The seven candidates vying to be the next leader of the BC Liberal spent 90 minutes on Tuesday night on health care, affordability and the party’s own future.
Former senior cabinet minister Kevin Falcon, MPs Michael Lee, Renee Merrifield, Ellis Ross plus Gavin Dew, Val Litwin and Stan Sipos went back and forth to try to differentiate themselves before party members began voting on 3 February.
The party seeks to rebuild after a disastrous 2020 election result in which the party dropped from 43 seats in the 2017 election to 28 seats.
The party will announce the winner on February 5th.
There are about 43,000 members of the BC Liberal Party, but it is still unclear how many of those members will be eligible to vote.
The party is currently reviewing calls from a majority of leadership candidates to audit party memberships ahead of the February 5 leadership vote after questions were raised about some of the new members.
Lee used his one chance to ask another candidate a question to test Falcon about his role in the membership issue.
All of the candidates, Falcon excluded, asked the party to review membership due to concerns that they were not properly filled out.
“Instead of standing with all the candidates here on this, the debate stage to ensure that members can have the confidence, the process of electing the next leader of our party, you accuse the party of racism and use you racist members of our party as a shield, ”Lee said.
“Which is just another example of the old style of politics you have.”
Falcon responded by saying there was no evidence of fraud in the leadership race.
“There have been some administrative mistakes and mistakes made, which by the way is not uncommon for new people to get involved with the party just because people struggle to fill out some forms does not mean that they should be fired as members of this party. ” Falcon responded.
All the candidates were asked about the future of health care in the province. The candidates focus on rebuilding the current healthcare system by investing in new nurses and doctors.
Ross proposes that the province make a minister responsible for recruitment, not just here in BC, but in Canada and internationally.
Falcon has weighed in on the debate over for profit-making and said it is an issue that the NDP likes to bring out all the time as an attack on the Liberals.
“Trying to create some fear that we’re all trying to get an American-style healthcare system. Let me tell you, a private clinic started under the NDP in the 1990s,” Falcon said.
“They have always played a role in our system. This is where our patients and union individuals go to be cared for. My focus is on what is in the best interest of patients. And I will focus our system on ensuring that we focus on outcomes for patients. ”
Read more:
‘Concerns’ over membership make quick review before BC Liberal leadership vote
The BC Liberals are in the middle of a leadership after the election performance led to Andrew Wilkinson resigning as leader and the party announced on 26 February 2021 a leadership race that would last until 5 February 2022.
The ongoing leadership race has struggled to gain traction largely as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Candidates were also asked to address issues of affordable housing, with Litwin responding the issue ‘keep him awake at night’.
“My list of three things we are going to do, we are going to give municipalities resources to get through those zoning backlogs and admissions backlogs,” Litwin said.
“Let’s have those houses built. We are going to link infrastructure investments to those housing requirements so that we can get the volume up and in the pipeline. We are going to get density zoning right on transit corridors so that we can actually have people next to our major subject. ”
© 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
Reference-globalnews.ca