BC United leader Kevin Falcon speaks at town hall meeting in Vernon Feb. 8. (photo credit: Peter Milobar/X)

By Liam Verster

Health Care, Drugs, Climate Change and more

BC United leader addresses number of topics at Vernon town hall

Feb 9, 2024 | 4:00 PM

The leader of B.C.’s official opposition had no shortage of issues to talk about as he hosted a town hall in Vernon Thursday night.

BC United’s Kevin Falcon held the event at the Prestige Vernon Lodge, telling Vernon Matters it was a well attended event.

“We had a full room, which was frankly really nice on a Thursday evening and I would say there was over 100 people. That would be my best estimate,” Falcon said.

“Every seat was full, so that was great, and we had some excellent dialogue.”

Falcon spoke on a range of issues, including health care, toxic drug poisonings, housing, and climate change.

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On the topic of overdose deaths, Falcon said he would scrap decriminalization within 90 days of taking power and eliminate the prescribed safer supply program and look at other ways of treating addiction.

“We would focus on providing free treatment instead of just free drugs,” Falcon told Vernon Matters.

“We would really focus on making sure we build purpose-built facilities in every region of the province, including the Interior, to deal with those struggling with addiction and untreated mental health issues. And we would ensure that they are getting the kind of care and attention necessary, the proper psychiatric and medical supports, to ensure they can be stabilized and, in many cases I’m sure, can also be at some point able to return to their communities as human beings that are now fixed and capable of making contributions to their community.”

He added that “many of these folks are not capable of making decisions” and that the government has an obligation to not leave people on the streets where they can fall victim to toxic street drugs, human traffickers or “other unsavory characters.”

Health care was another topic brought up, with Falcon saying there were concerns about wait times as Vernon’s last walk-in clinic closed in November, leaving people with only the hospital and the Urgent and Primary Care Centre as options for emergencies.

“I heard a lot about the clinic being closed down and now people are finding it extremely difficult to get care through the emergency department at the hospital and there’s a lot of concern about delayed care and it is just a huge issue. I don’t think there was a person in that room that did not feel that our health care system is really genuinely crumbling,” Falcon said, adding BC United would work to bring more doctors to the province.

“When only one in five British Columbians have access to a family doctor, that is a major problem because family doctors are the gatekeeper that direct patients to that specialist care that they often will need, so not being able to access a family physician is a huge problem when we have a system built up with a family physician at the core of it.

“So that means we have to stop the nonsense of literally hundred and hundreds of Canadian kids that have been trained as doctors abroad and want to come back to British Columbia but because of red tape and silly bureaucratic rules that have built up over the last 100 years, they can’t get in here. And I’ve said many times, I’ll say it again, I’m going to take a chainsaw to a lot of those ridiculous barriers that stop our kids from coming home and helping us deal with this crisis.”

Falcon, the MLA for Vancouver-Quilchena, said the people attending the town hall in Vernon had the same views on housing as many others in the province, namely that young people are concerned they will never be able to own a home and are looking at leaving the province.

There were also concerns about climate change and drought impacts to the region, which Falcon said BC United would handle with a “climate resiliency” approach to preparing the agricultural sector in particular for extreme weather events like heat domes and cold snaps become more frequent, as well as have “boots-on-the-ground” to fully understand the impacts of climate change to a region and its economy.

Falcon, a former finance minister and deputy premier under Christy Clark’s BC Liberal government, said the party has plans to make life more affordable for British Columbians, if elected, by scrapping “all provincial fuel taxes, immediately,” and remove the carbon tax from home heating fuels and the agricultural and ranching sectors.

“I think if we can get a government that understands leadership, the importance of reducing costs for families that are really struggling, the importance of focusing on innovation in our health care system, not bureaucracy, then I really do think we can get to a place where we start fixing some of these problems and getting the province back on track,” Falcon stated.

The BC United leader also took the opportunity to list some shortcomings of the current NDP government.

“I talked about my concern that we’ve got a government that governs thinking only of the next election and not the next generation, and I used as an example the three largest projects taking place in B.C. right now, which is Site C dam, LNG Canada, and the twinning of the Trans Mountain pipeline,” Falcon explained.

“All three of those projects are coming to an end and there’s not three more behind them. In fact there’s not even one major project behind them. That should give British Columbians a lot of concern because all three of those projects were fully supported, initiated and pushed through by BC Liberals, now called BC United, and all three of them were opposed by the NDP when they were in opposition.

“If you think about today, imagine where we would be, with all the power shortages and challenges we’re facing, if Site C had not gone ahead, if the NDP had been in power at the time and not allow that project to go ahead. So I was really signaling to the public that it’s important that we elect people that know how to get big projects done, know how to attract capital to the province, because those three projects combined represent about $80-billion of capital and I just reminded the audience ‘where would we be in B.C. without those three projects and without the tens-of-thousands of family supportive jobs that they represent.”

The next provincial election is scheduled for October 19, 2024. BC United has named Kevin Acton as the candidate for the Vernon-Lumby riding, and no other party had announced their candidate for the riding as of time of publication, although current MLA Harwinder Sandhu of the NDP has told Vernon Matters she will be seeking a second term.