'm anticipating that we'll need to bump up healthcare spending initially, of course, because we obviously have a backlog and we've got to do this transition that needs to be done. But as we get those more efficiencies in government, the increases will be able to slow down to a sustainable pace going forward, because our system, like I say, right now, is on the verge of collapse and is unaffordable to carry on with what we're doing. [00:18:37] Speaker A: World what would ICBC look like under a BC conservative government? [00:18:41] Speaker B: Sure, we can hit on all the great ones. It's good. I'm happy actually to do that, because ICBC right now, we got a government that seems to be more focused on making sure that ICBC is making money than it is on patients, on people that actually are in serious accidents. I think that's wrong. Government should actually be able to be compassionate for people that are in those serious accidents. And so we're going to make sure that we keep the equivalent of no fault for minor injuries. So there'll be a table or whatever the case may be, so that you, for minor injuries that can be dealt with. That's about 85% of the cost, and so that won't change. But for people that have major injuries, I think it's only appropriate that a lawyer or somebody is able to defend and fight for what you need as a patient to make sure that it's not just a crown corporation that's reading off some sort of table that says, you know, I'm sorry, you've lost a leg, here's what you get. It should be, you should be able to fight for what you need. And so that's the change that we'll make in terms of ICBC. Once we get to that structure, we need to make sure we put in place the guidelines for both the younger driver and older driver so that we can then introduce competition to ICBC. Because if you just do it right off, what you'll end up with is the rates for younger drivers and older drivers will skyrocket. And that's not right. We need to make sure we have that right balance and then hopefully then we can introduce competition. Because ICBC, quite frankly, I think is just too top heavy with what it's doing and its cost structure. And it needs to be, needs to have some competition. [00:20:10] Speaker A: So you will open up the auto insurance sector to private players so that ICBC competes with those private entities and provide people with the services? [00:20:21] Speaker B: Yes. Once we get the structure in place that's needed, then we're going to be looking at doing that. We need to make sure it's done right. [00:20:27] Speaker A: Mister Rustad, I know people have a lot of questions that they want to ask you as well. Is it okay if we open up the phone lines for a bit and people can talk to you directly? [00:20:33] Speaker B: Sure, that'd be fine. [00:20:35] Speaker A: BC Conservative Party the leader John Ruster telephone line 604-561-0915 the call karo chase to see BC conservative party the leader John Rustad Nasidi Galbat Kirke apnaswal put sagdisi Punjabi. That's fine. As he translate Karavangi genre sturdivaste multiple issues new club good morning. [00:21:13] Speaker B: Good morning. [00:21:19] Speaker A: Sure. Mister Rustad, our caller wants to know your stance on Soji. I think the stance is pretty clear about what will you do to address the issue around Soji because a lot of parents are concerned about it. [00:21:30] Speaker B: Soji will be removed from our school. Soji is something that has become a real distraction. Sexualization of kids in our schools is absolutely wrong. But we do want to make sure that we have a very strong anti bullying program in place and support in place for students to make sure that all students are feeling welcome and accepted and have a safe place to be able to be within schools. So it's something that's a major commitment from us in terms of the education system, but it is needed to be done in British Columbia. [00:22:01] Speaker A: Our next caller is Jesse Jazzy to see ertio. What's your question for Mister Rustad? Hello. [00:22:09] Speaker C: I have a question. What is the standout foreign trained doctors? Because no matter what you say, you are not able to completely help the healthcare system until we don't have enough doctor and nurses. I remember it is from the Christie Clark. They promised a previous problem, NDB promise, but none of those promises. [00:22:35] Speaker A: Thank you. [00:22:36] Speaker C: It looks like there's another promise, maybe. Thank you. [00:22:39] Speaker A: Foreign qualified doctors and nurses. [00:22:41] Speaker B: Yeah. So I mean, right now it can take four years for a foreign qualified doctor to be able to work in British Columbia. And to me that is just completely unacceptable. So we're actually going to take control of our own immigration in British Columbia. We're going to wrestle that just like Quebec has done, and take care of all these things. But part of doing that is to work with foreign institutions, the training for people like healthcare professionals to recognize those skills. So when they come to British Columbia, they're ready to be able to enter directly into the workforce. There may be a minor amount of things that need to go through, but all of this needs to be done to have these foreign doctors be able to work. I mean, there was a story in Surrey that a family of two doctors who came from India, the wife was a general practitioner, the husband was a surgeon, and the wife started the process while the surgeon, the husband had to take a labor job and then go back to India and do surgeries for six months of the year until she was done four years later. Now, he was now entering in the process. So we kept that surgeon from being able to provide those services in British Columbia for eight years. And to me that's just wrong. So we're going to clean up all of that process. In addition, we've got to do additional training of doctors. And I was talking with somebody from the dean of UBC just a few weeks ago who said they could expand number of seats that training doctors and British Columbia by 100 right away. And for whatever reason, David Eby and his weak leadership is not interested in actually doing that and hasn't even talked to them about it. [00:24:07] Speaker A: So would you scrap the seats, the expansion at SFU, and would you rather allocate the medical seats to UBC? [00:24:14] Speaker B: No, we need both. [00:24:16] Speaker A: You say that you're going to wrestle with Ottawa to get more control over immigration. That's another thing which is easier said than done, isn't it? [00:24:23] Speaker B: Well, look, Quebec can do it. Why can't British Columbia? [00:24:26] Speaker A: Quebec gets a lot of stuff that the country doesn't. [00:24:28] Speaker B: That's true. But there should be no reason why we can't do it here in British Columbia. Decisions being made 3000 km or 3000 miles away from British Columbia cannot be the right decisions. We need to be able to have control of this for our own people. [00:24:46] Speaker A: What's your question for mister rusted? Hi, I want to know what's your stand for Uber drivers? The current legislation is still exploiting Uber. And do you have any, any ideas to make the life better for drivers? [00:25:05] Speaker B: Yeah, so thank you for that. I've met with the Uber drivers I met with as well as the taxis. And I mean, the bottom line is what we want is make sure things are fair and transparent, particularly for Uber drivers. They don't see the rates, they don't see what's actually being charged through this process. And so there's also an issue with how many drivers are being put on. Many drivers are saying there's too many drivers being put on and then of course there's penalties and people can not get driving shifts. And so there's a whole bunch of things that need to be done. And I think quite frankly, the transparency and fairness is a big piece that we need to have for the Uber drive, just like we do for the tech, just like we should also have for the taxi drivers. [00:25:47] Speaker A: Sade aglay, call Rene Jasminder Bajwaji Jasmine, what's your question? [00:25:52] Speaker D: My question is in regards to carbon tax. [00:25:55] Speaker B: What's his take on the carbon tax? Will they be totally raising it? NBC or they are looking forward to. [00:26:03] Speaker A: Any decision from the federal government in regards to that? I think Mister Ruster has already answered that in the previous part of the conversation, but once again, please. [00:26:11] Speaker B: Yeah, no, so David, Evie's approach seems to be to just transfer it and actually put it on to industry. That's weak leadership from my perspective. We are committed to completely removing the carbon tax and you will see that in our first budget. [00:26:25] Speaker A: Our next caller is rupee on line one to see air. Theodore, what's your question for Mister Rustad? [00:26:32] Speaker E: Hi, my question is like what this government will provide to the kids who has autism. There's a long waiting list for everything. Rather they have to see the doctor or they need respiratory care. And even the eas are short at school. They've been sending them home earlier than just scheduled time. So what this government will do for the kids who have autism. [00:26:54] Speaker B: Mister Ostad, thank you very much. And I mean, obviously we want to be able to maintain services that we have, but there is a need to be able to clean up, particularly that assessment process for kids that go through often. What it is is there's an early assessment and then there's assessment before they get to school, and then there's assessment, they go in school. All of this should be cleaned up so that the assessment of a child can carry through the whole process. It doesn't need to be continually redone. And then of course, we need to make sure that there's support in place for children with autism. So it's not a simple answer in terms of it, but the whole process does need to be cleaned up and we need to make sure that we have some resources in place to be able to support parents and families with the children with autism. [00:27:35] Speaker A: Will you continue providing the funding directly to the parents so that they can select who the service provider is going to be for the child? [00:27:40] Speaker B: Certainly that's the gold standard in North America and that's a standard that I want to be able to keep. But we do need to be able to expand those services as well. [00:27:48] Speaker A: Sade Aglay Kaldurne Lakhanpalji. Lakhanpalji, what's your question? Thank you. So Mister Lakhanpal is asking. A lot of politicians make promises, especially during the election season. And then I, you know, once the party gets into power, the system takes over. System sometimes tames the politician who made the promise. Will you bring in an accountability act so that people can hold the politicians and the parties accountable to the promises that they had made to garner the votes? [00:28:36] Speaker B: I'll actually do more than that. What I'm going to do is I'm going to eliminate the need for freedom information requests because I'm going to make all of the information that the government has publicly available. And the job of the Freedom information officer will be saying what can't be made available. So what that means is that the public will have all of the facts about what government is doing and what they're not doing. Government will then be able to evaluate, or I mean, people will then be able to evaluate a government based on the facts, not based on the spin that they give as a government. Political parties for too long have been relying on just hiding facts from people and giving spinous. So we will change that. We'll make sure that all the facts are there. You can judge a government and any political party based on facts, as opposed to based on the rhetoric that they put out there. And it's a way to be able to make sure that as a government, we will be accountable for the things that we do. [00:29:27] Speaker A: But if the accountability commissioner or the privacy commissioner says this is what cannot be made public, then the process kind of still stays the same. You still have to make an application and you still have to get an approval. If the piece of information you're looking for would be given to you. [00:29:41] Speaker B: No, because the intent is everything that can be made public will be made public. Anything that can't be made public, you could put a request in, but you can't get it because it can't be made public. And so, for example, the things that can't be made public are decisions that could be market moving decisions about personnel. These types of things that are confidential or personal, right. That need to be kept. Need to be kept confidential. But beyond that, we're going to make everything else that can be public public so that we can be open and transparent. Transparent. People can judge us accordingly. [00:30:12] Speaker A: Calls both. I think you'll probably only be able to accommodate one or two more calls. Manpree ji, sade Aglay call Manpreeji. What's your question for Mister Rustad? [00:30:23] Speaker D: What plans do you have to expand the healthcare infrastructure? [00:30:28] Speaker A: Thanks. [00:30:29] Speaker B: Yeah, this is certainly a big issue. Surrey has been treated as a second class city for far too long. And the idea of putting in a hospital with just a few beds is, I find unacceptable. That's a second class response to a problem that should never be there. And so Surrey is going to become, if it isn't already, the largest city in this province. Surrey will likely be the first city in this province to reach a million people. We actually need to be building out the infrastructure to be able to meet those future needs, not what city was yesterday. And so that's a big piece that we need to be looking at in terms of expanding it out. But the important piece is, it's not just about a facility. You have to have the staffing to be able to provide services. Buildings don't provide services. It's staff that do. It's the doctors, it's the nurses, it's the specialists. It's the holistic approach that we need to be taking on healthcare. So that's a big thing that we'll be focusing on. [00:31:21] Speaker A: Sadij Galba, the. I'm sorry, I know a lot of callers are on hold. What's your question, Baki? The callers, Jagmeet your question to Mister Rustad. [00:31:34] Speaker D: Hello Mister Rashtra. Thanks for taking your questions. My question is government plans on public transmit transit. We rely on like lots of public transit transit system for our cities, but they are not well connected in BC. So my question is like, would you get newer technologies like Hyperloop and hydrogen based railway systems? Because for example, there was a landslide on Highway 97. [00:32:00] Speaker A: Oh, the call got terminated in between. But I think we got the crux of the question about public transit. [00:32:07] Speaker B: Yeah, sorry, sorry about the termination there on that. But yes. So no, Surrey once again has been treated like a second class city when it comes to transit. When you look at Translink and their plans, all of the most difficult, all the most, the busiest routes are all in Surrey and they don't have the additional services. People can be waiting two or three buses in order to be able to get home to put food on the table for their family. I think that is completely unacceptable. So we need to do an overhaul. We need to do a complete relook at transit within the city of Surrey. But most importantly, we also need to link it through. We need to have a rail connection all the way out the valley. We need to have far more infrastructure put in place. That's something that we're committed to doing. [00:32:46] Speaker A: World, would you look at the interurban rail? Because that railway track already exists and goes all the way to chillow. It's like a 99 kilometer or something in length. So is that something which you would be willing to develop? [00:32:58] Speaker B: It is certainly something that we're looking at as one of the options. I think there needs to be more options than just that. So if we can put that in, that would be great. If we can also put a more direct line in, I think that would be good. We need to be able to look at Surrey from perspective of what is that growth going to look like? Should we look at doing something like a ring road in Surrey? How do we make sure that we have the busing services in place, but also building out transit? You think are building out trains, transit services from not just on the bus side. You look at Vancouver. Vancouver is about the same size and yet it has all of these connectivities. Surrey doesn't. So we need to be able to make sure that we build out that capacity for the growth that is coming for Surrey. [00:33:40] Speaker A: We had a representative from the BC Landlords association on here earlier in the show today, and they've got this petition for almost about a year and a half and they've got about 42,000 signatories on that petition from across the province, they're asking for fair treatment of landlords. Would you commit to looking at what their proposals are, which entail establishing a registry of bad tenants and bad landlords, which also asks for implementing some other provisions which would make life easier for those landlords who unfortunately sometimes have to deal with a bad tenant. So what would you do for organizations of these kind who are only looking to get those changes made to tackle bad tenants and not just to harm the tenants? [00:34:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, the reality, there's a bunch of things on that, on rental units in BC. The reality is nobody wants to build out new rental units because of the rules that are in place and how difficult it is. And we have a 0.1% or less vacancy rate in BC. That means that the pressure is on for rates. The pressure is on and it's a huge problem. We have to have a very dedicated program for building out new rental units in this province. And so that's something that we are going to be focused on doing. Once we get to that balance, then there's other things that we can do that will help to stabilize the rates and hopefully bring down those rent costs. But they're absolutely right. We need to also find that balance between the landlord and the tenant. We have to make sure that tenants rights are protected, but also the landlords and the property owners rents are protected. So when you've got, you know, just a mom pop who happen to have, you know, a, whether it's a basement suite or they happen to have a second 2nd building that they're renting out, and when they have a bad tenant, they say, this is crazy, I'm not doing this anymore, I'm getting out of it. And so we actually lose rental units. So we need to make sure that they have that option to be able to address these things. And so, yes, we're looking at what they're bringing forward from a perspective of how can we make sure that we have that fairness between the landlord as well as the renters in bridge. Columbia. [00:35:50] Speaker A: Mister Ostrad, I want to squeeze in two quick questions. One, what about the messy tunnel replacement? Would you continue with the tunnel or will you scrap it and build a bridge? [00:35:58] Speaker B: So my understanding of what they're doing with the tunnel is that it's not permitted. They haven't gone through the environmental assessment. All they've got as a concept, that means it's going to be ten years down the road and I do not want to see that kind of pain carry forward. So if if it is not permitted and processed and ready to go, then we will move forward with a bridge and just get it done. More lanes is less pain. We've got to make sure that people can move around in this, in this province and not face that kind of a bottleneck. [00:36:24] Speaker A: Will it be a toll bridge? [00:36:25] Speaker B: No, it will not be. We will not do tolls. That's another lie of the NDP saying we're going to do tolls. We are not going to be doing tolls. [00:36:32] Speaker A: Some of our listeners feel that the BC conservative party has not elected an MLA, not elected an MLA in the last 50 years. And with you being thrust into the limelight that you now have, and with an election next month, some people feel uncomfortable voting for a party which is, say, untested. What would you like to say to those voters? [00:36:53] Speaker B: Well, first of all, I've got a number of MLA's that have. Have experience, have cabin experience that are running for us. I think we got what, seven MLA's at this particular point. We've got lots of people with some great background and experience. Everything from doctors to lawyers to engineers to CEO's to financial officers. Like we've got such a wide range of people with great skill sets. And what I would say to people is this. Can you see anything that David Eby and his weak leadership has done that is positive in this province? They have some people that are in there that have just created a mess. Whether it's on the drugs and crime policies, whether it's on healthcare, whether it's on our economy and actual destruction they've done to our economies, particularly our resource sector. This is their experience. I'm sorry, I'll put my people up against theirs any day of the week. We'll be able to come in and we'll be able to deliver common sense change for this province and get this province back on its feet so that people can build their future here and be confident and proud to be British Columbians. [00:37:51] Speaker A: One of your candidates is with us in studio from Surrey Fleetwood Avatar Gill Gil conversation campaign frustrations identify Kitiyana Jinan BC conservative. [00:38:20] Speaker F: Perfect education devastate feedback Maria Kyoti School and the Botchawas healthcare though Loki Bade Parishani Universal issue Bangdan population who reach Karjana the RJD study healthcare the system local family doctrine specialist in Mary so Sano in a Chi Lord Skytrain the development both or your boundary line Odika businesses both affect Horani proper replace Nikita Jari on a Kitijaria long term benefit honor short term Fleetwood. [00:39:39] Speaker A: And Mister Rustad. Thank you so much once again for your time. [00:39:41] Speaker B: Thank you for having me on. Take care. [00:39:43] Speaker A: Thank you. You too.