B.C. Liberal party leadership candidate Andrew Wilkinson was probably the only law student in Canada during his time at Dalhousie University whose part-time job was saving lives.
While his classmates worked to pay their student expenses as waiters or store clerks, he was putting his medical skills to use on weekends as an emergency room doctor.
In the courtroom or in a busy hospital room Wilkinson learned to think quickly on his feet and come up with logical strategies to solve problems - work skills he plans to lean on heavily as he attempts to bring the Liberals back into power running the province.
The 60-year-old MLA or Vancouver-Quilchena, who was born in Australia and grew up in Kamloops, spoke to a group of about 100 party supporters at a Prince George hotel Saturday afternoon, part of a nine-city, 48-hour tour to drum up support for his candidacy in the leadership vote, Feb. 1-3.
“I know how to get stuff done in government,” said Wilkinson.
“I’ve lived and worked all over British Columbia, I’ve been a doctor, a lawyer, a deputy minister, a minister of the Crown in three different roles, I think I’ve got the skills and experience to do this.
“I’m a pretty gutsy, focused, direct person. Being direct and hard-nosed is what we need in the Legislature, someone who is prepared to stand up to John Horgan from Day 1 and make them look weak and effective. We cannot have a leader in there who is learning on the job, it’s not going to work. I’ve got what it takes.”
Wilkinson promised to abolish the income tax on small family businesses that takes two per cent of net income to encourage employment and expansion of those community businesses. He wants tutoring of students to be tax deductible and said doctors should be booking appointments and renewing prescriptions online to save medical costs.
He spoke in support of Shell’s proposed liquid natural gas project for Kitimat to be decided later this year and said if elected he would continue to push for pipeline infrastructure and continued development of the Site C dam project to attract responsible investment.
“We’re not going to be like the NDP and just block things for the sake of it or listen to the squawkers in our society who think development is terrible,” Wilkinson said. “We were joking about this in Smithers, about the banana term ‘build absolutely nothing near anybody.’ This is a concept that’s caught hold in Vancouver and is unfortunately spreading around the province of British Columbia because it’s way too easy to come up with excuses or reasons to say ‘no.’ We need to be the party that’s prepared to say ‘yes’ in terms of responsible investment.”
He was critical of the NDP’s decision to drop the toll on the Port Mann Bridge and said it's not right that taxpayers who don’t use the $4.5 billion bridge are now being forced to pay for it, but it would not be possible politically to reverse it.
Wilkinson preached fiscal responsibility, saying he has a plan for a balanced budget that won’t bankrupt future generations. He said he’s the only one of the six to map out a three-year itemized plan for government spending, which he outlines on his website, www.andrewwilkinson.ca.
“We do not spend our kids’ or grandkids’ money on things we want to consume today,” he said. “If you want to have a fancy social program, that’s great, we’ll do it as soon as we can afford it, but we’re not going to spend our money in advance and then dump a bunch of dept on them later on. We do not want deficits unless there’s some catastrophe like the 2008 financial meltdown.
“We run balanced budgets because that’s the responsible thing to do for our generation and for the next generation. Some of my colleagues in this race are losing sight of that and they’ve decided that this should be an auction and they’re going to bid on the biggest, most expensive social program they can dream up and that’s going to be the wave of the future for our party. I disagree, we cannot get into a bidding war with the NDP to see who can spend public money the fastest. You cannot set up a program without the corresponding revenue.”
He took questions from the audience on topics which touched on gold-plated government pension plans and public sector salaries, increasing carbon tax implementation, the sale of legalized marijuana in government stores, future job losses due to automation, changing the name of the Liberal party to reflect its conservative policies, and how his government would handle First Nations blockades.
Wilkinson reminded the audience why the Liberal party is against proportional representation in provincial votes, which will be the subject of a province-wide mail-in referendum to be decided by the end of November.
He said a proportional system which would allot the number of MLAs based on the percentage of the vote each party receives would be disastrous for smaller communities who would lose direct accountability from the candidates they elect and said the only reason the NDP supports a change from the current first-past-the-post electoral system is to appease the three Green party MLAs now propping up the coalition minority government.
Wilkinson was among six leadership candidates who announced in September their intentions to lead the party. He joined that fight with Todd Stone, Dianne Watts, Sam Sullivan, Michael Lee and Mike de Jong.
Wikinson has been involved in politics since 1993 and was resident of the B.C. Liberal party from 1998-2001. Elected in Vancouver-Quilchena in 2013, he joined the cabinet as Minister of Technology, Innovation and Citizens’ Services, later taking on the role in Advanced Education. He was Minster of Justice and Attorney General until the NDP minority government was sworn in last August.
He received a Rhodes scholarship for Oxford University in 1980 after graduating medical school at the University of Alberta and decided on a law degree because there was no medical faculty at Oxford. He's worked as a doctor in Campbell River, Lilooet and Dease Lake.
Only B.C. Liberal party members as of Dec. 29, 2017 are eligible for the leadership vote, a preferential ballot online or by telephone which asks each voter to rank their choice of candidate one through six.
