Alexandra Wright: BC needs commonsense change driven by ordinary citizens

Alexandra Wright is a businesswoman, lawyer and farmer. She is running as the Conservative Party of British Columbia candidate in the Kelowna-Mission riding.

When I was asked to write this opinion piece, I thought about what I wanted to convey to my readers.

Usually, I try to add humour and wit to my writing, but let's be honest – the past few years of politics in British Columbia have been anything but funny. Even though I have always been interested in world events, I never thought I would become involved in politics. For starters, as a business owner, farmer, wife, mother, and cancer survivor, my time is in short supply, and precious.

Secondly, and sometimes for good reason, politics, and politicians, have an unfortunate reputation (as the joke goes, x% of politicians give the rest a bad name!).

However, the last decade has been an eye-opener to many of us. We have witnessed society becoming more and more divided, people losing patience with each other, and the ability to politely disagree almost completely vanishing. It's clear that our current political system, which rewards mudslinging and name-calling over real debate and thoughtful discussion, needs to change. And as the saying goes: If not me, who? And if not now, when?

I have heard John Rustad, the leader of our Conservative Party of BC, speak several times over the past year. If you haven’t heard him yet, I suggest you follow him on social media and listen to what he has to say about the party’s policies. What attracted me to the Conservatives was John’s commitment to speaking his mind instead of just following the party line.

For those who aren’t familiar with the story, John was kicked out of the BC Liberal Party a few years ago for retweeting a post with which his leader did not agree. In April 2023, long after most jurisdictions had dropped COVID-19 restrictions, John was the only MLA in the Legislative Assembly who refused to support the province’s public health orders, which still prevent non-vaccinated public health care workers from returning to their jobs, even though they are desperately needed [This column was written before Friday's announcement].

It worries me that our current MLAs seem to be restricted by their parties as to what they can and cannot say. At the heart of any democracy is the ability to raise concerns and debate important issues.

I have spent the past few decades working first as a lawyer and then as the founder and director of a successful supply chain business. Ten years ago, my husband and I decided there must be more to life than climbing the corporate ladder, so we bought a 20-acre hay field with the intention of becoming full-time farmers. The first few years were a steep learning curve, to say the least.

We built a chicken coop, adopted three pygmy goats that quickly destroyed every fence we built, watched countless YouTube videos on mulching, hügelkulturs, and greenhouse propagation, and generally had a lot of fun getting our hands in the dirt while learning a few lessons the hard way. As they say, fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Unfortunately, what we most quickly learned was that our provincial and municipal legislation is completely ineffective in supporting the small business owners who build our communities and feed our families.

For example, shortly after opening, and at a time when we were barely making $10 a day in farm stand sales, we were visited by a local agricultural inspector who told us our electronic scale wasn’t certified and therefore illegal. We dutifully went out the next day and bought a $600 government-inspected scale that was no more accurate than its predecessor. It is these types of burdensome regulations, along with sky-high taxes and increasing crime rates, that are driving our small business owners to close up shop and move elsewhere.

Of course, red tape is just one of the many concerns people have with our current government. We are all worried about our provincial debt and the huge deficits projected for the next few years. Thirty-three years of Liberal (BC United) and NDP rule have left us with a provincial debt of over $72 billion, and that number is projected to hit $125 billion in the next three years.

As reported by KelownaNow, our interest payment on federal and provincial debt combined is higher than BC’s entire social services budget for this year, with the province spending almost $10 billion on interest costs, or over $1,700 per person. And, of course, "the province" doesn’t actually pay this cost – it is you and I who cover the bill by working harder and paying more taxes.

The Conservative Party of BC has promised to mandate surpluses except in emergencies, and to use those surpluses to pay down government debt and reduce taxes. While we would all love to live in a world where money isn’t an issue and we could spend on social programs freely, that is not realistic. Without smart, sensible, and fiscally conservative management of our economy, we are heading towards a breaking point where unpopular fiscal cuts will be inevitable, and potentially devastating.

Many people are also very concerned about the government overreach we have witnessed in recent years. In the past year alone, our NDP government has enacted Bill 36 (Health Professions and Occupations Act) and Bill 21 (Legal Professions Act). These bills have been criticized for eroding the independence of professional boards and making the government the ultimate arbiter of professional misconduct in this province. They also seem to skirt some due process laws and allow what has traditionally been unlawful search and seizure of protected information, including our personal medical records. The Conservative Party of BC believes that professional boards need to maintain their independence, and it has committed to repealing both of these bills if we form a majority this fall.

I could go on about the other issues facing our province – “safer” drug supply, a school system that is not giving our youth the tools they need to succeed, policies that are preventing our law enforcement officials from performing their jobs, a healthcare system that is beyond broken, a bloated and inefficient automobile insurance system that is harming those who seek help for their injuries, and the short-term rental fiasco – the list is endless. We need a commonsense change driven by ordinary citizens working from the ground up, not by out of touch bureaucrats in their ivory towers, clinging to power. Our current leaders seem to have forgotten who pays their wages, and on October 19, we all have a powerful opportunity to remind them.

For the first time in a very long time, I feel hopeful that ordinary people can change the direction of our province this fall. If you are anything like me, you have been searching for this ray of hope for what feels like forever, as we have watched our government enact legislation and make decisions that we never requested, nor approved. To quote Angela Davis, “I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.”

I invite you to learn more about our party at conservativebc.ca, and to reach out to me if you have any questions or concerns via my website (wright4bc.ca) or alexandra.wright@conservativebc.ca.