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Comment: In B.C., lives and the economy are bogged down

“If we care about our jobs, our families, our friends, our communities; if we care about freedom, creativity, innovation and self actualization, we must advocate for a change to this insanity.”
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B.C. NDP Leader David Eby holds a copy of the party’s election platform while speaking, in Surrey, B.C., Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

A commentary by the CEO of Anthem Properties.

I am not normally a political person — but in this election, I am. Unapologetically.

Premier David Eby needs to be replaced.

In spite of his cadre of communications spin doctors, lawyers, advisers and consultants working out of the premier’s office, at great expense, in total disregard to parliament and his own ministers and their ministries, this new age autocrat is steadily undermining the very foundation of our civil society — individual freedom, property rights and the rule of law.

There is no end to his view that he and his advisers know how we should behave, and increasingly, through rules, regulations, laws and taxes, that they should modify our behaviour with respect to virtually everything.

And along the way, he bogs the economy and our lives down.

City sidewalks are owned by mentally ill drug addicts, lying in their spit, vomit, and excrement, ably supported by now-legal drug pushers presiding over their demise.

Once-prosperous retailers shutter their doors as shoplifters return again and again, undeterred and unpunished.

Eby wrote and published a book on how to successfully sue the police.

Home prices and rent continue their upward trend as Eby’s misguided policies and taxes, seeking to limit demand, merely scare capital away from financing increased supply; and he deludes himself that somehow B.C. Housing (a Crown agency) will make up the difference of the thousands of stunted housing units per year through their own programs, when most of the staff pretend to work from home full-time, delivering a few units here and there, which somehow he manipulates into “80,000 units,” at best a gross exaggeration and at worse, a bald-faced lie.

Waiting lists at hospitals turn into death lists, as he absolutely prohibits any form of private capital from investing in health care — better that all are equally miserable, then all better off, at the risk that some may be more so than others.

Freedom of speech around elections is stifled, and funding of political parties is curtailed, replaced by a complex government formula that has resulted in the NDP getting $8,100,000 of public funds to finance their campaign in this election, while the B.C. Conservatives get $200,000. That is Eby’s version of equity and fairness.

Government finances are ignored. B.C.’s credit rating diminishes on every review, as its once balanced budget balloons into large, unsustainable deficits, incurred on behalf of nothing in particular, and a growing, bloated civil service, working from home, on few new programs, in general.

The rat population is exploding, the result of a thoughtless environmental rule banning rat poison, on the basis that it will save owls from extinction, at the expense of the demise of our urban environments, already under siege from the legalized drug trade mentioned above.

And, worse, sleeking its way to the surface, slowly, underhandedly, deceitfully, is the putrefying Land Act, and the temporarily shelved Water Act, which provide special approval rights to an undefined plethora of First Nations, all of whom will compete with each other for jurisdiction, of any use of Crown lands, bogging down development through litigation, constipation, and ineptitude, pushing away entrepreneurial talent, and capital investment, in roads, bridges, railroads, energy, mining, forestry, and land use, creating a vacuum of free enterprise leadership, to be replaced by an increasingly permanent socialist regime, working in cahoots with, not First Nations, but rather their “consultants and advisers,” all of the same ilk as Eby, such that he and they, together, essentially create a Premier for Life, and an NDP forever.

This is not reconciliation, this is societal suicide.

If we care about our jobs, our families, our friends, our communities; if we care about freedom, creativity, innovation and self actualization, we must advocate for a change to this insanity.

John Rustad and the B.C. Conservatives promise common sense, simple, and small government, one that reflects a belief that individuals are virtuous, not stupid, and are free to make their own decisions over how to invest their time, energy and savings, without fear of retribution through some heretofore uncontemplated new rule, regulation, tax or ridicule.

This is not just any election. It is the inflection point between what works and what does not work. It is a defining moment. Is humanity a community of individuals freely pursuing their lives, or a collective herd being channeled by a man with a legislative whip?

The Conservatives need your support. If you want change. If you want a family doctor. If you want life to be simpler. Vote.