The BC Liberals have a tall task ahead of them no matter who is elected as the party’s next leader, Andrew Wilkinson says, but the two-term MLA believes he’s the best fit for the job.

The former advanced education minister and Vancouver-Quilchena MLA was in Fort St. John Nov. 14 during a break in the legislature to make his pitch to local party members as they get ready to elect a new leader in February.

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Atop Wilkinson’s priority list is mobilizing for a referendum on election reform next fall, where voters will be asked if they want to keep the first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all system, or move to proportional representation.

Defeating that referendum is critically important for Northern B.C., Wilkinson says.

“It will mean a dramatic reduction in representation if the NDP and Greens are successful in pushing it through,” Wilkinson said.

“The most likely model for proportional representation will be for much larger ridings with multiple members. If you take the population in Northeast B.C., you’re talking about one riding essentially for all of Northeast B.C, and that would involve voting for multiple members and then other members being selected from party lists.

“So, the local representation is almost entirely lost for the Peace Country,” he said.

Wilkinson, a doctor by trade, says he got an eye-opening experience of the northern reality as a 27-year-old fresh out of med school. He took a job in Dease Lake, finding himself the only doctor serving an area the size of Switzerland shortly after the Cassiar asbestos mine had shut down, he said.

“The doctors had left the area, so the doctor in Dease Lake served everything basically north of Terrace to the Yukon border,” Wilkinson said.

“It was an enormous area to provide service to, and there were some major accidents while I was there. We had to airlift people out either to Terrace for care or to Watson Lake, where they’d be picked up and taken to Vancouver.

“It was real seat-of-the-pants medicine and you learn about the pressures on people in Northern B.C. and the access to services, which is always a challenge.”

It’s this experience, and others growing up and working across B.C. including Campbell River and Lillooet, that Wilkinson says sets him apart from a field of six other candidates.

He cites the importance of Northeast B.C., and its petroleum industry, forestry, agriculture, and the completion of Site C as being vital to maintaining a healthy provincial economy.

“We’ve come out of 16 years of prosperity and there’s no guarantee thats going to continue under the NDP,” he said.

“We’ve seen the attitude to Kinder Morgan, which they want to stop, and to Site C, where they’re playing games with it. We’re entering a period of uncertainty in B.C.”

On his lessons as a two-term MLA:

“You learn two important things being a cabinet minister. The first is that your ability to change the course of events is limited, but you can do so with things like the new trades building at Northern Lights College, which is a $32-million investment that would not have happened without the two local MLAs and me as minister of advanced education making sure it went though.

“The second thing is it’s very important to have the experience of how a government runs before you pretend to know how to run it. Some of our candidates are well qualified in that regard, others are basically new to the situation of government provincially, and they would have an enormous task to figure out how it works in very short order.

“We have to remember, whoever becomes leader has to be ready to take on the NDP on day one. We can’t afford to fumble the ball. There’s no orientation program or training wheels for this.”

On establishing a premier’s office in Prince George:

“Northern B.C. has special issues. There’s the resource-based economy, which needs to have ongoing attention because the large role the provincial government plays in resource industries. Secondly, it’s the logistics of getting around. With very large distances, provincial services are often stretched a bit thin and people have to understand how that works in the north, and have a particular focus on that.

“It’s two thirds of the area of the province with about 10 per cent of the population. That requires a special approach in how services are delivered. Having a premier’s office in Prince George would be a real focus for the local MLAs and for cabinet members to come through and be seen to be accessible, and to make sure they are readily accessible there.”

On balancing the energy resource debate

“The world is moving into a cleaner, greener energy future and Site C is a good part of that in that it’s a clean, green renewable project that will provide electricity for over 100 years. And there’s another element in this in terms of the Peace River District having massive natural supplies, including a significant liquid component, which will be enormously valuable well into the future.

“Some people talk about the end of the fossil fuel economy, but I think that’s a bit naive and premature. We have to make the most use of our resources and make sure our communities are thriving based on the resources that exist underground and also renewables like Site C.”

On rebuilding the BC Liberal party:

“When I was president of the party from 1998 to 2001, we spent a huge amount of time listening to people around the province to make sure the Reform party members were engaged in the BC Liberal project. That resulted in that enormous election win in 2001.

“We’re going to have to spend a lot of time in communities listening to people and understanding their priorities, and we’re going to have run essentially two election campaigns. One for the Interior, to make sure it is not neglected or forgotten in anyway at all. The second in the Lower Mainland, to make sure we rebuild the seats that we lost in this past election.”

On the opioid crisis:

“The opioid crisis is very real. We’ve had more than 1,000 deaths this year and most of them are of males between 20 and 50 years old using oral medications in their home. This makes it a really difficult problem to address, but we need to implement quickly things like a prescription monitoring program to catch people early in their use of prescription medication that can lead to addiction.

“And we do need to step up the prevention and treatment side of things, and get away from the excessive focus on harm reduction, which is mostly related to safe injection sites in the Lower Mainland. This problem is all over the province and some of the highest incidents of death are in places like Kelowna and Campbell River.

“So, we need to make sure we’re addressing it throughout the province and getting a better understanding of how it works and get these young males to take a different path in life.”

editor@ahnfsj.ca