Though he didn’t get a chance to speak much at the town hall he hosted for BC NDP party leade rJohn Horgan, Tarik Sayeed said the meeting was a success.
“I think the more important thing was to make sure the leader was heard,” said Sayeed, who was selected as the NDP candidate for the Penticton riding last November. Sayeed was impressed that about 100 people filled a conference room in the Sandman Inn to hear Horgan on Feb. 7.
More: Sayeed will take absence from Penticton council to run provincially
“I underestimated the support I had from the community. I am grateful to represent everyone,” said Sayeed. “The biggest thing for me was the concerns they have shared, and are now going to be my concerns.”
Horgan spoke non-stop to his audience for two hours, claiming to have come by it naturally. The son of an Irish immigrant, he said he once kissed the Blarney Stone and hasn’t stopped talking since.
Horgan left no stone unturned in his opening speech, starting by touching on health care, and then went on to mention a number of common issues: child care, minimum wage, agriculture etc before returning to the subject of medical service plan premiums.
That was also the subject of the first question, an audience member wanted to know why the MSP premium couldn’t be eliminated, as it is in other provinces.
“If it were just waving the wand, we would have done it some time ago, but it is so ingrained in our taxation system that we have to do it slowly,” responded Horgan, adding that the province collects more revenue from health premiums than from forestry, mining and natural gas combined.
The government wants you to believe the resource sector is thriving said Horgan, but the money for tax breaks is coming from MSP premiums.
“It goes straight into general revenue,” he said.
Horgan also questioned the province’s focus on bringing in the Site C dam, when alternate methods of generating electricity, like solar panels, were becoming more mainstream.
“While the price of building a dam is going up, the price of alternatives is going down,” said Horgan, adding that the focus should be on training a new workforce.
“We can create, out of climate change, a tremendous new economy,” he said. “A new energy driven economy that comes from wind, from alternative sources of supply. We don’t need another reservoir.”
Horgan also spoke out against attack ads, saying the focus is on creating connections.
“B.C. is full of New Democrats, they just don’t know it yet,” said Horgan. “Our challenge is to connect with them on the issues that are important to them.”
However, Horgan didn’t hold back from taking his own shots at Premier Christy Clark directly.
“We are going to be positive about what we want to do, but I am going to be absolutely relentless about what they have done,” said Horgan. “I am going to say that she spends more time fundraising than she does governing because it’s a fact. I am going to say that she spends more time with the wealthy and the well-connected than she does with the rest of us because it’s true.”
