A Conversation With Carole James

Interviewed on January 14, 2005

The following is a transcript of a taped conversation among Carole James, leader of the BC New Democratic Party, Monte Paulsen, a reporter for Shared Vision magazine, and Scott Perchall, communications officer for the BC-NDP. This interview was conducted at Delilah’s, a restaurant in Vancouver’s West End, on January 14, 2005, and served as the basis for Paulsen’s cover story in the March 2005 issue of Shared Vision, entitled “Who Is Carole James?”

This transcript was prepared by Shared Vision’s Jon Azpiri and reviewed by Paulsen. We elected not to tidy up grammar and sentence structure, but to present the interview as close to word-for-word as possible. Small portions of the tape that were unintelligible (Delilah’s can be lively) or bit of the discussion that were completely redundant have been excised and marked with an ellipsis (…).

This transcript is presented for those who want to know more about James (or those who want to quibble with Paulsen’s article). Permission to quote 250 words or less from this transcript is freely granted on the condition that the interview is attributed to Shared Vision magazine. Longer quotations, reprinting, or reposting of this transcript is denied without express written permission.

Monte Paulsen: My name is Monte. I work with Shared Vision, and I’m working as a reporter. …As I told Scott, I was one of the people called in the Ipsos-Reid poll in December.

Carole James: Were you?

MP: We had just finished dinner and I had a few minutes, so I agreed. The woman on the phone was very polite and we went through all these questions. I hadn’t really focused on this election at that point. They were testing themes, and they were asking about Campbell and the NDP. It was really easy for me to say, ‘Yeah, I’m not that happy with this, I’m not that happy with that.’ Then the woman from Ipsos-Reid got to the question that threw me off. She asked, ‘Who’s better prepared to lead the province?’ That was the moment I realized that I don’t know anything about you. And very few of the folks I’ve talked to in Vancouver do. My goal tonight is to fix that.

CJ: Well, polling is worthwhile, you see?

[All laugh.]

MP: Let’s think of this interview in three parts. I’d like to spend a bit of time on each of three areas: First, on you personally. Then on the NDP and what’s happening there. Then in the last hour I’d like to go over a whole bunch of specific issues quickly, and see where you’re at.

CJ: I’d be happy to unravel the mystery.

MP: Where were you born?

CJ: I was born in the little tiny town outside of Manchester in England, a place called Dukinfield, Lancanshire.

Waiter: Anything to drink for you right now?

CJ: Just water is great for me, thanks.

MP: May we have some sparkling water?

CJ: Actually it was an interesting story how I was born in England. My mother is an only child and my grandparents had immigrated to Saskatchewan from England when my mother was 14 or 15; my grandfather had a brother that had a farm in Saskatchewan. My grandparents were from a working class town, Lancashire, and had heard that Canada was the place to come to get a job and find a house. They were living in fairly poor conditions in Northern England. So they came to live with my grandfather’s brother in North Battleford, Saskatchewan.

One of the quotes I always remember from my grandmother, she said, ‘We were really poor in England, but at least our toilet was inside the house.’ I think the circumstances might have been a little rougher than she expected when they left England.

My mother graduated from school when she was 16. She got pushed ahead when she was in Saskatchewan. At 16, she got pregnant and she was too afraid to tell my parents she was pregnant. She didn’t want to let them know that, so she told them she was homesick and wanted to go back to England.

MP: What was her name, your mother?

This was my mother, Mavis. So they let her go back to my grandmother’s sister- and brother-in-law. She went to live with my uncle, got a job as an executive assistant for a law firm when she got back to England and kept her pregnancy hidden until the day I was born.

MP: Wow.

CJ: She didn’t tell anyone. She said kept it totally hidden, kept wearing baggier clothes. She said nobody noticed.

MP: My wife and I are presently expecting our first child. Having lived with a pregnant partner for almost nine months now, your mother’s story is hard to fathom.

CJ: It’s incredible. I had the same feeling when I had both my kids. How could that happen? How could that occur?

CJ: I was born in my uncle’s house [on Dec. 22, 1957] because she didn’t tell anyone until she was too far along in labour that she was having a baby. I was born and my uncle was the first one to hold me. I learned this story when I headed off to England in my late teens for a trip. That’s how I ended up being born. My uncle phoned home, told my grandparents that they had a grandchild and they said, “Of course, come back. We want you back here.”

My first journey was on a boat to New York, and then back up to Saskatchewan…. I was six months old, apparently passed around on the boat the entire trip back. I was babysat by everyone on the entire boat. We came back to Saskatchewan and my mother married my father. She had been in contact with my father, married my father, got pregnant shortly after that with my sister. We’re only 14 months apart. Then after she had my sister she wanted to go back to school, get a career, and my father didn’t support that so he left. They split up. So I don’t know my father. I didn’t grow up with my father at all. I know the name but haven’t had any contact at all.

MP: Was he from Saskatchewan?

CJ: He was from Saskatchewan. Of the little bit and pieces I know, he worked for the railway in Saskatchewan, don’t know much else. I know his name. I have my citizenship papers from when I was little baby, so I know his last name was Hall. I know he was Métis, and I found that out later. We can get to that later.

MP: But you didn’t know that as a child?

CJ: I didn’t know that as a child because nobody really talked about it. Back in the 1950s and early ’60s, it wasn’t that common to grow up in a single-parent household. Nobody really talked about it. Nobody really talked about the other side. I was incredibly fortunate to grow up with my grandparents.

MP: Did you grow up in Saskatchewan?

CJ: No, we moved to Victoria in 1963. My mom, when my father left, knew that she had to get herself a good job because she was going to be on her own and supporting two children, so she decided to get her teaching degree. She thought teaching was a good profession if you were going to be a single parent with two kids because you got holidays off and you could spend time with your kids.

So at that time the only teacher’s college was in Saskatoon. We lived with my grandparents [Edith and Richard Jones], so I would have only been two or three years old, and my mother would go to school in Saskatoon to get her teaching degree. She would hitchhike home to North Battleford on weekends to be able to come and see us. The rest of the time I lived with my grandparents. My grandmother was an LPN, a licensed practical nurse, at the hospital in North Battleford.

Waiter: Hi folks.

All: Hi.

Waiter: I just wanted to let you know that it you have any questions about the menu, make sure you ask one of us when you’re ready.

CJ: It does look good.

MP: What are you having?

Scott Perchall: I’m going to get the snapper.

MP: And you, Carole?

CJ: I’m going to have the trout.

Monte: I’m going to go for the lamb…

CJ: My sister and I stayed in North Battleford. I lived with my grandparents while my mother got her teaching certificate. It was a two-year certificate at that point.

During that time period, my grandmother was an LPN at the hospital in North Battleford. She got caught in a blizzard coming home from the nightshift. She was working nightshift and basically got frostbite on her leg. Looking back, today you could have saved her leg but at that stage she got gangrene and problems so she had her leg amputated. That’s how we ended up in Victoria because my grandmother said, “I just want to pick a place to live that doesn’t have snow.”

That’s how I ended up in Victoria. I moved there when I was five. It’s my home. Victoria is my home.

MP: Did you move right into the city?

CJ: We moved right into the city. We started off in Fernwood, and then moved into James Bay about six months after that. I grew up in James Bay, lived in my grandparents’ house until my mother re-married when I was 11-12. Later in life, I bought my grandparent’s house, so I raised my kids in the same house I grew up in. They went to same schools that I went to, so a very strong connection to the James Bay neighbourhood in Victoria.

MP: What were you like as a girl?

CJ: I was a very serious child. Anybody you talk to would say that I was a very serious kid. I always took things seriously.

I grew up in an amazing household because my grandparents had foster kids over the time period that I was growing up. They had actually brought foster children with them when they immigrated to Saskatoon…. When they moved to Victoria and bought a house in James Bay, they went back to having foster kids again. So in my household we always had at least five or six. My grandparents would take large families so the kids didn’t have to be separated. There were always five, six, seven, eight in some cases, additional kids… some of whom I still consider my brothers and sisters. There was a family of kids who were two and three years old when they came and lived with my grandparents until I graduated. My grandfather gave her away at her wedding. I stayed connected with their families. She would call me her big sister.

It was a wonderful way to grow up, an incredible way to grow up. Those are the kinds of influences that influenced my values. I knew that with my family that I was really fortunate that we had my grandparents because being a single parent, as I said, wasn’t the usual thing then.

MP: What were your grandparents’ names?

CJ: My grandparents were Edith and Richard Jones.

MP: And your mother remarried when you were about 11?

CJ: My mother re-married when I was 11-12, I guess. We stayed with my grandparents until that time period, and then we moved two blocks away. We stayed in James Bay. My mom married an incredible, incredible father for me. He has been my father throughout my life.

It’s a funny story as well for how the two of them met. My mother was on a protest midnight vigil. I spent a lot of time on protest lines when I was a kid because my mother was very active in the peace movement. She was one of the founders of the Voice of Women organization in Victoria. Quite active in the peace movement. I joked that dinners at home were brief; you’d sit down, you’d eat, and then you’d head off to your cause, whatever it happens to be. That was the way I was raised.

MP: Was your mother also political?

CJ: Very political. She ran for the nomination for the NDP way back. She was active in her teacher’s organization as well. My grandparent’s commitment to family and community being bigger than your immediate family was always there for me. It was a given when I grew up.

We had an older man who lived across the street from us when I was growing up, people called him a hermit then, that’s sort of what he was. He never talked to anybody, was grumpy in the neighbourhood, and we took him Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas dinner, and Easter dinner every single year. He wouldn’t open the door, we left it outside. Different kids would take different turns going over depending on whose turn it was, and you’d take it over and you’d leave it outside his door. It was always eaten; the dishes were always there the next day to pick up when you went back again.

We did it because my grandparents taught us that you look after people in your community. That’s part of your responsibility in your community. My grandparents had 40 foster kids over the time period that they were in Victoria, and got an award as foster parents for the number of kids that they had.

Many of the foster kids we looked after had special needs. Many of them had disabilities. Again, there wasn’t the same kind of acceptance in communities about people with disabilities as there is now. Lots of First Nations kids. There were challenges at school with racism with teasing, all those kinds of things. Because they were part of our family, I learned to stand up for them. You learned to stand up for the strengths of everyone.

One of the kids that I connected with when I was a kid that came to my grandparents when he was four. He had a speech difficulty, and they didn’t know whether it was physical speech difficulty or just that he hadn’t had a lot of verbal support when he was growing up. He and I connected. I could understand him when other people couldn’t understand him. When I got married and moved into my grandparent’s house there were still four kids who had been there for the time period I was growing up, and my grandfather decided he needed to retire, that he wasn’t sure he could take one more set of teenagers after all of those years.

So my husband and I moved into the house and kept the foster kids who were in the house. We had an instant family, moved in and had four foster kids in a household. One of those kids was Tim whom I had grown up with. At that stage, he was 18-19, getting to the age where he wouldn’t be in foster care any more. Tim had lots of challenges and we tried to convince him to stay with us after he turned 19 because I was really concerned about what kind of support he’d be able to get in the community. Like lots of 19-year-olds he wanted to be out on his own. He went through some real challenges in his life. He had challenges with the court system. He lived on the street for a long period of time, and was taken advantage of on the street. We’d get calls from the hospital because it was always our name that he would end up giving.

I stayed connected with Tim. One of the things that I could do for Tim was to provide food for him, so he managed to get into one of the last housing units that was put in place by the local MLA in Victoria, which was a motel that was converted into housing, to house street people. We managed to get him a bed in that place, so at least he knew he had a place to live. He would spend his disability cheque when it came usually on alcohol, but he had a place to live, a place to go home every night, and I would bring him groceries once a month. I keep that up today, because for him that was his way to stay alive. For him, that made all the difference between life or death, I think. He was fished out of the harbour twice. This is someone who wouldn’t have survived but stayed connected and is a huge part of the community; he volunteers at the Open Door in Victoria, is a connection in all of our lives and an incredibly worthwhile person who I think the community and other people could have written off very easily. You could have written off Tim seeing him on the street very easily. He wasn’t always clean, long hair, not good teeth; it would be very easy to write him off.

MP: It sounds like a rowdy household you grew up in.

CJ: It was a very rowdy household. Christmas morning, we still talk about Christmas mornings with all of the kids. It was an active household. As I said, I had the good fortune of knowing that those supports were there for me. I look back on it now from my days on school board, when you’re making Father’s Day presents and you don’t have a dad, that’s a big deal for a kid—a really big deal. I had my grandparents. My grandfather was my father for a large portion of my life. I was incredibly close to my grandparents. I knew how close we were. If we didn’t have my grandparents there, I knew how tough it would have been for my mom to have been working full time supporting two kids on her own. I think that shapes your values when you grow up in that kind of way.

MP: You led a protest when you were in Grade 7?

CJ: [Laughs] It’s true. My first political action. In grade 7, it snowed in Victoria, which was a rare thing, and girls weren’t allowed to wear pants to school. It was cold and we were complaining about being cold. We went to the principal, the principal refused. We were only requesting to wear pants while it was snowing. We actually weren’t looking at breaking the rules at all. But he said no, so I took the school out and we walked around the school and got our pictures in the paper and the principal allowed us to wear pants.

MP: Do you think you were influenced by your mom?

CJ: No question. My mother is the radical in the family. She taught us to stand up for our rights, and you stand up for what you believe in even if it isn’t the popular thing to do. It’s certainly, all the protests we went to around the peace movement, the involvement that they had during that time period. It was a good role model for me, both my mother and my grandmother.

I come from a line of very strong women in our family who despite the challenges, faced the situation they were in and got on with it. They got on with what they needed to do and at the same time recognized that you contribute to what’s around you.

My mother has continued the same way. She was a special-education teacher in our school district. She retired five or six years ago. Now she’s just as active. She’s president of the Intercultural Association of Victoria. She volunteers teaching refugees English. She does citizenship classes on Fridays. She still volunteers at the rest home where my grandparents spent the last couple of years of their life. And she’s retired. You have to schedule time with my mother the same kind of way you have to schedule time with me. I’m fortunate.

MP: What were your high school days like?

CJ: I graduated from what was considered an innovative new program in the school district, a first-year program where they recruited students from around the school district to come to an independent learning program. You actually got your credits by doing an independent studies programs. I think we took three courses within the high school and the rest of our work was in the community. I focused on psychology. I took my math within the school system and did psychology by working outside the school system, volunteering and working with special needs youth in the school system.

I got involved in drama and acting when I was 12. I was a fairly shy kid. I was quite quiet and so my parents figured that if they got me into theatre it would help a little bit. I think they thought it would give me a little bit more confidence. I wasn’t someone who was big into public speaking—one of those kids that froze at being called on in class to answer questions. You avoid the eye contact in class like lots of kids. So I got involved in the local theatre company in Victoria, and I loved it. My very first job in high school was doing summer theatre in the square. We did theatre in the square and we did children’s theatre. We performed at the MacPherson [Theatre] and I loved it. I got quite involved. Drama was an area that I focused on.

MP: What would kids in your high school have said about you?

CJ: It’s interesting. A few of them have called and made contact over this past year. People that I didn’t have contact with who’ve made contact over this time period. One of them—it’s funny, I wouldn’t have seen myself this way—but she said, ‘Oh yeah, you showed political action and showed leadership back in high school. Don’t you remember when you got us all together to talk about equality and women’s liberation during that time.’ I think people would say that I was politically active even then, active in the community even then. I didn’t get involved in student council in high school because I was too involved in outside activities through the community theatre.

MP: Did you go to university?

CJ: I didn’t. I went right to work from high school. I went to work in an institution for adults with disabilities. I graduated from highs school when I was 17, and was hired a month later and that was in Red Deer, Alberta. At 17, it was the first time away from home with a person who was then to become my husband, and we both got jobs in Red Deer, lived there for a year and then came back to Victoria and worked at Glendale, which was an institution in Victoria.

MP: What sort of work were you doing?

CJ: In Alberta, I was working with adults with disabilities. Care Aid is what they called it, looking after people who were institutionalized.

MP: And your first husband was someone you knew from high school?

CJ: My husband was the brother of my best friend in high school [laughs]. We grew up together. We were 16 when we met, and we stayed together 27 years. We divorced about four or five years ago now, stayed good friends. I just re-married last May. My ex-husband, my ex-mother-in-law, my ex-sister-in-law, and ex-father-in-law were all at the wedding. We’ve stayed great friends and have a great connection in life.

MP: So he’s, Chris James, the father of your two children.

CJ: Yep. I had very progressive parents.

MP: It sounds like quite a ’60s childhood.

CJ: It was a ’60’s childhood [laughs]

MP: So you continued to work in special needs?

CJ: I did. I came back to Victoria and started working back in Glendale, which is an institution in Victoria and realized that I didn’t want to continue on with the institutional care. It wasn’t the kind of support that I thought was important for adults and youth with disabilities. I wanted to get back into community care and at that time, as I said earlier, my grandparents had made their decision that they wanted to retire so they offered to sell the house to my husband and I… So we moved into the house, and had an instant family, four foster kids.

MP: Built in.

CJ: Built in.

CJ: They were already there, settled. As kids moved out, we took in our own foster kids. The foster kids were the work. I was there full time and we decided to start our own family during that time period as well, so I think after the first year after being in the house, I decided we should have our own kids. Within the next couple of years I had both my kids, my daughter and my son, Allison and Evan.

MP: How old are they?

CJ: Allison is 25 and Evan is 23.

MP: What other things interest you. Do you have hobbies or passions outside of politics?

CJ: I’m an addicted reader. I was joking I have a half an hour in my schedule today so I trucked off to the book store to make sure I could pick up a couple of books because they only had two.

MP: What do you read?

CJ: I read a little of everything. Right now, I’ve been reading a lot of Canadian fiction. My daughter on her time out of university works at Monroe’s Books so that’s wonderful for her and wonderful for Monroe’s books because it means it’s and opportunity to pop down and pick up a little more literature. I read a little bit of everything.

MP: Mostly fiction, non-fiction?

CJ: Both. I usually have at least two books on the go so I usually have a fiction book and a non-fiction, depends on what type of mood I’m in. It’s my relaxation time. I read every night regardless of how crazy the day has been. I sometimes fall asleep with a book. For me, that’s really my relaxation. To me, a great vacation is to sit someplace with a book and be able to read two or three books and take them on.

MP: Do you get outside much? Are you an outdoors person?

CJ: I’m a walker. I’m new to loving wilderness. When I moved up to Prince George and met my husband, he lives outdoors. My husband is from Burns Lake. I claim he spent his childhood outdoors. I don’t know how much time he spent inside. I think most of it was outside, especially talking to his mother. He is a huge outdoors person; it’s part of who he is. I had the good fortune to have a holiday with him when I was still living up north where we went out to what is his family’s traditional hunting ground. They have an area that their family has gone to for over 100 years outside of Fort St. James. It’s about 10 hours from Fort St. James so it’s in the middle of absolutely nowhere. I realized it was the first time I had ever been anywhere that it was completely dark.

My mother wasn’t much of a camper. Having a cabin was her camping when I was a kid growing up. If you go camping anywhere on the island you still see the lights. It was an amazing experience. I saw my first grizzly bear. I saw caribou. I saw deer. We camped for a week in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It’s become a real passion. …It’s incredible. I’m a city girl. This was all a new experience for me living up north. It’s incredible.

MP: Are you religious?

CJ: Nope. I think my family would call themselves spiritual. I don’t think that organized religion was ever part of my family growing up, but my mom because of her connections with peace movement had lots of connections with the Unitarian Church and with the United Church and with Quakers because they were involved with the peace movement. We would go to peace events at the Unitarian Church, which was in the neighbourhood. But organized religion wasn’t part of my family growing up.

MP: When did you join the NDP? Or was that like the house, you inherited it?

CJ: [Laughs] I think some of it, my daughter jokes, is in our genes in our family.

I don’t know when I became a formal member of the party. I think probably around the time I ran for school board. I would have been 28 or 29. But when I was a kid growing up, we worked on every NDP campaign. We were out there, we delivered leaflets. It was around the Dave Barrett time period when my parents were really involved and when we had two MLAs for the riding.

Strong political discussions have been part of my life from the time period when I was a kid. My house, we always had a large house because we had a lot of foster kids, so we always had good political debate whether it was the dinner table or whether it was later in the evening. There were always interesting people around in our household having good discussions. That was just part of my growing up.

MP: Your first bid for office was to be secretary of your kid’s pre-school?

CJ: We have a co-operative pre-school in James Bay, and I got involved in the co-op pre-school. I wanted my kids to have that kind of engagement in the community. I also wanted to be involved in the pre-school, so I was convinced to run for the executive and I picked the job of secretary because you didn’t have to say anything. You could just take the notes at the meeting. I got elected president the next year, so that didn’t last very long [laughs].

I then got involved in my kids’ education through the education system. I was asked to run as president of the parent’s association. Both my kids went to the same school where I went. I was asked to run for president of the parent’s association, so I did that. Then I was asked if I could get involved at the district parent’s association. I was elected president the first year I was there as well, and sat as the representative for the school board. I did that for a year, and got convinced to run for school trustee in 1990, and sat on the Victoria school board for 11 years.

MP: Were those all part-time positions? You were still a mom and foster mom?

CJ: It was part-time jokingly. I think if I counted up the hours that I put in… not full time pay, but full time job hours.

I was chair of the board for a large portion of most of years that I was on school board. Then I also got involved provincially with the B.C. school trustees… It took up a great deal of time, a lot of travelling, a lot of weekend travelling. I spent five years doing that.

At the provincial school trustees association… I actually went to the AGM to run for the board of directors. I put my name forward for the board of directors. People were trying to convince me to get involved provincially and felt that I could bring some leadership to the provincial association and there were three people running for president at the AGM. The night of the nominations, when they opened up the floor for nominations, somebody nominated me for president from the floor and I had never been on the executive before and didn’t think I should be doing that. Someone said, ‘Oh, that’s really good experience because you run for president, then you’ll drop down to vice-president and then you’ll drop down to board of directors. You’ll ensure that you end up serving on the board of directors, and I ended up winning on the first ballot as president.

It was an incredible learning experience to be president of an organization that had just hired a new executive director. The association was looking to shift and change. It was an association that had a lot of school boards in the province that weren’t members, who saw the association as not representing the broad views. At that stage, the executive director retired—he and I came in new—the new executive director, and really it was an incredibly exciting time because it was an opportunity to really shift the organization to really try and represent the needs of all of the school boards as diverse as they are in B.C.

MP: If you could pick one anecdote from your years there that you think demonstrates your leadership abilities, what would it be?

CJ: I think the one that stands for me the most, and the experience that I think points out the most, was the whole issue of school board amalgamation. I think it was my second year at B.C. school trustees, and the government of the day which was an NDP government. It would have been Clark. They made a decision that they were going to amalgamate school boards.

The minister phoned me out of courtesy saying he was going to come out with this report that was going to take the school boards in the province down to 37 school boards. At that point I think we had 79 school boards in the province. He said, ‘This is the direction I’m going. I’m going to be making this announcement in the next few days.’

I sat down, in shock, like many people that this was the decision. We had had no indication from government that they were going in that direction, and felt that there was a huge missing piece in this decision of government, which was the local communities. You had a government that was going and make a decision based on no input from the people who elected these individuals in the communities.

So I called my board of directors together and said that I felt we had to go forward to the minister and make a recommendation for a public consultation process. That was critical, that’s part of the values of elected school boards, and part of my values to ensure that the people who are impacted by this decision actually have a chance to influence those decisions. We went to the minister of the day and said we wanted a public consultation process and would he hold off.

He came back to me and said, ‘I’m willing to hold off on a few conditions.’ One of those conditions is that you will do this public consultation yourself. In other words he was insisting that I, as president of the school trustees association, actually do the public consultation process with the deputy minister of education. Two, that there was a timeline—this was I think February—that a report would have to be on his desk by Easter, so early April. We’re talking about 79 communities. The third one was that we had to recommend amalgamations, that it was not an option to go into this process and come out with a report that didn’t recommend some amalgamations. Amalgamation had to stay on the table. It would be our job to figure out how to walk that.

I spent a couple of long nights going back and forth about what position we were in and called the board of directors back together again to have a conversation and got agreement from the board that we would move forward on this process despite the fact that it wasn’t ideal. But, recognizing that government was going to amalgamate anyway, I convinced the board of directors that we should go forward with this public consultation process. So we did 22 meetings in 24 days in the middle of winter around British Columbia with the deputy minister. We held meetings that went anywhere from three hours to nine-and-a-half hours in communities where people had a chance to come and argue.

MP: Was it clear to people in the meetings that there was a foregone conclusion?\\

CJ: We were very clear. It’s one of the toughest processes I’ve gone through. You were talking about people losing their school board. In fact, people sitting around that table were ones who were targeted on the list by the minister. So we went through the public consultation processes, we pulled together the report and delivered it on Good Friday—I still remember that—to the minister. We recommended that the boards in the province go down to 58 school boards.

It was a very tough time. It was a tough time for our members; it was a very tough time for the public who felt they were losing publicly elected officials. I wouldn’t have changed the decision at all because it was the right decision.

We came out with the better decision in the end. We had the ability to actually listen to the communities so we recommended very different amalgamations than the government had suggested because of public input, listening to the people that were directly in that community.

To me, that was one of the significant leadership that I was involved in. I had the chance to take the values that I believe so strongly in: the value of including people in decisions that are going to be impacted in decisions, being practical and pragmatic, we had to look at the fact that the government was going to amalgamate. We could say we didn’t like that all we wanted, it didn’t matter, that was the reality. So how do you take that situation and try and turn it something that going to come out with a better result? It may not be ideal result that you want but it’s going to be a better result.

Then I had the good fortunes to be elected three significant years after that as president of the school trustee’s association where we had reduced our membership significantly. That, I think, was an honour and a recognition of the inclusiveness of that process for people.

MP: What did your fair critics hit you with during that time?

CJ: Interesting question. There were people who said that I should have fought harder against the amalgamations, that if we had dug in our heels, maybe the government wouldn’t have moved forward, if we had stood strong. I obviously don’t agree with those critics because I think we would have ended up with 37 school boards and no opportunity for the public to be involved. There still are some communities that aren’t overly happy with their amalgamations; it still comes up every once in a while.

On the school board, I was proud of our pubic budget consultation process. We cut a lot of funds in the school boards. It was a tough time to be a trustee. We had dropping enrollment in the Victoria school district, underfunding from the government and so we were having to make decision that were very, very tough. We described it as, “Which important program do you want to cut?” That was the situation we were in. I worked very hard to insure that we had a public budget consultation process, an opportunity for everyone to be heard before any decision were made and not simply heard by administrators around the school board, but, in fact, heard by everyone in the school districts, students included.

In the two years I was chair there, we had introduced a district consultation committee. We had a committee of teachers, administrators, trustees and support staff all sitting together involved in advising the board as we made decisions. I also introduced a district student consulting committee, so we actually had one representative from each high school in the school district. It was an opportunity to include all of those people. In the end, tough decisions still had to be made.

We had very clear timelines. One of the things that I think is very important about any consultation that you do is be clear about your timelines, be clear about what’s on the table and what isn’t. Don’t give people false expectations that you’re not going to make a decision in the end to cut budget because we had to. We had to balance our budget. I balanced 11 budgets in the school board. Those weren’t easy decisions.

I’m proud of that fact that we had people who had a chance to have their say and I think that you talk to the unions and the associations, they may say that they didn’t always agree with the end decision that was made, but they felt respected and they had their voices heard. For me, that’s an important value, a very important value.

MP: How did that lead to becoming a director of child care for the province?

I was stepping down from B.C. School Trustee Association. I’d decided that at the end of five years that I should move on and look at other opportunities. There was a Director of Child Care position in government where the person was stepping out and they were looking for someone to come in on a temporary basis to fill the position. I was recruited by people in the Ministry. The government, at that point, was looking to develop a child care program for British Columbia, then New Democrat government.

MP: This was a full-time directorate with a staff?

CJ: We started off only with three staff and expanded. I was given a budget to hire staff so we expanded a department of eight to 10. During the time period I was there I had to go through the process of hiring staff, recruiting staff who would manage that position.

Basically the mandate I was given was to develop a child care program, bring us a budget, so this was a brand new program, write legislation that is going to develop this program. Again I went to government and said, “You need to work with the communities in order to be able to do this. There are a lot of people in the child care world who feel very strongly about this program. You need to develop a program with them.” Again, I ran into some resistance. It’s not common for people in the civil service to work with people in the field to develop program and services. But again, part of my values are that you talk to the people who have the expertise; you’re clear about what the parameters are. This wasn’t an open-ended process.

I had the opportunity to put together a group of people to work on this program and develop a five-year child care program, for the government to present, had the legislation through and passed, supported by child care providers, not for profit, as well as private child care providers were involved in that process, developed a transition plan for how you get from where you were now to the reality.

There would probably be, to get back to the critic question, people who would have said that we should have implemented it immediately, and we should have done it all, put the money in right away. But again, I think part of my leadership and part of what I’ve learned through life is you put your goal out, you put your vision out, and you work within the realities you have to get there. I was very proud of the fact that we had a five-year plan. It looked at how we could use the federal dollars along with the provincial dollars—it matched them up, it phased it in. It was open to everyone so they knew how the program was being developed.

MP: You left to run for office?

CJ: I took a leave of absence in 2001 to run in the last provincial election.

MP: You ran in Victoria?

CJ: Yeah, Victoria-Beacon Hill.

Waiter: Excuse me, folks. Who would like the soup to start?

MP: Oh, I do.

Waiter: And the salad?

CJ: Thank you very much. Great. Thank you.

Waiter: Do you need some ground pepper for the salad?

CJ: Thanks.

MP: Thank you. OK. Back to 2001.

CJ: Yep, 2001. I won the NDP nomination and then took an unpaid leave of absence to run in the provincial election. An incredible opportunity, an incredible challenge. We ended up in a vote recount in our riding. We were one of the two ridings at the end of the election that actually had to go through a final recount. What were the final numbers? 38 votes.

MP: You lost by 38 votes? Wow. Out of how many cast?

CJ: I don’t know. I’d have to go back and look. I’ve blocked it out. [laughs]

MP: Why did you run?

CJ: For the same reason I got involved in school boards, for the same reason I got involved in B.C. School Trustees Association. I saw a chance to get involved, make a difference, and in fact to shift a party that I saw that wasn’t going in a direction that I supported.

MP: The shift of the NDP.

CJ: Yep.

MP: What direction was it going?

CJ: I felt that it was a government that had lost its ability and its respect for listening to the public. I think you had a government that lost its connection to the people of British Columbia. I felt that that was a huge loss. It was moving away from the values of New Democrats. It wasn’t good government, and I felt I had an opportunity to contribute to that change. It was the toughest election for anyone to run in, this last provincial election.

MP: 2001 wasn’t a great year to be an NDP candidate.

CJ: It wasn’t a great year. I had a lot of people said to me, “Why would you run now? Why don’t you wait for a couple of terms until the NDP has gone down and started rebuilding again?”

It would have been easy to sit that election out, continue on in my job and not get involved. But I learned growing up that if something you belong to or something you care about is going in a direction that you don’t like, you have a responsibility to get involved and try and change it. That means in good times and bad.

MP: With all due respect, it must have hurt to lose in a neighbourhood that you grew up in, you raised your family in?

CJ: It was very tough. It was two-and-a-half weeks before the count came in. All the other ridings were done. The election was over for most people. We had to wait for the advanced and other polls to come in. It was a very tough thing. This community I cared deeply about.

It also held a lot of weight at that point because we only had two seats in the legislature. The hope was that if we could get those two seats, we could get official opposition status. There was additional responsibility as well. But, as everything in life, and I know from my life, you learn from every experience. I look at what occurred for me for the few years after that and I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

MP: So you went back to government and worked for Gordon Campbell?

CJ: I did. It was my job as Director of Child Care to look at the direction government was going. We had a re-organization. I was in what became the Ministry for Community and Aboriginal Women Services. I was given additional responsibilities.

I went through the core review, Gordon Campbell was going through a core review of all the Ministries. We were required to put forward for consideration 25 per cent, 35 per cent and 50 per cent. Myself and the Director of Women Services were asked to spend our time putting together the scenarios, so we worked for all of September and all of October, and she and I talked. We both worked all Thanksgiving, stayed in the office all Thanksgiving. We’d put our scenarios together, we’d go and commiserate with each other and say how awful this was and we’d go back and do our job again. We spent a lot of time struggling with all of that.

By November I knew I couldn’t stay in the job. I’ve never taken on a job or a role in life where I didn’t feel I could have some kind of positive impact and this was a job where I didn’t feel I could have a positive impact. In fact, I was going to be hurting the very area I had spent a lot of my life. So I made the decision to leave.

MP: Did you know what was coming when you went back to work?

CJ: It was pretty clear then what direction the government was going. It was very clear. I went to support my minister of the Union of B.C. Municipalities as a staff person. It was pretty clear then, and looking at core review process, that we were looking at cuts in programs and services coming up. I knew it was going to be a tough road, a very tough road.

MP: Were the cuts more or less severe that you expected during the election?

CJ: Oh, worse. Much worse than I expected. I didn’t’ think the government would go as far as it would. I didn’t think you could take apart things that had taken years and years and years to build so quickly. I think that was shocking to a number of people in how fast something that took a long period of time to introduce and to develop could be gone by one decision by government. I think like many people, I was shocked.

I think more shocked after I started my new job up north because I saw the direct impact so clearly. I saw what happens when a government basically gives up on people who are struggling, some of the most disadvantaged family and children in our province, providing no support. I saw the direct impact of that through my work. I think it was much worse. I didn’t think they would go that far.

MP: Tell me about the decision to go north. You spent virtually your entire life in Victoria. But now you are single or soon-to-be-single, your kids are out and gone, the odds of getting a job in the Campbell administration are pretty low at this point.

CJ: [Laughs] That’s a good assessment.

CJ: I knew it was going to be very challenging for me to find a job in Victoria. I had been a candidate in the election. It was a time when they were seeing civil service cuts and cuts in programs and community organizations. I knew that it was going to be tough for me to find employment. At that stage of my life both my kids had moved out on their own. My husband and I were separated, going through the process of divorce. I decided that I was at the stage where I could look for new adventures.

MP: Even with all of that, I’m still trying to figure out how Prince George leaps to mind?

CJ: [Laughs] Believe me, I had my family ask me that as well. I applied first for a job in Nunavut. There was a senior policy position in the government that looked very intriguing. I put in an application and was told that their budget was frozen.

The executive director of the agency that I went to work for in Prince George phoned me.

He had a director of child and family services area open. He phoned me and I laughed. I laughed for a long time on the phone. Why would I want to move to Prince George? He convinced me to come up for the interview. “You don’t have to make a decision, just come up for the interview.”

So I went up in the middle of December for the interview, so lots of snow. My biggest fear of living up north was driving in snow; having lived in Victoria you don’t ever learn to drive in snow. So I rented a car at the airport just to see if I could do it, to see if I could actually drive from the airport to downtown. I went for the interview, went back to the hotel that night, got a call the next morning saying that they were offering me the position. I asked them if I could take the weekend to think about it. By Sunday morning, I knew that it was an incredible challenge, something that I’d regret it if I didn’t give it a chance, if I didn’t take the offer. I called my family, told them I was making the decision, and put my house up on the market the next day.

MP: You sold your grandparents’ house?

CJ: I did. My family house. I decided that if I was going to make this decision, I had to make it all the way. I had to really commit to living in the community up north. So I sold the house, packed up my bags and moved up to Prince George on January 2nd, 2002.

MP: To work for Carrier-Sekani child and family services?

CJ: It was an Aboriginal organization. This is part of the devolution of services from the Ministry to the Aboriginal communities. We served 12 aboriginal bands. Particularly in the north, many of the First Nations are quite small bands, so they aren’t able to have their own agency to do the transfer of services. Here we had 12 bands that joined together to create this agency. They provide both health services as well as child and family services. So in both areas they had to transfer dollars from the federal government. There were more than 50 staff in both the health area as well as the children and families area.

They moved all the health services over and they weren’t having a lot of success moving the children and family services over. There was a reluctance on behalf of our Ministry. They didn’t feel their communities were ready, and so they asked me to come in and see if we could move to unstick that. One of the things that was very clear to me when I came into the agency was that there was a step that they still needed to do, which was to go out to the communities and be very clear about what it meant to take on children and children services. You’re talking about child welfare, you’re talking about challenges with your own family members in many of those small communities. I felt it was very important before the services were devolved for communities to actually be clear about what responsibilities were going to be there and what partnership they had to take on because that this isn’t something that the agency could take sole responsibility for. The communities had to be a clear partner in this as well.

MP: Had you discovered that you were Métis by this time? Maybe we missed that along the way.

CJ: [Laughs] Right…. When my daughter was nine or 10 she got quite interested in genealogy and started to do some searching.

Scott: Like every nine and 10 year old.

CJ: [Laughs] Exactly, a driven child. She started to some searching, and she discovered in some photo albums in my mother’s house—she and my mother were very close—she discovered divorce papers from my mother and father. In the divorce papers it had place of birth, Alberta, for my father. So she figured out a way to find out more information was to write away to Vital Stats in Alberta and ask them for a birth certificate. All she had was a name and the fact that he was born in Alberta, no date of birth, nothing else. Vital Stats wrote her back and said we’ll do a search for three years. It’ll cost you this much money and we may find nothing at the end of it. She dutifully sent her money and heard nothing for two years.

Then all of a sudden arrived my father’s birth certificate and my grandparent’s on his side. I found out more information on that day when those things arrive than I had my whole life. I had found out my father’s age; I found out my grandparents and my grandmother on my father’s side were born on the same day of December as I was. I had the discussion then with my mother and my grandmother who said, ‘Oh yeah, your grandmother was First Nations. So I did a little digging again based on her place of birth. It was a place called Egg Lake, Alberta, which was a Métis settlement where they moved many Métis communities in Alberta. It’s now a nature sanctuary. That’s where I discovered my roots. It was through my daughter.

MP: So your father would have been half Métis. So that makes you a quarter?

CJ: Yeah.

MP: OK, back to Prince George. Why did you leave that job, and how did you get back to the NDP.

CJ: I had intentions of staying in that job for at least five years. I’ve said this often, it was the toughest work I’ve done in my whole life, it was the hardest work and in many ways the most rewarding work. I learned what it was like to live in a resource-based community. I learned what it was like to drive logging roads day after day, experiences you never have in the city. You learn how tough it was and how resilient they are.

I was asked by the First Nations in the north if I could be their co-ordinator, their staff person. I did both jobs—I did my job at the agency and my boss agreed that he would give me half-time to the agency. Basically I did two full time jobs, both of them on half-time.

And then Joy [McPhail] stepped down. When Joy stepped down, the calls started to come from people around the province who said, “Have you ever thought about it? Would you consider it? Would you put some thought to it?”

I think my first reaction was “Why would I do that?” [All laugh.] But the question stayed with me.

In lots of ways, I went up to Prince George to take a break from politics. What I found out was that it was a passion. I decided I really had to spend some time thinking seriously about this. I took some time talking to the elders in the communities that I worked with.

I felt it was important to talk to the elders. There was a comment that stuck with me from one of the elders where she said, “If you have the ability to run for leader, you have a responsibility to take the experience that you’ve had here and the knowledge you’ve gained here and use it at that level.” That really stuck with me because I could reflect back on my life and how my parent and grandparents had lived that way, and so I took a long weekend with my soon-to-be husband.

MP: Someone you’d met up there?

CJ: Yep. Al Gerow. We went camping to a place called Moose Lake, which is off way to the side of Burns Lake in the middle of absolutely nowhere, a forestry camp site and spent the weekend in the middle of nowhere away from phones and other people giving advice and spent a lot of time sitting by the fire, swimming in the lake, watching the bears, and I woke up Sunday morning and said, “Y’know, I have to step up to the plate, just as I did in the last election. I think the party has to go in a direction that I saw was missing in the last government.” I felt strongly about that and strongly enough that I would regret it if I didn’t step up to the plate and try and bring the same kind of values that I ran in the last provincial election for, to the leadership. I phoned the next day and made my decision.

MP: You went back to Victoria?

CJ: I stayed in Prince George while the leadership processes was going on, but by putting my name forward for leadership I had also made a commitment to run for the party. I wasn’t just going to run for leader. If I had made a commitment to get back into politics, I had made a commitment to get back into politics.

I’m also a strong believers that MLAs need to know their communities. I think that’s a critical part of representing your community. By making this decision I’d also made a decision to move back home because that’s where I needed to run. I needed to run back home. I needed to run in the place I had grown up and raised my kids.

Prince George has become my second home and the people up there have been incredible, but as people will tell you up there in the north, unless you have lived for ten years, you’re still a newcomer, and I haven’t had the community connections that you do when you raise your own kids in a community.

MP: You ran for party leader?

CJ: Yeah, so I got involved in the leadership campaign. An incredible opportunity and incredible challenges, being the only woman in the race was a huge challenge. I had people including our own party members say, “I think you were the best candidate. You were the kind of person we need in the party, but I can’t vote for you because you’re a woman.” It was an additional barrier to have to face throughout this process.

MP: Why do you think you won?

CJ: I think I won because people in the party were ready for the message that I was putting forward, which is that we have to end the polarization of politics in B.C.

People would point to my experience, people who knew me in the Trustee Association, or knew me in the child care job, or knew me up north, would have always said I was respectful of everyone even if they had different political views than I did. That if I felt we had a common goal and a common direction, you could move forward.

I think one of the telling e-mails for me, and I’ve saved it actually, is from a trustee who would describe himself as right of Attila the Hun—in fact, that is how he introduced himself when he would be at trustee meetings—he sent me an e-mail after the leadership saying I put him in a horrible, awful dilemma because for the first time in his life he may have to vote NDP.

I brought an experience base of a very practical, common sense, pragmatic kind of approach to politics. I think that the party was ready for that. I think that’s why I won the leadership. They wanted the party to go in that kind of direction.

MP: I want to follow up on a couple of things. Why did the fact that you are part Métis not come out until after the leadership race?

CJ: I got a lot of questions from the press about how come I didn’t put out that I was Métis during the leadership convention. How come it wasn’t on my website?

My response was that I didn’t grow up in an Aboriginal community, and I wouldn’t presume to know the experiences who grew up in an Aboriginal community. But I think the fact that I have Aboriginal background—the same way that I’m a woman, the same way that I’ve been involved in my community—is going to influence my decision making.

Was it a deciding factor [in her decision to run]? No. But it is part of who I am, part of my make up the same way that I grew up with foster kids or got involved in my community or served as an elected school board. I think that’s one of the pieces of my experience.

MP: Before we move on to talking about the NDP, is there anything we haven’t covered, anything about you personally?

CJ: I think we touched on most of it. I grew up in a family that knew that faced challenges and also contributed to the community despite that. I think that influences strongly who I am. I think that I’ve lived the values that I believe in so strongly; that I haven’t come to these values because I’m in politics. I’ve lived with my entire life. I’ve continued on with those values with my own kids. We had foster kids with my kids, so they grew up with other people in the household. They grew up knowing how important it was to contribute and be responsible.

I think these are the values that the majority of British Columbians are looking for. If you talk to the majority of people out there, they don’t talk about left or right or centre. The debate that the media gets into or the debate that people in politics get into, they’ll talk about the fact that they want common sense approaches, they want someone who is open and trustworthy, who has integrity. They talk about the traits as those kinds of things as being important.

MP: It sounds like a fun way to grow up. Trust and integrity are good segues to talking about the NDP.

CJ: [Laughs] Certainly.

MP: A lot of B.C. voters feel burned by Glen Clark. Why should anyone ever trust the NDP again?

That’s probably the question I got the most often in the first three months I spent traveling around the province. I think that the first step is to talk about the things that we’ve talked about: my qualities, my traits, the fact that I’ve shown through my leadership that I’ve lived those values.

I think second is that I’ve been very clear about the mistakes made. I’ve been very open with the public, with members, with communities about the fact that New Democrats made mistakes. We weren’t perfect. I think it’s important to say that.

I think that one of the things that happened was that they lost their connection with the public. That can’t happen again. That’s not good government to lose that connection. I committed to people that I would spend the first year of my leadership traveling around the province listening to people. And that’s what I’ve done. Months where I’ve been home three nights in a month because I’ve been out in communities meeting with people, meeting with groups and organizations and meeting with people across the board. I go into communities and meet with community organizations and social agencies and business groups and downtown associations because again I believe it’s important to build that trust back for people.

MP: What, specifically, will you do to insure that the NDP will not fall back to those ways?

CJ: I think that the first one is to have a leader that has shown through their work that they believe in bringing everyone to the table, that this isn’t just rhetoric. This is the way I’ve live my life, this is the way I’ve been in leadership positions. I don’t know how to do it otherwise.

I’ve shown that over the last year despite some criticism from both inside and outside the party. There were a lot of members who weren’t overly happy that I went to speak with B.C. businesses, for example, last summer. There would be people who would be happy if I didn’t speak to business groups as I went into communities.

I think they were surprised that I showed up. I think that’s the important piece. I think it’s also making sure—and people will see it reflected in our platform, but they’ve also seen it in the types of commitments I’ve made so far—that we’ll also put that into action. I’ve been clear, for example, in saying that we will put together a Premier’s Economic Advisory Council that will include business and labour at the table, and educators and community groups. So we’ll actually put structures in place that provide the opportunity to ensure that you’re getting a broad range of feedback from British Columbians.

MP: Will this process be open, be public?

CJ: Those processes will be very transparent. I think that there are all sorts of suggestions that have come forward from people about how do get more feedback from the public. How do provide more opportunities? People have brought forward suggestions like town hall meetings by MLAs on a regular basis. They’ve suggested opportunities for standing committees in government to actually go out and insure that they get feedback from groups and organizations.

MP: Are you hamstrung by the fact that many of the players in the Clark government are still involved with the NDP? Do you need to clean house?

CJ: Certainly there are people who were involved politically at that time period. But if you if take a look at what’s happened over the last year with the party, you’ll see that we have a huge number of new members—we’ve more than doubled our membership in the last year-- and many people who gave up their membership during that time period have now rejoined. We have a number of new candidates, people who haven’t been involved politically but are getting involved and come from a wide range of backgrounds. So I think that we’ve shown that within the party we are including a number of voices, not just the old guard. I think that you can take a look at the party itself—the party executive, the structure of people who have been involved—and see that it’s very diverse. A wide range of people; not simply the usual suspects which some people might believe.

MP: Have you ever been arrested or charged with a crime?

CJ: No [Laughs].

MP: Not in any jurisdiction?

CJ: Not in any jurisdiction.

Scott: Are you now or have you every been a member of…

CJ: [Laughs] That’s right.

MP: There’s a perception that the party is beholden to BC’s strong labour unions. Can you tell me how much union money is in the NDP now?

CJ: Most of our donations come from individuals. I’d have to take a look at the exact numbers.

Scott: I’ll get that for you next week.

[NDP communications director Scott Perchall provided the details a few days later: Trade unions donated $359,164 to the NDP in the first 10 months of 2004, the most recent period for which figures are available. That’s 14 per cent of the $2.5 million in total contributions during the same period. Individual contributions, by comparison, accounted for 84 per cent of the total. By comparison, the B.C. Liberal Party received 20 per cent of its revenue from individuals; 74 per cent flowed from corporate coffers.]

CJ: The perception [that the party is beholden to labour] is there, I understand that. It’s not reality when you look at the numbers. It’s part of the reason I’ve said New Democrats will implement election finance reform after 2005 if we’re a government. We will ban all donations from corporations and trade unions to political parties. I think it’s important we address the perception for the public, and I’ve been very upfront about that.

MP: The other question I want to ask you bluntly: as you’ve met with these folks, have they ever asked you to soften your position? Have the unions ever asked you to move your position, on any issue?

CJ: I can tell you that there are people that I meet on a daily basis, union and non-union, who push me on positions all the time. One of the things that’s shifted over the last year is that because New Democrats are now in the game, everybody has a piece of advice. I can’t go grocery shopping anymore without having people stop me in the store to offer their positions. Have I been pushed by labour more than I’ve been pushed by anyone else? No. In fact, I would say that it’s probably equal time for everybody and every issue and every agenda that people have offered their suggestions. I haven’t felt pressured in that respect, but I’ve certainly had people who have wanted the opportunity to be able to put forward their positions and that includes business and labour.

MP: Have your labour funders ever said, “If you do or don’t do this, your funding is going to be in jeopardy?”

CJ: Never. Never. I’ve never had a labour person say that to me. I’ve never had a labour person say, “We’re giving you this money because we want this done.” I’ve never had anyone either individually or collectively make those kind of comments to me. I think they’d know better because that’s not who I am. They know they’ll a fair shake from me, the same way that business will get a fair shake with me.

MP: Let me raise a specific that surprised me. I think it was last summer when the province seemed on the verge on a general strike. There was a lot of momentum. I was surprised that you were nowhere to be seen. From my understanding of the old NDP, that strike would have been something the NDP would have been right out in front of encouraging, nurturing, using that working class issue.

CJ: There were people who would have preferred to go to a general strike, who believed that was the way to get the message heard. It would have raised the anger against the government. But we were out there trying to resolve the dispute, not fuel a general strike in British Columbia. We were working very hard, but at the other end because it’s not good for British Columbia to move to a general strike. It’s not good for the province, it’s not good for the people of our province. What we wanted to do was actually get the dispute resolved.

As a party, through Joy and Jenny in the legislature, we argued vigorously against the legislation that was brought in. If you look at the history of the Campbell government—it’s hard to point to one item—but that certainly was one of the most punitive pieces of legislation that was ever brought in by a government. We did what we could; Joy and Jenny kept them going until the wee hours of the morning in the legislature to provide the support that was necessary to try and bring that legislation down. We knew that that wasn’t going to happen, but it was important to do that and make sure those voices were heard.

MP: A general strike… would have put you in the spotlight.

CJ: Yeah. There were a number of people who said, ‘It would have been a great opportunity for you.’ But my view was my job is to represent the people of this province—whether I’m leader of the opposition or whether I’m in government. And a general strike hurts the people of the province. We as a province already have a reputation of those wild swings, of that kind of extreme action. I don’t think that’s good for British Columbia.

If there would have been an opportunity to get government to change its mind on that legislation, if we would have been able to—through a general strike or some opportunity—to actually get them to change their direction, I might have looked at it differently.

But we had two seats in the legislature. That legislation was going to pass. No question about it. And so I thought it was important to try and find a result that would have been better for the people of B.C., better for the health-care system and the hospital workers. A general strike wouldn’t have done that.

MP: You’ve promised a balanced budget. Are you saying balanced every year?

CJ: Yep, I am. First of all we’re going into a surplus position. Sadly, the Liberals have balanced the budgets on the backs of low- and middle-income earners in B.C., which I think is unfortunate, but we are going into a surplus position. I’ve said we’ll continue that.

It’s the way I was raised. You don’t buy something until you have the money to be able to pay for it. You don’t take on debt that you don’t need to, and I think it’s important for government to maintain that as well. What that means, and I think the child care program is an example that I often use, it doesn’t mean that you get rid of your values or beliefs and your vision of where you want to take British Columbia, and what you want to put forward for British Columbia. It means it just may take some time to get there because you may have to wait until the economy is strong enough or the resources are there to be able to add programs and services.

As I said, the child care program was a very good example of that—five years, using federal dollars phased in so it was affordable for British Columbians and I’ve said to people we won’t be able to put back everything they’ve taken away. You can’t turn the clock back four years.

The reality is that Gordon Campbell has taken away so many things over the last four years that it would be a huge challenge to build back programs that took 10 to 20 years to put in place. We’re going to have to be patient. One of the things that I love about being a New Democrat is that we dream big and we want it all yesterday. It’s tough to be patient when you’re a New Democrat.

MP: Let’s talk about some of your challenges as leader, especially in this campaign. What are you doing to court either Green Party members, as well as people who lean Green whether it’s with a capital G or not.

CJ: I guess I’ll start with the leader first. I met with Adrienne Carr after I was elected leader. I felt it was important; it was a respectful thing to do. I knew that there would be issues that would come up around the Greens and the NDP so I wanted to meet in a formal way to say that I was going to run a respectful campaign, and that if she heard otherwise and had concerns to let me know. We had that kind of meeting. We also talked about issues that we had in common between the two parties.

We talked about the fact that both parties were concerned about voter registration. Usually before an election there’s a voter enumeration that occurs. That won’t happen this time. Liberals cut the Elections B.C.’s budget; there won’t be another voter enumeration before this next provincial election, so we expect a large portion of the population, especially people who moved for jobs who may think that they can’t vote because they don’t have voter registration cards. We talked about the fact that both our parties will be going out and doing that kind of push around voter registration. The other thing we talked about was the issue of electoral reform. Both parties were supporting some kind of electoral reform and that is each party put together strategies and it went public, and that we’d share information with each other. We had that conversation.

But I also made it very clear that we wouldn’t be looking at any kind of coalition or agreement where we would run NDP members in certain ridings and they would run in certain ridings because one of the fundamental beliefs that I have and the party has is democracy. I don’t believe that there should be two party leaders sitting in a back room somewhere making an agreement about not running people in ridings. That’s a voter’s choice. That shouldn’t be the leaders’ choice. I don’t believe in those kinds of political backroom deals. I think that’s the voter’s choice to decide who they want to run in their riding. I also made that very clear.

Am I reaching out to Green voters? I am. I’m reaching out to everybody. I’m reaching out to people who haven’t voted before, to youth and to people who voted Green in this last election.

MP: Could you give specific examples?

CJ: I’ll touch on Green first. In my 2001 race, I was one of those people impacted by the vote split. The two weeks we were waiting for the vote recount, I had people who left messages on my answering machine at home to say, ‘I was really mad at the NDP so I voted Green, but I didn’t think you’d lose.’ They were very upfront about that. They thought it was a vote that they could give without jeopardizing my seat.

I am saying to people that it is important for all of us to join together with a common direction of getting rid of what I believe is one of the most extreme governments we’ve ever seen in B.C.’s history. I am appealing to people in this next election to look at what’s at stake, to look at what’s at stake for our environment, to look at what’s at stake for our communities, to look at what’s at stake for education and health care system, and to vote for the only party that has an option of getting rid of these guys, and that’s the NDP.

To people who haven’t voted before and to youth, as we all know youth are pretty disengaged with political processes right now. I think a lot of that has to do with cynicism. I think a lot of that has to do with our politicians who haven’t been upfront with our youth. As I go into communities I try to make sure we do some kind of connection where youth are. I don’t think it’s good enough to expect that youth are going to show up at a New Democrat meeting or are necessarily going to join the party. I’m insuring that we actually go out where youth are—colleges, universities—make sure we connect with them in their environment, talk to them about their issues.

MP: What is the NDP doing on college campuses?

CJ: We’re going out and meeting with both New Democrat clubs as well as holding open sessions for people to come out and talk. I did that on my tour as well over this last year. I’d go sit in a cafeteria in a college for a while, talk to the youth who were there, engage them in the discussions about the issues that matter to them because I think that’s critical. We have to be talking to them about the issues that they see that are going to impact their lives. That’s a part of the continued work that I’m doing. We also have a very active Young New Democrat club that’s reaching out as well across the province. We had the largest convention we’ve ever had this last year with Young New Democrats, so we’ve got a good strong group of young people who are the ones that need to be providing the advice on how to reach out to young people.

MP: You’ve mentioned business groups a few times tonight. What is your vision for a new economy that is not based solely on extraction of resources?

CJ: We’re doing well in British Columbia right now, there’s no question we’re going to have a surplus. Areas of the economy have had strong growth and one of those areas is the whole area of commodity prices. Oil and gas and lumber are doing very well right now. My concern is, and I think that the gaffe we see with the Premier, is that we don’t have any diversification in our economy. We’re basically still relying on resources to keep us going. What’s going to happen when that cycle goes down as it always does? We’re going to see those commodity prices and I think the responsibility of government is to look at that kind of diversification.

The film industry announcement is a good example of that. It was New Democrats who, in fact, provided tax credits to the industry to begin with. $1.4 billion that they bring in in economic activity in British Columbia, good paying jobs—over 30,000 jobs—in B.C. You’re talking about an industry that is providing that diversification.

The example of the Beetlewood was actually called for by mayors in northern communities who said, “What’s going to happen when all this wood is gone? What’s going to happen when we pull the Beetlewood out of the forest?” and we’ll go back to that boom and bust cycle where we won’t have the jobs anymore. We’ll start losing our communities. Our schools will start closing. Again, my view is that the communities that know these kinds of things and the kind of industries that they can look at and the kind of diversification, let’s involve them in some of those decisions. If you talk to the Mayor of Quesnel, for example, he’ll say we should be sitting down in our community and saying “Five to 10 years out we know that we’re going to have a 40 per cent drop in the annual allowable cut. Let’s start looking at industries now. Let’s start looking at how we diversify our economy.” I think providing more opportunities for communities to be directly involved in those decisions is critical.

I think that the third economic tool that a government has, again that I’ve seen fail with this government, is education. We should be investing in skills training and trades. We should be investing in post-secondary educations so our young people can get the education they need so that they are looking at other economic opportunities, they have the skills to do that. We have a government that has increased tuition, isn’t using education as any opportunity.

Again, the new economy talks about investing in people. The new economy is where people are our resources. This government is not investing in people.

MP: Many your responses include a process that goes back to the community. Wouldn’t you agree that also, taking away nothing from that, it’s also necessary for a party leader to set a vision that’s inspiring, that people get excited about? A vision other than ‘We’ll consult with communities.’

CJ: I agree with you. In fact, I think that there would be people that would agree with that statement.

I think that’s why we’ve looked at things like freezing tuition fees once again fro universities and colleges, so that students can actually have the opportunity to move forward. We’ve talked about supporting once again apprenticeship training and trades so that young people can get that kind of training, so we can encourage that kind of investment in people in British Columbia. That’s why we talked about investing in the film industry. We have actually put out some specific examples that have talked about just that. How do we look at encouraging those kinds of changes in our economy, and what tools does the government have to do that? As I said earlier, I think education skills, training and trades is one of the key tools that we have and I think that’s being ignored by this government.

MP: I have one more question about politics, and then we’ll move to a list of specifics. The NDP has won three elections in B.C. history—and each time the conservative vote was split. Obviously, you’re running for all the marbles, but what would you define as a really successful race?

CJ: I think that’s up to the voters to decide. I don’t think it’s up to me to make the kind of call around what number of seats we’d like at or what would be success. To me, success is that we’ve been able to reach out to voters, that we’ve put forward our vision, a very positive message for the people of British Columbia, that we’re able to talk about the values that I think will resonate with the people of B.C., and that we run a good strong campaign. To me, that’s success.

It’s going to be a very close race. I think it’s going to come down to the wire. I think if you take a look at the polls they’ll go up and down a few points here and there until we get to the election. Obviously, we could go either way. I think we just need to be clear in the campaign with the people about our vision for British Columbia which I believe is their vision for British Columbia.

MP: Shall we have a look at the desert menu?

CJ: You go ahead. None for me.

MP [to waiter]: I’d like a cheesecake.

Waiter: Any coffee or anything?

CJ: I’m good, thanks.

MP: I’ll have a decaf please.

MP: OK. I have a laundry list of issues. They’re in no particular order. Please reply as briefly as you can. First, publicly funded childcare?

CJ: Will we be supporting some kind of childcare program in the next election? Yes we will. My hope is that federal dollars will be coming to assist us.

MP: The moratorium on offshore oil and gas development?

CJ: It remains. We’ve been very clear about that. An environmental assessment hasn’t been done, consultation has not occurred with First Nations. The industries aren’t interested in moving that, government is dangling false hope to communities when they should be looking at a resource and an economy that can actually be addressed now. So the moratorium remains.

MP: How about on shore oil and gas development?

CJ: We’ve expressed concern about the speed with which they’ve moved on coal bed methane, the lack of consultation and the lack of environmental protection. I think that the best example is in the Fernie area, where you had the mayor and council saying, “We’re not closing the door, but we want a community consultation process and we want an environmental assessment done before you open the door.” The Campbell government ignored their request and put the tracts up for bid in the face of local, national and international opposition.

That was incredible. The Campbell government didn’t care that the community was not interested, that the companies have recognized that the community was not interested. They just pushed ahead, not listening to the communities. That’s a common theme with the Campbell government. Not only in the area of resource extraction, the area of education, health care, and otherwise. “We know what’s best for you, trust us.”

MP: You said budget was balanced on the backs of the working class. There certainly is some truth to that. I would argue that another place that the provincial budget was balanced was on massive amounts of oil and gas revenue. Won’t it be hard to balance the budget without that revenue?

CJ: New Democrats moved forward on the oil and gas sector in the northeast of the province. It was New Democrats, in fact, who pushed to get a lot of that activity going. There’s a balance there, and having lived in northern communities, I recognize that’s there. You need to have those jobs and the economic growth going. I think that there are a couple of keys here. One is the community consultation that we talked about earlier.

The other is insuring that environmental protection is in place and the people are in place to carry that out. That’s another area where I have a great deal of concern. We’ve seen so many staff cut from the Ministry of Forests. A lot of the people who would be out insuring that logging practices were being followed, that watersheds were being protected, those jobs are gone. There aren’t people to do that kind of monitoring. I think it is the job of government, contrary to Gordon Campbell, to set those environmental standards and make sure that they’re carried out. That’s probably the difference, if you’re looking at economic development, between the two parties.

MP: Native land claims? Mike Harcourt made settling land claims a priority, but I don’t think really was successful.

CJ: It has to be a priority. It should be a priority for any government in British Columbia. It’s the right thing to do and it’s also the right economic thing to do. Even the B.C. Business Council has come out with a report that speaks clearly to the fact that we won’t see real economic growth in B.C. until the land claims are settled. It also brings resources to communities.

You talk to the people in Terrace and they’ll tell you the Nisga’a settlement brought in a large portion of economic activity and resources that supported that community that had really been struggling in many cases. It’s a benefit to First Nations and non-First Nations to get them done. It has to be a priority for any government. I don’t think that any government has done a great job thus far in settling land claims. We did, as New Democrats, get the Nisga’a settled, but not from the treaty process. I think it has to be a priority and it has to get done.

MP: How would you move claims forward?

CJ: There’s not a quick answer. It’s a complex problem. I would be foolish to suggest that there’s an easy fix. There isn’t an easy fix. But I think it starts off with respect. When I look at what the Liberals did when they first came in and brought in their referendums around treaty negotiations. How do you sit down at a table to negotiate in a serious way when you’ve brought in a referendum that was one of the most racist referendums we’ve seen in B.C.’s history? I think the first step is to show the respect that’s due there, to show that you have respect for the process. I think that goes a long way to them being able to move the process along.

MP: How about forest policy?

CJ: Well, again there are some key pieces that stand out for me that the Liberals have moved on that we need to correct. The first is the whole issue of raw log exports. We’ve seen raw logs exports increase under the Liberal government and again, I think we’re talking about shipping jobs from British Columbia, shipping resources from British Columbia. I think reducing raw log exports has to be a key for any government, and it has to be a key for us as New Democrats coming in. That’s the first step.

The second step is the kind of thing that we talked about with the Beetlewood where you actually take some of the revenue that’s coming to government from the cutting of logs and actually keep that in the community so a community can look at how they diversify. It’s a long-term view of forestry, I guess. What’s missing right now is what’s going to happen when that wood isn’t there and how can we make sure that we’re providing support for jobs in those communities and not seeing the boom and bust that occurs.

Obviously, softwood continues to be a huge issue. The softwood dispute continues to be a huge issue in British Columbia. I think that the Forest Minister has messed this up from the start. As the same Forest Minister in there, all of a sudden now he’s actually saying he thinks it’s important to actually get tough and get negotiations done. I think he should have been looking at how to get these negotiations solved three years ago and not six months before an election. I think that’s another huge piece.…We have a Forest Ministry that’s been gutted just as the Ministry of Environment was. I think that says a lot when they get rid of the Ministry of Environment when they come in.

MP: How about fish farms?

CJ: The moratorium should go back on for additional fish farm licenses. I think that there are a number of environmental concerns that have not been addressed.

I have said again that I think it’s government’s role to sit down with the industry to look at how they can move to safer land-based technology and closed-pen technology. There is technology out there to look at addressing the environmental issues, supporting the jobs in the community because these are communities that have been hit hard by changes in the resource-based economy.

The fish farms jobs are critical to the success of those communities, but what we see right now is that the industry itself isn’t doing well right now because of the concerns around the environmental issues.

MP: How about pulp mill effluent? Would you restore the organochlorine regulations that were placed a few years ago?

CJ: We talk about environmental protection; I think it’s important to set those standards at a provincial level. It’s important that the standards be there whether it’s pulp mill effluent or whether it’s air quality or where it’s protection of water. So, yes, I think it’s important that those regulations be brought in, and I think it’s important that we make sure to insure that people are following up on that. It’s not good enough to have a regulation in place and have no one out in the field to check and see if it’s being followed.

MP: Let’s talk about health care for a minute. Specifically, what are your plans to improve health care services and make it more accessible?

CJ: It’s one of those areas when you look at what’s failed under the Campbell government. Health care has been a huge failure under this government. We have non-accountable health boards, so I talked earlier about making sure you have people elected on those health boards so they are accountable to the community. We’ve made a commitment that we will require those community health boards to work with the community before they make changes in health care so you won’t see, as you saw under this government, health boards closing hospitals, recognizing afterwards that there was a problem there, when you’ve done damage for patients. We’ve said that we would require consultation to occur with communities. We’ve made a commitment that there will not be public dollars spent in private health care. Public dollars should be spent in the public system because that’s the right thing to do, it’s the cost effective thing to do. Manitoba is a very good example where they were actually able to buy a private clinic, move it into the private system, and discovered that they could save 33 per cent because that was a profit margin that was being made by the private clinic.

MP: How about alternative therapies? Here in the Lower Mainland we have a lot of people concerned that Chinese medicines or other alternative therapies are not being covered, not being supported.

CJ: We look at the fact the new Democrats weren’t perfect. There were things that we did that were successful as a government. In fact, we introduced the first legislation in the country supporting alternative medicine within the health care system, looking to how you could integrate it into the health care system, and I think we need to look at that legislation again. The Liberals canned that when they came in, got rid of it, and I think it’s important. If we’re going to look at prevention, which we’re not focusing on in the health care system, healthy lifestyles; I think there are a number of areas for us to look at including alternative medicine.

MP: How about the Olympics? Gordon Campbell said that he wants to light the Olympic flame with gas from the offshore. Meanwhile the Chinese are powering their Olympics by wind power.

CJ: Exactly. It’s an embarrassment. There are people who have said, “Would you cancel the Olympics? Should we put those dollars into the Olympics?” The reality is that the Olympics are coming. They’re going to be here in British Columbia. We need to make sure that they’re the best games ever. We have talked about some specifics around the Olympics. The first one being that the Auditor General will, under New Democrats, audit the books for the Olympics. The Liberals have said no, they won’t have the Auditor General. These are public dollars. We need the independent officer of the legislature to audit those books to insure that the public has confidence in the dollars going in. That’s the first step.

The second step is I think it’s important that we make sure that there is a legacy for all of British Columbia from the Olympics. One of the concerns you hear from people outside the Lower Mainland is ‘Well, great, the Olympics are coming, but what good is that going to do us in Burns Lake or Dawson Creek?’ I think it’s important that we look at a legacy for all of British Columbia, whether that’s for amateur sports for communities, recreation facilities.

We talked earlier about prevention and health. It’s a wonderful opportunity to do both things, to look at providing support for that kind of infrastructure. There are lots of northern communities where if you have a swimming pools or a recreation center, that would make a huge difference for youth in communities. I think that there are some examples like that.

You mentioned the environmental piece. We have a chance to showcase British Columbia. Embarrassingly enough, we have a Premier that hasn’t said that he thinks we should sign on to Kyoto. That’s an embarrassment to British Columbia. Here we have a chance to be the Green Olympics, a chance I would hope to both integrate the Paralympics as well as the Olympics together to show inclusive British Columbians, show all the strengths of living in this province--the multicultural elements that we are, the inclusive province we are. I don’t see the Premier paying attention to any of those kinds of issues in B.C. I think it’s a missed opportunity if we don’t have a government that acts on these kinds of things.

MP: What about the RAV line? Would you continue that level of funding?

CJ: Yes, I think the funding probably has to go forward. RAV line is going to be built now. I think the sad things about the RAV line, and I made these statements while the debate was going on, is that you saw a government that was interfering in a process around TransLink and around the board, in looking at a comprehensive transportation strategy. You saw the pet project of the Premier and Transportation Minister determined to make a privatization program work, because they haven’t had success yet. So I think they saw the RAV line as their way of having a private partnership work. Pulling that project out without having a discussion about the impact on the entire community.

In fact, we probably need a line to the airport. I don’t think that that’s the wrong direction to go, but you jeopardize the entire infrastructure for rapid transit and for alternative sources of transportation if you decide that this is your pet project and you’re moving forward with it. I think it’s a sad example of this government’s stubbornness.

MP: BC Hydro?

CJ: We will not be selling off BC Hydro. I’ve been very clear about that. BC Hydro is a Crown corporation that belongs to the people of British Columbia and will remain so under New Democrats. When we talk about alternate sources of energy, we’ve had the opportunity with BC Hydro to utilize the knowledge that is there, the expertise that is there. The Power Smart programs that were started by BC Hydro could have been utilized as a generator across the country. We could have been selling the kind of technology that’s there.

MP: I understand, and I may have this slightly skewed, that they’re basically prohibited from creating more generation at this point? Would you allow them to get back into generation capacity expansion?

CJ: Yes. It should be a tool, in my opinion. It’s an opportunity we have in B.C. that’s being missed.

MP: How about the ferries?

CJ: BC Ferries will be a Crown corporation again under New Democrats. We’ve been very clear about that as well. If you look at government that has moved to privatize their transportation systems, what ends up happening is lousy service and more expense for the commuter.

MP: So it will be turned around.

CJ: It will be back to a Crown corporation, and it will be under public scrutiny then. We’ll know where our tax dollars are going. Right now, we give over $100 million to BC Ferries as taxpayers--we have no idea where it goes. Because it’s no longer a Crown corporation, you can’t ask questions in the Legislature. We have no chance to find out where that money is spent. No accountability.

MP: What other transportation options would you be looking at? I have no doubt these lower mainland projects generate considerable resentment in places like Prince George.

CJ: Oh, yes.

MP: What does the rest of B.C. need to be connected to each other, or to here, or to wherever they want to be connected?

CJ: Well, I think public transit s a huge issue, and it’s not just a huge issue for the Lower Mainland and Victoria. It is a big issue for remote communities. I think that government does have a responsibility to provide support to municipalities for public transit. It would be interesting to see where the discussion around the gas tax goes with the federal government. We had a commitment from Martin that appears to be nowhere right now. Again, I think that’s an opportunity to bring resources in to support public transit and buses in communities that aren’t ever going to see rapid transit, but could use a good quality bus service. Having lived in Prince George, they could use some support in those communities. I think it’s an area we have to remember. We can’t forget the infrastructure of highways in our communities. If you’re living up north and you’re driving the highway from one end of the community to the other, it’s important to make sure that those roads are safe and that the infrastructure is there and we don’t let that go.

MP: How about police? As you know there have been some real problems in Vancouver specifically, and also allegations elsewhere. There is no complaint system. There’s no transparency. The RCMP investigation of the Vancouver Police Department is not public.

CJ: I think that the concerns are real. I’ve certainly had discussions with people who have raised those issues and I think it’s important to sit down with the municipalities and talk about how we put in place a very transparent review process. The police commissioner has strengths, there is certainly some strength there, but people have raised concerns about it not being independent enough. I think that we need to look at the existing structures, we need to look at what’s missing, we need to have those discussions with the municipalities and move ahead on insuring that more transparencies occur. What the model is? I don’t know until those conversations happen. I think it’s important to sit down with the people both inside and outside the system. There are lots of people who have had the experiences of going through the police reviews over the last little while, and have a lot of expertise and knowledge to share as well. I think it’s important to listen to their advice first.

MP: On drug issues, do you support the Four Pillars approach that’s been pioneered in Vancouver?

CJ: I do. In fact, I think we need the support for the other pillars. I think we’ve moved in a certain direction but we need more support for drug treatment and that’s not there. I think you would find the municipality saying that as well—that there have been cuts in that area. We also need to look at the Four Pillars approach in other communities. It’s been raised with me in Kamloops; it’s been raised with me in Prince George. Those are communities that wouldn’t look at the exact same model that you have in Vancouver, but the approach of looking at it from a holistic point of view is important. I think we also need to look at providing support to other communities.

MP: Support means funding?

CJ: Support means funding. Support means sitting down with the community and determining how that would occur, what would meet the need of the community. Not taking a model from Vancouver and thinking that that’s going to work in Kamloops, for example. Yes, I think for mental illness and drug addiction, is a big missing piece right now in British Columbia as the whole support with dual diagnosis—people who have both addiction and mental health issues. We’ve said it’s important to support that. Vancouver has a good example in their homeless strategy that came out a month or so ago. They, in fact, talked about support for dual diagnosis, for treatment beds and a comprehensive way along with housing. We, in fact, called on the Premier to look at supporting the Vancouver model; it has federal government funding, provincial government funding and municipal, it’s a partnership between the three. We’ve said it’s a great model. Other communities could look at the model to also incorporate. We think it’s important that the province support it.

MP: One drug, in particular, might be B.C’s largest cash crop. Given that it’s such a huge part of the economy, given that so many feel the risk-benefit picture is different than other drugs, would you consider legalizing marijuana? Would you considering taxing it, like liquor at a B.C. Liquor Store?

CJ: It is a federal government issue, not a provincial government issue so I don’t think it’s up to the provinces to make those decisions. I think that the debate will continue. I’ve heard arguments on both sides of the issue, and I think it’s a good debate for Canadians to have, but I don’t think it’s a debate for B.C. to have in isolation from the rest of Canada.

I think on the issue of drugs is the whole issue of organized crime. We know that that’s a problem in British Columbia and we know it’s an issue that needs to be addressed. I don’t feel it has been addressed by the provincial government. They, in fact, cut the budget for the organized crime unit. I think that needs to be supported because we need to attack the real issues of crime here and that is organized crime. I don’t think we’re doing that right now.

MP: It’s a huge industry, in which most employees work under the worst possible conditions.

CJ: Exactly.

MP: What specific changes would you make to welfare and support systems?

CJ: It’s early yet for us to come out with our platform. We will be releasing those pieces as we get closer to the election. One of the things we have made a commitment to is to get rid of the two-year rule. The Liberals, although they backed off it in April when they were going to implement the two-year rule, they backed off it. It’s still in legislation. It’s still in the books. I don’t trust this government not to decide that they’re going to move forward with it. We have said that that punitive two-year rule will be gone. We’ll have more to say as we get closer to the election around the specifics.

MP: Homelessness?

CJ: Again, we use the Vancouver model as an example. We’ve seen the Campbell government cut social housing units that were due to be implemented the first year of their mandate. They reduced that funding and we think it is important that the provincial government play a role in that. So we said look at the Vancouver model that has matched funding from all jurisdictions and move ahead on it. It’s a huge issue. When you look at the poverty issues in British Columbia, we’ve seen an increase in homelessness. We’ve seen an increase in the use of food banks, an increase of children living in poverty and when children live in poverty, families live in poverty. They don’t live in isolation from their families. I think affordable housing is a huge issue that has to have provincial government that isn’t happening under Gordon Campbell.

MP: Electoral reform. What specifically would you do?

CJ: I’d be the last person to tell you something positive that Gordon Campbell did, but the Citizen’s Assembly was one. I think it was a creative, interesting idea to bring people together to look at such a complex issue and to bring citizens together. We supported the work of the Citizen’s Assembly.

We also supported the question going on the ballot this May. I don’t think it’s up to the political leaders of the parties to get involved in the debate. I think the people need a say. We’ve said that from the start that it should be the citizen’s decision and I don’t think they need political parties making decisions fro them. You’ll see people from our party getting engaged, probably on both sides of the issue. We’ve got people who agree and disagree with the model that’s put forward and I’m looking forward to that debate. I don’t think they should, as a party, be stepping into this. It’s up to the citizens to make that decision.

MP: Thank you. Is there anything else we haven’t touched on tonight that you think our readers would be interested in?

CJ: I think we’ve touched on most of the things I can think of.

MP: I really appreciate your candor. It’s still going to be tough to sell people that someone who has not even been an MLA is ready to be Premier.

CJ: No question. I think people come to politics for different reasons and from different backgrounds, but when I talk to people, when I sit down with them and talk to them about this issue, what I hear from people is that they’re looking for someone with the leadership skills necessary. Everybody brings a different background to the position, but, as we talked about earlier, they want a leader they can trust. They want someone with integrity and who has shown that, who has proven that they have integrity. They want someone who has common sense, who is practical, and who listens and works with people, who can make tough decisions when needed. That’s what they’re looking for, and my experience shows that I have those skills and that I’ve utilized those skills.

MP: Great. Well, thanks.

CJ: Thanks for the opportunity. Thanks for dinner.

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