Stone making final pitches for leadership
B.C. Liberal leadership candidate Todd Stone made one final visit to Prince George before the party votes on Feb. 3.
Unlike a general election, the focus of a leadership campaign is on the card-carrying members of that party. The window to buy a party membership is already closed, so Stone – perceived to be among the frontrunners – is working hard to connect with card-carrying members with only seven days remaining in the contest.
“We are very pleased with our numbers, signing up new members, and since New Years we have focused on reaching out to those people, and to the undecided members of the party, the longtime B.C. Liberals who didn’t buy their membership with any one candidate in mind.”
Since this is a preferential ballot voting system, where voters can rank their favourite candidates and those rankings calculate into the final outcome, Stone is hoping he stacks up well on the overall list as members consider their options.
“No one is going to win this on the first ballot, in my mind,” he said. “It will probably go to a third or even fourth ballot, and we are urging party members to take a look at my platform, my points of view on what we can do together to build British Columbia even stronger, and open those conversations with me. I think our members will like what they see, and when it comes time for the next general election I think British Columbians will like what they see. And at the end of all this, if we have the kind of hardworking final week my team intends me to have, then we can say we put it all out there and left it all on the field. We ran an engaging and respectful campaign, we offered a positive alternative that maintains the important and well-founded core values of the B.C. Liberal Party but draws in all the new energy and new ideas of young British Columbians, new Canadians living in British Columbia, the surging First Nations of the province, and puts that all together so we are revitalized and refueled from the ground up.”
Stone was the Minister of Transportation & Infrastructure up until the most recent general election that saw the NDP and Green Party form a coalition government. He was in his first mandate as the MLA for Kamloops-South Thompson. After winning his second mandate, he was made the opposition critic for Municipal Affairs.
He used his time in Prince George to stress the main ideas from the past that he was in support of, chiefly the Site C Dam project that he called “probably the most scrutinized capital project in B.C. history, with years and years and years of oversight” and the Trans Mountain Pipeline that adds a second line to an existing line that’s moved oil from Alberta to B.C. port since 1953.
What he wished had been different in the B.C. Liberals’ recent past was not spending enough out of the public surpluses on issues dear to his heart like addressing mental health and addictions victims, bolstering the education system, boosting First Nations capacity and getting Indigenous communities in deeper and earlier touch with economic development projects, and most critical of all: building bridges to the grassroots of the province. Communication faded to those facing housing crises, inaffordable living crises, a perceived urban-rural divide, and other areas where voters felt they had to turn away from them.
Stone said those are areas where gains need to be made, trust reestablished, if his party intends to form government.
“The future of this party and our ability to compete is at stake in this leadership choice,” he said. “We can’t turn away from our core values, and I don’t think British Columbians want us to. But we are being asked to listen better, respond to the issues that are truly concerning British Columbians, and I completely agree. I want those things too, and I’m hearing from party members that we have not kept up with a new world right in our own province. We have to acknowledge that our province is ever-changing, the priorities of British Columbians are ever-changing, and we must, as a party, keep evolving our connections to what’s occurring in the lives of everyday British Columbians.”
He said the leadership race has “been a privilege” as he got to know the people and places of B.C. better than he ever could have any other way, and the more he’s observed, the prouder a British Columbian it’s made him.