Sullivan seeking Liberal leadership, swears he’ll take on ‘tough issues’
Former Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan has announced his bid to replace Christy Clark as leader of the B.C. Liberal party.
The 57-year-old Vancouver MLA is the first high-profile name to formally enter a race that could attract political stars. Surrey Conservative MP Dianne Watts and VancouverQuilchena MLA Andrew Wilkinson are among those reportedly about to launch campaigns.
First elected to the legislature in 2013, Sullivan served as the minister of community, sport and cultural development as well as minister responsible for TransLink in the Clark government. He was reelected this year in the VancouverFalse Creek riding after a recount.
His focus, however, will be a return to his roots of sorts as he seeks to address two issues he first tried to tackle as mayor before his move to provincial politics: the housing crisis and addictions treatment.
“I believe that people are ready for someone who will take on tough issues,” Sullivan said Thursday. “And some of those include the two issues that I championed as mayor 12 years ago. I took on the supply of housing. I called it eco-density and its goal was to increase the supply of housing so it would keep prices down. … The other thing I took on was the issue called CAST, chronic addiction substitution treatment, where we would provide substitution drugs to people with addictions.”
Sullivan told Postmedia News he was troubled to see these issues failed to receive the attention they required in Clark’s government.
“It’s very disturbing to me that 12 years after I identified those two subjects as critical to our future that here we are where they are top in our consciousness, certainly in urban areas.”
Sullivan suggested the B.C. Liberal government had other priorities at the time, and while he believes they achieved what they set out do to in those areas, that came at the expense of two issues that alienated the party from two key demographics.
“We were focused on economy, and I must say with great success,” Sullivan said.
“(But) I don’t believe we focused on the urban and the youth vote as much as we should have. It’s clearly evident in the election results.
“I know that young people are very concerned about house prices and they’re very open to innovation in drug policy and they really can’t figure out why we have such a problem doing what clearly works.”
Sullivan brought up other issues he said he plans to champion. Individually they might not be a good idea for a leadership candidate, he said, “but collectively they just might be the winning formula.”
Chief among those is the harmonized sales tax. Admitting that no one wants to talk about HST, Sullivan suggested instead a “modified sales tax” that would exempt a number of low-income goods and services. Sullivan said he wants to bring in “more elements of privatization into our health care,” and look at the Alberta model of charter schools. He said he believes they have energized that province’s public system by giving entrepreneurial teachers opportunities to design their own programs.
“There’s so many creative, smart teachers that just roll their eyes at the way they have to teach,” Sullivan said. “I’d love to give them freedom to innovate.”
Sullivan also proposed selling off B.C. liquor stores, ideally to employees of those stores, and leaving alcohol sales to the private sector.
“There’s no need,” he said, “for the government to be in the liquor business.”