The BC MLA The NDP Loves to Hate | Heather Maahs Unfiltered - Briefcase & The Barn EP 92

April 22, 2026

PHONE: [00:00:00] This is a,

HEATHER: I feel your pain, Gary.

PHONE: I feel your pain. Hena a

KYLE: headache. Okay.

HEATHER: Okay. Have you

GARY: ever listened to one of these episodes?

HEATHER: I did. I, I, not in entirety, but I listreened to a few bits and pieces. I was actually, if

GARY: you have a family member that's a faithful listener.

HEATHER: I know.

KYLE: I didn't even know until I went out for, um,

HEATHER: till we had lunch.

KYLE: Yeah. I was like, what? That's your daughter?

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: Oh. I didn't know your daughter. I just knew your son-in-law listened sometimes.

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: Text me. Um, or people always come to me app at church Right. And set me straight or whatever. Right.

HEATHER: Well, I I, they

KYLE: say you straight and they don't set me straight,

HEATHER: but I

GARY: was Ah.

'cause they know who, who will actually listen. Right.

HEATHER: I was, I was concerned though, because, because you're so, uh, vulnerably, honest. And I, I know that the, um,

GARY: [00:01:00] the savages are coming.

HEATHER: Well, the NDP is, is what is, is who will take something like this and then try and turn it.

GARY: Oh, it's so easy. They could grab, there's so much content here for it's so amazing.

I know. They could literally just do like an hour of awful, misogynistic, deprecating clips towards women and farm animals and whatever other species that they're worried about.

HEATHER: Yeah, I know. So, so this is the, the most recent, I'll just show you really quick here. Oops. Hang on.

GARY: We're not gonna talk about politics at all, eh?

Just so you know, like

HEATHER: Yeah, sure, sure. No problem. 'cause I never talk about politics either. Why isn't this working? What is it doing? One

GARY: second. Me. Who is this guy

HEATHER: again? One second. Oh, here. Here we go.

Okay. Like

PHONE: there are many days where I'm so proud to be sitting as part of a government because I'm looking across the way that the BC conservatives and just seeing absolute bat [00:02:00] crazy MLAs. You got two crazy MLAs and Heather Moor Newfield, who voted against a piece of legislation. All their colleagues voted in favor of it, but these two MLAs voted against a piece of legislation that would stop protestors from protesting on the grounds of our schools.

Imagine you're walking your kindergartner. To school. School and you see a bunch of people protesting, banging on windows. That happened here.

GARY: We put a stop to it. We introduced legislation. No, we want free speech, man. Our schools safe from crazy people like Heather Mos definitely playing that clip to start

HEATHER: Double down.

GARY: Sit down, sit down. Let's get live. Let, let me pray. Keep the phone out. We're gonna need that.

HEATHER: Oh, okay.

GARY: Yeah. Keep that clip live.

KYLE: Who is that? Oh, we, we got it.

GARY: Wait, we'll get it. We gotta wait. Just getting ahead of ourselves. Okay. Heavenly Father, God, I thank you that we can, uh, record today with Heather. Lord, I pray that would be enlightening, encouraging, and glorifying to you and entertaining while not being too offensive.

We thank you for everything, uh, that we have. And [00:03:00] Lord, we just thank you for this chance to chat. And Lord, we pray a blessing on her and her taking a stand and, uh, trying to take a stand on truth and what is right and, uh, God just pray a blessing on her as she goes to Victoria and the weight that she has to carry from the criticism and all the people that are armchair quarterbacks.

Lord, I just pray for wisdom for her and every decision and everything she says. We ask the Jesus name. Amen.

HEATHER: Amen.

KYLE: Welcome back to the Briefcase in the Barn, your two favorite armchair quarterbacks, uh, produced by The Furious, the Curious Company, episode 92 with Gary Barge and myself, Calvin Berg. Today we've got a very special guest, our local MLA, which stands for member of Le the Legislative Assembly here in British Columbia.

Heather Mooz. She represents the area where we live, known as Chill Lock North, and as a member of the Conservative Party of bc And right now the Conservative Party is in the middle of a leadership race to choose its next year. So there's a lot going on behind the scenes that actually affects this province.

So I'm very excited that you took the time to [00:04:00] come on the show. Welcome.

HEATHER: My pleasure. Very happy to be here.

KYLE: No worries. I'm just gonna move your mic a little closer.

HEATHER: Okay. I can actually, oh, you can? I'm gonna move my chair a little closer too.

KYLE: Yeah.

HEATHER: Oops.

KYLE: Nice. All good.

GARY: When is the, uh, leadership vote?

HEATHER: The leadership vote is between May, uh, May 9th and May 30th.

GARY: Okay.

KYLE: May 9th and May 30th.

GARY: Why over? Because there's so many rounds of voting, potentially it takes that much time or,

HEATHER: well, because, or

GARY: the decision doesn't come out until May 30th, is what you're saying.

HEATHER: Well, yeah. The decision comes out May 30th, but what they have to do is, um, they have to orchestrate the voting because oftentimes I didn't mean that.

GARY: You know what,

HEATHER: so No, no, no.

GARY: Fuller former, we did an orchestration here.

HEATHER: No. So they have to figure out how everybody's going to vote. So, um,

GARY: it's ranked right. It looked like [00:05:00] it was ranked and that that actually really

HEATHER: matters. It is ranked,

GARY: yeah.

HEATHER: But also, um, uh, so I'm not sure if it's gonna be live or not. I don't think so.

GARY: I don't think so.

HEATHER: Um. So, but anyway, so, so there was talk about you take a picture of yourself, take a picture of your id, scan it, and then send it in

KYLE: to make sure that there's no, like, fraud

HEATHER: going on. And then, yeah. And then you vote like you're a member, they'll check you off. And so all that kind of stuff.

Okay. And so, I mean,

KYLE: how many members are there?

HEATHER: Well, yesterday, more every day. Every day. Yesterday they, they posted that there are now 30,000

KYLE: Oh, wow.

HEATHER: Uh, BC conservatives.

KYLE: Is that, how many, is that comparative to like, what, um, would've been in past, uh, well, a

GARY: fraction for the b BC

HEATHER: levels. Well, we were,

GARY: because it's a brand new party, right?

HEATHER: Oh, yeah. BC liberals, well, they're pretty much flat. They're, I, I actually don't even know if they still have. [00:06:00] I guess they must have membership still, but we, we have more members than any, any other party.

KYLE: Oh,

GARY: more

HEATHER: than the ndp? I think so. I think that's what I read. Okay.

GARY: Okay.

HEATHER: I don't know. Check. Okay. We'll, fact, fact, check me.

GARY: Well, there's a lot of fact checking

HEATHER: that happens on

GARY: this show

HEATHER: and mostly

GARY: there's

KYLE: good liar. There's such thing as facts. Is there, is there absolute truth?

HEATHER: We don't want them to be subjective. Um, but I think there was, I think before we started there was between seven and 8,000 members.

KYLE: Yeah.

HEATHER: So this is huge.

KYLE: Yeah. That's awesome.

GARY: What did you do before you're an MLA?

HEATHER: I was a school trustee for 16 years on the in famous cello wax school board.

GARY: Yeah. Unfortunately.

HEATHER: Oh, fortunately,

GARY: yeah.

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: Okay.

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: I dunno.

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: Fair

HEATHER: enough. No, it was good. You know what I mean? I think, I think Chillowak kind of blew up the narrative on the whole, so G 1 23, uh, [00:07:00] learning resource with Barry calling it out and the rest is history, historic history.

KYLE: Okay. And I guess there's another by-election for that, uh, open position since lower Earth Arizona, um, resigned Or is there another election coming soon?

HEATHER: No, there's a municipal election coming in October, uh, this October.

KYLE: Okay.

HEATHER: Yeah, this October.

KYLE: Okay.

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: So Chillax supporters that are listening to this, some local people that listen.

Take a stand if you feel the calling or the conviction or run. Yeah, no, that's what I'm trying to say. Like if you feel like you have the capacity, it's a pretty important role. If your kids are gonna a public school and you think, Hey, this is important to me, it's really interesting, right? Because in the sphere we live in, um, and I've talked to politicians on both sides of the aisle about this, like, it's very like public education and private schools and homeschooling is very polarizing for a lot of people.

To me, it's just like, whatever. If you wanna homeschool.

HEATHER: Right.

GARY: If you wanna send your kids to public school. So education

HEATHER: is education.

GARY: Yeah. And obviously everybody has a bent and you could have a private school

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: Teacher that's a horrible teacher and teaching your kids a lot of [00:08:00] crazy things. So it's, it's not that black and white, I guess in my mind.

HEATHER: No, it's not. And I don't think, I, I think all because your kids are homeschooled or you're enrolled in a private school, that shouldn't um, be a reason for you not to run for school trustee. Because I mean, let's face it. Um, kids in the public school and kids in private schools and maybe they live in the same neighborhood and they all play together.

GARY: We're all their life together

HEATHER: and That's right.

GARY: Exactly. Yeah. They're all gonna end up becoming, working members of our society. We should all care about what's being taught in public school. I think it is ideal if they would go to a public school. If I had to be honest, I could see that it would be cha Yeah.

Like obviously a lot of great people ran and maybe yourself included, but I feel like

HEATHER: Sure. But some people use both. Some people use things. Oh,

GARY: totally. Our

HEATHER: kids school kind is a great example that things Right. Some people are homeschooled. Plus, I mean, even for myself, um, I homeschooled my. One of my kids, uh, at the same time he was back and forth in the public system and homeschooling.

GARY: So how many kids do you have?

HEATHER: Three.

GARY: Okay.

HEATHER: You're not kids anymore?

GARY: No, they're all adults.

HEATHER: They're all

GARY: grownups. Adults, yeah. [00:09:00] Beyond young adults, actually. That's

HEATHER: right.

GARY: Yeah. Interesting.

KYLE: So last time we chatted, um, you hadn't put your support behind any of the candidates yet for the conservative party, right?

U bc Has that changed?

HEATHER: It has.

GARY: Yeah. It was yesterday or the day

HEATHER: before. I saw it. It has, yes.

KYLE: Who did you

HEATHER: support? So I decided that I would support Carrie Lynn Finley.

KYLE: Okay.

HEATHER: Um, yeah, for the leader. I did a video with her on, I don't know what day it was. Wednesday maybe.

GARY: Yeah.

HEATHER: So

KYLE: why did you

HEATHER: pick up? Yeah, well, I, I Is

GARY: that 'cause you guys go out for seniors discount together at the local restaurant or?

HEATHER: Very funny. But we could,

GARY: I digress. I digress.

HEATHER: Um, so. Of all the candidates. I, I found that she, uh, has the most experience. Um, she is, uh, a lawyer and she, um, uh, she served under Steven Harper. Um,

KYLE: that's why I recognize a name. It's pretty well [00:10:00] known name.

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: She

HEATHER: was

GARY: MP for a lot of years.

HEATHER: 14 years. Yeah.

Federal.

KYLE: MLA, no mp,

GARY: federal MP

HEATHER: Parliament. Yep. So, um, you know, the condition that this province is in right now, every sector is in crisis, so we want somebody at the helm who has experience and knowledge and, and the ability to, to

GARY: stepping back away from that. You would agree that there's quite a few.

Great candidates running, would you not?

HEATHER: Absolutely.

GARY: Okay. I would put, I mean, I haven't done probably near as much

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: Due diligence as you have. But looking at the race, I'm like, there's nobody there that I'm like, oh, this would be an unmitigated disaster if they, or would you put somebody in that camp where you're really struggling with, oh, this is not my like, or how like, I guess I view them all as like,

HEATHER: yeah,

GARY: here's one thing that I was talking to somebody this morning telling me, telling that I saying that you were gonna be on the podcast today.

Great guy. And he was like, you know, is she really as conservative as, [00:11:00] is Heather as conservative as she seems or is she just pandering to the, the people in her eye like, no, like can't make,

KYLE: can't make anybody happy.

GARY: Well, it was more like, well first of all, I know your character and I know that you've taken a lot of bullets in the front and the back for Yeah.

For trying to stand on truth. So I have a lot of respect for you.

PHONE: Yeah. Thank you.

GARY: Um, and I think on the flip side of that, hey, people are on the human being tour. And it's fascinating in the culture we live in, the cancel culture and the idea of like if you, if you go one time a little too far, one direction either on either side, right?

Especially once people have you in a box, they say, Hey, Heather's the most conservative candidate. We're so thankful she's our

KYLE: right

GARY: MMLA, and then the next day you say something that's maybe a little more gracious or a little more nuanced and now they're just writing you right off. And I'm seeing that in this campaign.

One of the things I'm seeing a lot of from people that are very conservative, they're saying, anybody, they're right away trying to peg people as like a, a BC united slash BC liberal, right? I'm like, guys, we need the whole tent,

HEATHER: right?

GARY: Like, right. Would you agree we need to bring in like even after this race is done, this leadership race, let's be [00:12:00] gracious and realize that whether it's, you know, Caroline or Yeah, Martha or who, whoever the people are, we need to convalesce under an tent here and be a united front.

HEATHER: Absolutely.

GARY: Okay, so you would've

HEATHER: and absolutely. So in every single party, and I don't think this is anything new, I think. You, you are always going to have, um, uh, so, so I would characterize our party. Right now, our caucus, every single person, every single person is fiscally conservative.

GARY: Everyone. That one thing you have in common for sure.

HEATHER: Every, every

GARY: single one. That's a great example.

HEATHER: And then, and then you're gonna have, you know, different levels of the social conservative piece.

GARY: Very, very broad.

HEATHER: Yep.

GARY: Swath It is. Which is fascinating.

HEATHER: Yep.

GARY: So what's interesting is people do not like that.

HEATHER: Right.

GARY: And people don't like it on either side.

HEATHER: Right.

GARY: And so that's where I was going off with my friend this morning where it's like, it's so frustrating to me because I think, you know, and this is what people don't understand about politics, which I'd be interesting to [00:13:00] hear your perspective, but when you're elected into that role, you're basically. You have to represent everybody in Chillowak and you have more than that spectrum in chill.

Absolutely. You know what I mean? You have, you're, you're out meeting and greeting people all the time. Some of them probably really disagree with where you stand on social issues. Yep. But you're still representing them. You still care what they think. Absolutely. They're right. So I feel like when you have this in your own party, and now because you have basically, you know, the Dallas team that's way over there, and then you have other people that would land in a more.

Social conservative camp, but not that camp. And then you have people way over on the left that are just like, Hey, I'm fiscally conservative. I'm sick of the spending. Yeah. Please allow me to be in your tent. Yeah. But they're obviously really, so I'm wondering how do you, how do you get people on the same team in your, in your camp, in the conservative, well,

HEATHER: I'm not ready for leader, so that's not my job.

GARY: Yeah. But you could see the struggle.

HEATHER: Oh, absolutely. And I mean, it's, it's always there. And I think it's the age old struggle. I mean, you look at Lori Thrones when he was part of the BC liberals, and he was [00:14:00] a very social, uh, uh, conservative,

GARY: but

HEATHER: very gracious and very well spoken. Oh, so grief gracious, good grief.

GARY: can't survive in a party.

HEATHER: Exactly.

GARY: Yeah.

HEATHER: And so, um, I think you know, it, it's the leader. It's the leader who can navigate it. And when Andrew Wilkinson tossed him out. Um, that was terrible.

GARY: Yeah. That was a

and

HEATHER: that was, and it was a

GARY: mistake. It was the beginning of the end. It was, it's fascinating that we're actually having this conversation,

HEATHER: right?

GARY: Yeah.

HEATHER: And so, I mean, he'd been in MLA for seven years and he'd been a, you know, he serves a valuable voice. And, um, um, you know, and I, I've said to my caucus, I, do you think, do you think that the, the conservative Christian check mark looks any different in the box when they check for to vote for you than it looks for a liberal check mark?

I mean, everybody's vote and, and everybody deserves reference representation. And [00:15:00] so, yeah. So

GARY: on that note, I makes me feel like we should play that video clip Heather played for us before the show.

KYLE: Yeah. '

GARY: cause it ties in pretty nicely.

KYLE: So, so this is a clip. Who, who, who is this in this clip?

GARY: This

HEATHER: will be, so this, this is, so I'll, I'll give you a little background on this now.

So, um, um. Recently stop. Uh, the, um, we had a vote in the house on the, um, um, safe, safe access to schools amendment. And what the amendment was, was to extend that, that policy by two years. And, um, I looked at that and I thought. No way. I'm not voting in favor of that. And um, there was a few of us who we chatted about it, but because I was a school trustee,

KYLE: why would you not vote in favor of it?

HEATHER: So, because I was a school [00:16:00] trustee, um, here's the context. I was a school trustee when they enacted that policy or that act, and so was cork EU felt. And, um, we know that that was put in place right after the million person march against the learning resource, Soji 1, 2, 3. And so what they wanted to do was prevent.

Parents from

GARY: speaking out

HEATHER: on school grounds,

GARY: anybody from protesting anything they disagreed with.

HEATHER: Exactly.

KYLE: Not crazy people, parents.

HEATHER: Exactly. And it could, I mean, you can be protesting anything. You can be protesting, busing changes, you can be protesting, um, protesting boundary changes for your kids' schools.

So anyway, so yes, it's

GARY: quelch free speech is basically what it's doing. Correct me if I'm wrong. Percent not, I could tell

HEATHER: just

GARY: from the way that the video has

HEATHER: Hundred percent. So, and it also, to me, that flies right in the face of our charter, the [00:17:00] Canadian charter Free, let's

GARY: play the, play the clip.

HEATHER: Right.

So, so the, the, the, the, we voted against it and,

GARY: and then

HEATHER: this is an

GARY: MLA that's Beacon off.

HEATHER: And this is Ravi Parmar, who is the Ministry of Forests. And interestingly, he actually speaks from his desk with his Ministry of Forest logo behind him. So that's not really cool. But anyways, so should I just hit play?

KYLE: Play? Yeah, just hit play. Yeah. I just play, put about mic there, then just play it. But

HEATHER: the mic,

KYLE: we'll, we'll put it on the screen,

GARY: right? We'll put it later. We'll, we'll patch it in later.

HEATHER: Okay. Okay. Oh, my sound

GARY: hit across the way.

HEATHER: What's that? Here it's, there

KYLE: are many days where I'm so proud to be sitting as part of a government because I'm looking across the way at the BC conservatives and just seeing absolute bat, crazy MLAs, two crazy MLAs and Heather Mooz and Corky Neufeld, who voted against a piece of legislation.

All other colleagues voted in favor of it, but these two MLAs voted [00:18:00] against a piece of legislation that would stop protestors

PHONE: from protesting on the grounds of our schools. Imagine you're walking your kindergartner to school and you see a bunch of people protesting, banging on windows that happened to your British.

I mean, we put a stop to it. We introduced legislation and we're extending that legislation to keep our schools. Safe from crazy People like Heather Mo, I love it. They stand with protestors who want dismantle our education system and turn this into a circus. We're gonna always stop them every single day.

KYLE: Wonder how, what the definition of crazy is.

GARY: I'm for sure crazy.

HEATHER: And then of course you have this nice logo, whoops. Anyway,

KYLE: what, what, what what I have issue with is that clip, and I see this happening on the conservatives side and the liberal side. Is that, is that you, have you vilify the other side? Yeah.

Or dehumanize them? Yeah. Because they have a certain belief and they vote a certain way, and you don't actually have a dialogue anymore about how that person got to that belief. Um, and so then you can just make a little clip like that, [00:19:00] which shows up on, um, everyone's reels and they come to a conclusion to, uh, with that.

And it, it doesn't help. No. Like we, like, I'm sure that Phi had lunch with David Eby, or if you go on vacation with him like Gary does, um, or, or, uh, or anybody else e even like someone like Du I'm sure we could have a respectful conversation. And, and I, I've often say to people, you know, if someone, for example, in the conservative circles, I come from.

I, I think sometimes there's a fear for around like liberal people and like someone that has a pink hair or something else like that. And I'm like, wait a minute here. Like there's a, that person didn't just get there out, out a, in a vacuum. There was a series of events that happened. You

GARY: for sure didn't come outta the womb like that.

KYLE: That's, that's true. But there's a series, series of events that happened to us in our life to where we get to a certain viewpoint. And so if we want to change someone's mind, forcing them, it never works, right? Mm-hmm. You have dialogue and conversation and, and that's how you get somewhere. That's why you need to have freedom of speech.

Otherwise, how can you think through something? And [00:20:00] that, that, that really bugs me and I see it happening on both sides. And, and, and it's frustrating because I'm sure Ravi Parer is, his name is like, if, if we sat down, but um, I think it also gets used as it's also powerful, right? You can get, you know, cliques, boats.

HEATHER: Yeah. Well, and I think too, you know, we had just. The, the house al also just implemented a safe access to church's bill and, um, that one is, um, uh, to answer the antisemitism that's been going on. Um, and, and I spoke to that in the house and I said, well, I understand the intent, which is good,

KYLE: which is, what is the intent?

HEATHER: Well, so it's the same as the safe access to schools. So it's keeping

KYLE: protecting children

HEATHER: protesters

KYLE: away from churches,

HEATHER: away from churches. The only trouble is, um, the Jewish community spends a hundred thousand dollars a month [00:21:00] on security and, um, same as the access, safe access to schools simply changing where people.

Can stand, isn't gonna stop a terrorist, it would not have stopped what happened in Tumblr Ridge.

GARY: Yeah.

HEATHER: Um, and it's not stopping the churches from being burnt down in this country.

GARY: No, it's not.

HEATHER: So, I mean, we voted in favor of the safe access to churches because, um, it's okay. It's, it's something who brought forward the

GARY: bill.

They

HEATHER: did the, the

GARY: ndp? Yeah. Okay.

HEATHER: It's something, um, not

GARY: so sorry. Can I clarify a point here? You literally, you, how often would you vote with a bill that they bring forward? That would not be that common, would it?

HEATHER: It's more common than you would think.

GARY: Okay.

HEATHER: Oh yeah. That doesn't

KYLE: make the news.

GARY: No, that does not make the news.

Oh no. Sorry. That totally caught me off guard. I thought as the official opposition. We are such trained seal this, that we vote for any bill that comes out from the other, we vote against any bill from the other party. No.

HEATHER: So, okay. So here's how, so that's

GARY: [00:22:00] encouraging.

HEATHER: The way it works is that, so we have first reading.

GARY: Yeah,

HEATHER: that's contentious too, because we all voted in favor of the banning the human rights. And so everybody got all crazy over that. But we have a policy now in the Conservative party that we vote yes on first reading of everything no matter what it is.

KYLE: Okay. Explain this to me. 'cause I, even me being in BC that like goes over my head a little bit.

So there's, there's a, a, a first reading it, the first time a bill proposed bill gets read. Yeah. And what are the different stages?

HEATHER: Well, so the fir, so the title of the bill is what you see Okay. On the order papers. So you go in and you don't really know what it is. Then the person introducing it gives a brief description, which may not give you any more, any more information.

And so, so first reading just puts it on the floor. Okay. And, um. [00:23:00] So, but there have been instances where the NDP in particular started opposing bills that, um, Dallas Brody and Tara Armstrong and Jordan Keeley, uh, were bringing to the house. And so they were just voting down on first reading and, but, but our policy is, no, I'm gonna vote in favor of any bill.

Um, because if I don't, then I'm technically, or, or I could be removing my ability to speak for or against it in the house if it's not gonna be read. So, and that's, that's not democracy. So then second bill is when, um, um, or

KYLE: second reading,

HEATHER: or sorry, se second reading is when they, um, um, you debate. And so there's

GARY: no debate even on the first, there's no discussion even hardly.

It's literally

HEATHER: a brief overview. There's nothing. It's just like, put it out there. Yeah.

GARY: Okay.

HEATHER: And so then you have, then you have debate. And so that's when usually we have 30 minutes. [00:24:00] They allow a certain amount of time to speak to it, and then we have, um, up to 30 minutes to speak.

GARY: Everybody

HEATHER: would've had it or, or against it.

GARY: Everybody would've had it emailed to them at that point. Everybody would know fully what all the fine details of this bill are, right?

HEATHER: Yeah. Yeah. As soon as you know that there's a bill, this is how it works. Okay. This is, this is the process. And so then after, um, the allotted amount of time, there's a vote.

Um, and um, oftentimes what happens is, wait, there's a no, sorry. After the debate, it goes to, uh, the committee process and in the committee pro process. Um, if you don't, if, if there's, that's where you can make amendments, that's where you can ask them lots of questions and speak to it like back and forth, whereas the, the first part is just.

Talking about.

GARY: So what per, now when we say bills, just so people that are very, uh, not aware of, of politics and how it works. Those are laws. Those are laws. And that's why politics matter. People that always Exactly. People that listen to this that don't even vote 'cause they're just like, it's totally useless.

Yeah. They [00:25:00] don't understand that literally how we live our lives in this country come from people like you that are hashing it out in some weird building in our capitals and they're, and then you get to those committees where changes committee and it does matter. It. So like, that's why I'm passionate about it.

You would agree it. Yeah. So

HEATHER: it matters.

GARY: How many, what percentage of bills make it to this, uh, committee stage? Do you know? Like, would it be, it'd be way less than half. Would it ever make it even to the committees past second reading, right?

HEATHER: Um, no, most of them do.

GARY: Oh, they do?

HEATHER: Well, don't forget they have a majority,

GARY: well, any NDP.

HEATHER: Yeah. And so really. They, they can shut ours down, which happens nonstop, obviously. And it does happen. Yeah.

KYLE: How often do bills that you guys bring forward while they have a majority get passed?

HEATHER: We actually have historically now passed two bills. As of this last week we passed two bills and, uh, which are the last one we just passed, was a bill, um, to give firefighters, um, the, um, medical, um, 'cause firefighters are at [00:26:00] risk for, um, cancer.

Lots of cancers from all the nasty stuff they inhale when they're, um, fi fighting fires. And so, um, they didn't have all the medical, uh, entitlements that they should have had, and now they do because of that bill. And that was brought forward by Misty Van PTA in Langley. Okay. And the one before that was, uh, uh, a bill on, um.

Oh gosh, it was on, um, I can't remember. Okay. I'll tell you later.

KYLE: Okay. So going back to this bill with, um, about the one that you voted against.

HEATHER: Oh, right.

KYLE: Wanna finish explaining what happened there?

HEATHER: Um,

KYLE: like, I

HEATHER: can't remember where we were.

KYLE: Sorry. Was it, you were in the, I think it was the first reading you were saying that it went to and,

HEATHER: uh, the safe access to schools.

KYLE: Yeah.

HEATHER: Right, right. And so, and she voted

GARY: against it the whole way through.

HEATHER: So Corky and I voted against it. [00:27:00] In in the final. In the final,

KYLE: yeah.

HEATHER: Reading the third reading. Many are there.

GARY: Three

HEATHER: third reading, we voted against it. Now, oftentimes when a bill is being passed, the committee chair will just come to the speaker and say, I am reporting in this bill.

We have completed it. No amendments. We're done. That's when everybody votes. But only the people who are in the house vote and all the MLAs are not in the house at that time.

GARY: Only for confidence votes. They would be.

HEATHER: And so yeah, will will know. So there's a voice vote, so I'll lose in favor. Aye. Those opposed nay.

And so then the speaker will call it sometimes, most of the time there's no nay. Most of the time it's I and, but if there's nay then whoever is saying nay, whichever side it is, can call division. And if they call division, that means everybody's coming into the house and everybody's calling close because it's close to

GARY: call.

[00:28:00] They would say

HEATHER: that's right. And so that's when it's a standing vote. And so that's when you gotta stand up and say, I oppose or we didn't

GARY: have have a standing vote on that bill. 'cause there's just two of you yelling me.

HEATHER: No, there was no, that was a standing vote. Why that ended up being standing vote. Why?

Because somebody yelled nay. And so then the other side called division 'cause they wanted to see who called nay.

GARY: So

HEATHER: that's how it works. Right? That's

GARY: awesome. It's savage. I love politics.

HEATHER: It's dirty. And so then that's why Ravi Parmar, that's why the like Bie parmar, we'll make a video about me calling me low, hanging me

GARY: low hanging fruit too.

HEATHER: Yeah. Right. That's awesome. And so that, and so that's, that's how they,

KYLE: so you

had

HEATHER: a lot, take the pot shots. So a

KYLE: lot, a lot of colleagues though that voted in, in favor, uh, of this, um, that would also still be against Soji as well. Of course that would've been okay with all these parents protesting a bunch of years ago.

So that seems like, uh, at odds with each other.

HEATHER: So what, so for the most part, my colleagues [00:29:00] don't have the breadth of experience that I did and Corky did. 'cause both of us were trustees for 16 years.

KYLE: Okay.

HEATHER: And so we saw. We saw it all. And um, uh, so they don't, they just like, yeah, we want safe access to schools.

That's,

GARY: that's a good thing. That's how, so that's what, and it's, right. So we would agree with that. So that's why, right. That's why it's how you spin. Things matter so much. That's exactly,

HEATHER: that's,

GARY: it's so complicated to be, it would be, it's so easy to paint you in that.

HEATHER: Sure

GARY: that, you know. Yeah. Crazy. Whatever words he

KYLE: used.

But you, you run, you run into these people in the halls of parliament, right? Yeah. And so I'm sure you run into Ravi, are you able to have like just one-on-one discourse with these people and

HEATHER: we're like, Hey, how's it going? Nice day. Yeah. We're gonna, we're gonna go outside and have coffee. Okay. See you later.

KYLE: But if I was,

HEATHER: that's literally how it is.

KYLE: Yeah. So if I was in your shoes, I'd be like, Ravi, come in my office. Like, I seen that video made last week.

HEATHER: Yeah.

KYLE: Like, you know, this is taking just pot shots that don't make sense and that this isn't who I am. Like, or is that [00:30:00] just a game? Is this that just expected?

HEATHER: It, it, it's, it's a game. It it, you know what I mean? I would do that if I thought that there was anything to, to gain by it. Um, it might make it harder the next time if he's got a. If he's gotta sit down and look me in the eye and be nicer to me. And so it might make it harder for him the next time, but it's, it is, it's part of the game.

GARY: I feel like politic politics is like hockey where, you know what you elbow in the head right? You try to take your teeth, your head off right in the corner.

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: And then after the game, you shake your hand and you go drink beer together.

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: Is that fair?

HEATHER: It totally is. And you know what, you know, that's so

GARY: stupid.

HEATHER: It's stupid. No, it's totally

GARY: fine.

HEATHER: It is. You know the cartoons, uh, the Bugs Bunny cartoons with the, we

GARY: know brother. We never watched TV when we were kids. We grew up Okay. So a wrong crowd wrong, not the podcast.

HEATHER: Alright, so I'm just gonna tell you then. So there's a cartoon where my

KYLE: kids watch it now.

GARY: Bugs Bunny.

HEATHER: Bugs

KYLE: Bunny, uh, what's like

HEATHER: Wiley Coyote?

KYLE: Yeah. Wiley Coyote is one of them. Yeah. So, [00:31:00]

HEATHER: so the, the funny thing is like the dog was be, was protecting something. And Wiley Coyote, of course, he's always trying to get the roadrunner and so they're switching shifts. And they punch the clock and they're arch enemies and they're like, Hey, Ralph, have a nice night.

He's like, yeah, okay, Wiley, you have a nice one too. And, and, and it's literally, that's what, it's what it's like with most people.

KYLE: Okay. But I feel like it has got worse the last 10 years where there is, it's gone beyond that and the other side gets vilified. Well, like, like hard. Yeah. Like when you have, you know, someone like Lori Thrownness, and if you've spent any time with Lori, you know that he's just.

A genuinely good dude that you'd want to spend time with or, or like, like, and actually really cares about a lot of issues. Yeah. But just gets raked over the coals for the most basic things. Yeah. I'm like, wait, what, what, what is this? What or is that you think that's got worse or not?

HEATHER: The school board, the school board was an entirely different

KYLE: Okay.

HEATHER: Experience entirely the, the nice [00:32:00] thing worse than provincial

KYLE: politics.

HEATHER: Oh, you what?

KYLE: But he was, but he was in MLA when this happened. When he got,

HEATHER: oh, well when he, when that happened to him.

KYLE: Yeah.

HEATHER: When he was in MLA. Oh, yeah.

KYLE: Yeah. So like,

HEATHER: well that was that was, yeah. Was that was his own party. That's a separate

GARY: issue.

HEATHER: Yeah. He

GARY: got eight by his own to some degree.

HEATHER: Not, yeah. It wasn't the other side doing it to him. It was, of course they're taking the videos and sharing them and whatnot. But, um, but, but being on a school board and, and being, um, provincial politics. Is the beautiful thing about being in provincial politics is you have colleagues who, who are like-minded team.

GARY: You have

HEATHER: a whole team. Team, you're all on the same team. Team. You have a whole team.

GARY: Yeah.

HEATHER: Whereas on the school board that's, uh, that I've, yeah.

GARY: Lot of PTSD there, eh,

HEATHER: well, yeah. I needed space from the board. I, I really needed space. They wanted to have meetings with me and I said no. And it was all [00:33:00] just almost, quite, almost a year.

And I met with David Swanky. He came to, um, Victoria, and I met with him and I said, David, you know what? I just needed to put some space between myself and the board and

GARY: just

HEATHER: boundaries for they, I mean, they creed me three times in a year and a half. I mean,

GARY: come on. For

HEATHER: what? That's history making. Right. So, so, but it's like the constant attacking.

GARY: Yeah,

HEATHER: and I mean, I mean, I've got a pretty core group of haters out there and I've got pretty thick skin.

GARY: You do? It's

HEATHER: amazing. I

GARY: love it. I wish I, Kyle and I, me anyways, do not have thick skin.

HEATHER: Yeah. I don't

KYLE: care. Well, no, no. I mean, I, people are crazy.

HEATHER: Yeah.

KYLE: So.

HEATHER: Well, and the thing about including, you know, and the thing about articles in the newspaper and all the, I mean, that last one that the progress wrote was they wrote the article on that vote, um, based on an email that they got from Ravi Parmar.

And the NDP totally vilifying us [00:34:00] because, you know what? We were flying right over the mark. They knew we were right. And, and so vilify us and, um, never

GARY: called you for your side of the story, or they did.

HEATHER: Oh no, not when the story was first published.

GARY: Okay,

KYLE: so that's not journalism, right? Like if you're a journal, it's not if you're a journalist, you talk to everybody's,

GARY: right.

No, that's just an opinion piece, right? That's right. Whatever. That's right. Don't, don't sell that as news. What's an opinion? No. Put it in the opinion section.

HEATHER: Exactly. Yeah. So my son actually wrote, uh, on the comments on the Facebook article that she posted and, um, or the, the progress posted and said, uh, well that's, you know, you didn't even ask for comments.

How is this even journalism considered journalism. Then she contacted me Nice. And asked me for comments. Nice. And so the one that appeared in the paper had my comments, but everything else was exactly the same. And so, you know what, but at the end of the day, it's, thanks for spelling my name Right.

Actually, and they didn't, they spell my name wrong. They [00:35:00] said, Heather Ma, quote, and they took the ass off. It's like, well, you didn't need to spell my name. Right.

GARY: You've been, you've been called Worse by Batter, Heather.

HEATHER: Uh, yeah, it's true.

KYLE: Okay. So the conservatives are, hopefully there's gonna be an election soon if David Eeb gets a non-confidence vote against him through this issue regarding the native land.

Uh, right. I think that's, that's in progress. But yeah. What, uh, which I want to get to, but I'm curious more on like, what are the issues that the conservatives would be advocating for and pushing for in, in bc Because I think there's a lot of low hanging fruit that both the left and the right would say, Hey, let's focus on this.

Like, like the cost of living. Like saying, Hey, if I own a piece of land. And, you know, I paid a mortgage on it for 20 years that I can't just be like, it's not your land anymore.

GARY: Yeah.

KYLE: Or just like really basic things. Um, um, freedom of speech. Maybe there's arguments more on that one that wouldn't be both sides that agree with that, but, um, what, what, but maybe those aren't issues that necessarily are gonna be pushed.

Like what is it that, that Carolyn and Finley is either, you know, promoting [00:36:00] in her, um, leadership race or the conservative party as a whole that they would focus on once they got into power?

HEATHER: Well, um, I mean the biggest issue in the entire province right now is, is dpa. And, well, it's not, well

KYLE: define, define

HEATHER: dpa.

It's not just, is not just a, it's also, uh, charter, uh, the, the section 35 of the charter. And right now, uh, the whole, actually I just saw something the other day and it said, I think it, Juneau News posted it, they said that 80% of the province. Um, has a land claim attached to it. So, um,

KYLE: okay. So there's a lot of listeners that aren't from bc I am from BC and I don't really even couldn't explain to someone what drop is or section 35 of the charter.

So in layman's terms, what are we talking about here?

HEATHER: Okay, so section 35 of the charters is, um, um, that's the, uh, indigenous [00:37:00] piece that states that the only Canadians who actually own, well they don't, I, I can't remember how it's defined, but it, it, um, it states that indigenous are the only people who actually have the rights to land in Canada.

KYLE: That's what it says currently in section 35. Yeah, it has for long

HEATHER: section 35 3 and

KYLE: it has for a long time.

HEATHER: Yes. It's, yeah, that's been there and for I don't know how long actually. And, um, the, the Drip a piece is the, uh, is DPA enacts the undrip, which is, uh, comes from the United Nations. And so Drip a enacts that in the province.

And that, um, along with that, um, the NDP added Section 8.1. Of the Interpretation Act that gives indigenous [00:38:00] people the right to, um, oversee, give, consent, uh, consult consultation with any resource projects that are going on in the province. So that's forestry, that's mining, that's water rights. That's, there's a lot.

Okay. It's, it's.

KYLE: So I'm, I'm still pretty confused here so I can tell you, so I can

GARY: tell you.

HEATHER: Okay. Do you want

GARY: me to tell you?

KYLE: Okay. So from, from what I can see so far, there's section 35 that's been around for a long time.

HEATHER: That's in the charter, the Canadian charter.

KYLE: Okay. But that's not necessarily on, that's just on the resources or is that, that's on all land can be claimed because

HEATHER: that's all land in Canada Crown land.

KYLE: Okay. Because this, 'cause this blew up

HEATHER: all land. Yeah.

KYLE: When a big section of Richmond

HEATHER: Yeah.

KYLE: The homeowners were told that have owned it for many years, 20, 30 years we're told, Hey, this is now, um, indigenous land or is a claim against it. I don't fully understand. Right. And people can't get mortgages anymore.

And, and so

HEATHER: Well,

KYLE: okay, go ahead.

HEATHER: Go ahead Gary.

GARY: We'll give a bit of context and I, I mean, [00:39:00] I have had friends that study this like crazy who listen to this, so they will, they'll have a lot more context. But yeah. In 2019 the BC government, uh, passed a law. Basically saying, um, like Drip, drip a stands for the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, and it's something that the United Nations talks about.

Yeah. And that's what really went awry. Yeah. All of a sudden the BC government, you know, and their, uh, self-righteousness said, Hey, let's. Let's do what the UN's doing. Let's you know, this is, I, I don't wanna say virtue signaling, 'cause obviously there's been a lot of things that have been done that have been great, but just basically on the land side of it's like, hey,

HEATHER: there's zest for indigenous.

GARY: Yes. This whole idea of of you know, say, Hey, we're gonna just bring this in line with the UN would do. And when you do that, all of a sudden, of course that's happening differently all over the world in the different context. And so BA and see,

HEATHER: we're the only province in Canada

GARY: that has enact enacted that, that aligned with that.

HEATHER: Yeah. Enacted

GARY: undrip,

HEATHER: United Nations declaration with [00:40:00] dpa. We're the only province has done that.

KYLE: Okay.

GARY: It supports negotiation of land rights title and self-governance, which is a huge issue right now.

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: It encourages agreements between the province of First Nations on how to use land and resources, which there again is a huge issue.

Yeah. You could have one very small band of 20 members holding up a whole pipeline for millions of people in the province. Um, people bring it up because a lot of the land in BC was never covered by treaties. There's huge swaths of land that obviously that are up for debate. And so now. Through Drip A, the province is trying to deal with land ownership, disputes, resource projects, and recognitions of the rights and titles.

So I mean, there again, it's no different than the conversation that you brought up earlier about that bill, that the be that the NDP enacted, on one hand, a lot of your colleagues would've supported it. You see different side of it and think, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is gonna cause some serious problems and wisdom is seeing that.

And so we're way further, we're way past this now. Yeah. Obviously people, you know, first Nations group have grabbed a hold of it

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: In a, in a pretty crazy way. And there's chunks of land that we're in that swath of, there's been no [00:41:00] treaty here, and all of a sudden they're laying claim to it. Yeah. And because we have a, a government in our province that has zero backbone, like all it would've, correct me if I'm wrong, all it would've taken is for eeb and the, and the, and the powers that be to go hard on it and, and enact legislation and say, let's just be very clear, anybody that has title to their land right now has title to their land that will never be questioned.

Is it fair to say that Uh,

HEATHER: well, the charter actually, the charter interferes with that because the charter doesn't, um, actually doesn't give. Homeowners exclusive rights own, because the Crown has it own, own the Crown property. The Crown

GARY: does actually own the property.

HEATHER: That is true. So, yeah. And so there's the indigenous piece of that.

It, you know what,

GARY: that's something that most people would not understand. That's fascinating that you say that. You learn that in the real estate course.

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: You really don't own your house anyways. That's right. Literally, the government is still just allowing you, which is why, so if you people that have had land exp [00:42:00] ated would realize that.

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: If you own a chunk, a chunk of land along a busy road and the government arbitrarily decides they're making the road prices wide, they're taking your land, they will pay for it, but they're expropriating it. You are not stopping a highway.

HEATHER: That's

GARY: your property for nothing.

HEATHER: That's right. Yeah. Exactly.

So, and I mean the, the whole issue, I mean, it is not my critic role. Um, and so, but I mean we've, you know, been learning about the whole thing as we go. Um, but it's, it's, it's very complicated and. And, um, a lot smarter people than me are, are dealing with this stuff. And there's a couple of, um, uh, brilliant lawyers, Jeff Moist and, um.

Tom Isaac are two, um, indigenous lawyers who have been traveling around talking about this and giving people warnings about the seriousness and the consequences of this. And [00:43:00] actually,

GARY: Tom Isaac?

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: Yeah. He's on the Looney Hour podcast on March 6th, if you wanna have a listen about this.

HEATHER: Okay.

GARY: So for those that care more about this and wanna,

HEATHER: yeah,

GARY: that's good guys.

Pretty bright. And those guys.

HEATHER: That's good.

GARY: Going a deep dive on it.

HEATHER: And I'm actually having a, a town hall, um, on, or a forum, whatever, um, on May 13th, and I'm bringing John Carpe to Chillowak and he's, he's gonna talk about this and so without, he's from the justice, uh, center of Alberta. And

GARY: so have we talked about him before on the podcast?

I feel like we have. He defended my brother right when my brother shot the Easter Bunny in Nuke Santa Claus.

HEATHER: Oh,

GARY: you didn't know this, did you?

HEATHER: No,

GARY: I didn't.

HEATHER: John Carpe?

GARY: Yeah. Yeah.

HEATHER: Oh

GARY: yeah.

HEATHER: Well, he, so John Carpe and his organization, um,

KYLE: yeah, I feel like we should give context to that. No, that's fine. But it's fine.

We'll get, we'll get there another time.

HEATHER: So, so he, so the, [00:44:00] the forum will be entitled Rights and Freedoms, and so he'll talk about that and he'll talk about, um, you know, all the stuff going on. It's so controversial right now.

KYLE: Yeah. Eeb kind of has backtracked on this drip of thing a little bit and said some, explain that.

Well, yeah. That, that's causing the, some of his own team saying like, being upset now.

HEATHER: Right.

GARY: Well, it's no different than the thing you were talking about in the Conservative Party where you have this divide, right? There's people in their party. That would believe this hook, line, and sinker and think we should just carry on as we were.

And who cares. Right? Right. Let the indigenous people challenge everything. And then of course there's property owners in their party that own their mansion in West Vancouver that are like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

HEATHER: Well, so he, so, uh, and to add to that, he has, um, Joan Philip, who is an N-D-P-M-L-A, and she is the wife of Grand Chief Stewart Philip, uh, of the province.

GARY: Is she the one that had the knife on her shirt?

HEATHER: No, that's Grace Lore. Um,

GARY: Savage.

HEATHER: And so, um, [00:45:00] um,

GARY: sorry. Trailing so bad.

HEATHER: Squirrel. Um, and so

GARY: that's Gary's brain. That's this podcast. This is the Squirrel podcast.

HEATHER: So, but Joan voted in favor of, um. Well, she, she's supported motions or, or bills that the NDP has put forward that her husband, grand Chief has opposed vehemently.

And so, um, but there was Joan, well actually it was her husband who stated in the media that Joan Philip would not be voting in favor of any amendments to dpa. And, um, there's two other indigenous, uh, MLAs in the NDP. And um, we heard that there was about 10 people who would not support it. And so they yanked it,

GARY: didn't want it to be a confidence

HEATHER: motion after

GARY: all.

Right.

HEATHER: Correct [00:46:00] me if I'm wrong, that's, yeah. Whoa. That's right. He changed that. And, um, I.

KYLE: So now no change is happening again.

HEATHER: I There's no, no, it's a delay. Delay, right. They're still saying it's a delay. They're that they're going, I, I'll, I know what, I'll believe it when I see it. So, 'cause he was, he even said he was gonna pause dripper for three years and, but I'll believe it when I see it.

KYLE: sounds like that couple needs some marriage counseling 'cause uh, or the, oh no. Table's pretty interesting there.

GARY: No, it's totally fine. It's good to have sparks in the

HEATHER: bedroom. She, you know what Joan, Philip is the mo is the loveliest lady and I sit with her on the ferry sometimes coming back. We've done that and had dinner together and yeah, I

GARY: guess you guys would be, do you not fly to Victoria?

HEATHER: No, I take the ferry.

GARY: Okay.

HEATHER: Yeah. Okay.

KYLE: Okay. So my, my earlier, my earlier question was like, what would the conservative focus on, so drip A is one of 'em, and, and

HEATHER: Right.

KYLE: Fixing that, those issues. What, what else? What were the other issues that are important?

HEATHER: So, well, you know. Okay, so we have all of our issues that we ran on initially that were, [00:47:00] you know, get rid of.

So G 1 23, um, that was a deal breaker for all of us. Um, get rid of repeal, dripper. Um, uh, what are some of the other issues? Well, I mean, we have to get the economy going again. So I, I would think that, uh, repealing drip is job one, because that's the only way that you can get the economy rolling again, um, is by getting all these projects going without,

KYLE: because it's halting so many projects

HEATHER: all Exactly,

KYLE: yeah.

HEATHER: So that, that's the main thing. Forestry, I mean, forestry's in crisis. Look at all the mills that are closing and,

KYLE: and that's 'cause of dbo.

HEATHER: That's. Part, part of it is dpa, the other part is gross mismanagement.

KYLE: Yeah.

HEATHER: The other part is clean energy, uh, requirements for [00:48:00] everything. There's an indigenous, um, owned company here in Chillowak that um, has, uh, they have all the equipment for a sawmill

KYLE: that Sequoia,

HEATHER: and they're by, um, Townsend Park.

KYLE: Oh, okay. I think, I'm not sure.

HEATHER: And, and they can't get the fiber. They're an indigenous company. So, so these are How come

GARY: N-D-P-N-D-P, it's fascinating to me because NDP has always, at least initially was started by the workers. Yeah. Like really? And I'm, and of course it's completely lost it's way No different than a lot of things.

Yeah. Like I think, you know, it's, it's

KYLE: like at most churches

GARY: Fair enough. But you know what I mean? Like, things obviously get way off track over time 'cause different people take over and, and things change in the world. But like, they're very anti anything resource. Even locking, like they're very much anti, you know, they somehow the green movement snuck in.

So now is there not pushback within their party, even on the front of like, people that are, hey, they, they have great union jobs at Mills and you [00:49:00] know, I like, I'm just old enough to remember the nineties, right? It was my childhood. Mm-hmm. And I can remember all the mills closing down when Glen Clark was in power.

And, and I'm thinking now we're kind of back to like, hey, we have huge government.

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: And that was another question I had and I have another question as well, which we should get to. 'cause we starts to get really anxious around the one hour mark, right? Isn't like long talk start

KYLE: twitching,

GARY: starts twitching and just cuts us right off and says, I don't

HEATHER: even know how long we've been

GARY: talking.

No, we're good. Well you're just getting warmed up, right? Because you're used to four hour all good school, five hour school board meetings. But the, um, I guess where is the bulk of like, we're running billions and billions of dollar deficits and I hate that word even now 'cause people don't understand how much a billion is.

Um, but. Where is that spending been coming from in the last six years? It obviously would've came initially through COVID of, but like where, what government agencies are spending all this extra money in the last five years? Do you know?

HEATHER: Well, I, I would say all of them.

GARY: Okay.

HEATHER: So, so if you have a problem in, in a ministry, well then you just hire more people to [00:50:00] fix the problem.

GARY: Okay. 'cause it is fascinating 'cause you know, my wife and I are foster parents.

HEATHER: Yes.

GARY: And like, if there's one area, and there again, this is just my experience. Mm-hmm. So I deal with government agencies all over. Mm-hmm. And we get treated really well. And by the ministry, um, in she walk, we feel like, you know, there's a great team people there for the most part.

Yeah.

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: Especially if you hear stories from further down the valley. Yeah. It sounds like there's a lot more issues the further you go to the city for various reasons. But right away there you hear about clamping down on spending and I mean, just as a foster parent in general, now, there again, it's like, you know, you're not doing it for the money per se, but you get, you get paid to, to Yeah.

Look after children in your home to cover their costs and

PHONE: yeah,

GARY: and it, and I would say it more than covers it, like I don't, you know mm-hmm. We're, we're maybe a higher level home than others, so maybe we get a bit more, there's varying degrees of that as well, but the very first place you hear it is in that ministry.

Those social workers don't get paid that much. Like the, the people that work there. It's not like those are ex, you know, exuberant, high paid jobs. And right away they're talking about, Hey, we gotta cut, we gotta cut. Like now, you know, the NDPs is realizing, hey, they gotta do something. Our credit score in BC keeps getting [00:51:00] downgraded every few months.

It's a disaster times, five times. It's a disaster.

PHONE: Yeah.

GARY: There again, most people don't even understand what that means. They're like, oh yeah, what, what do you like? Who cares? Right. Yeah. Well, it matters 'cause like we owe billions and billions of dollars. I think we have one of the per capita, I think we have almost the highest debt in all the country, maybe behind Ontario or some of the eastern Atlantic provinces.

But

HEATHER: per capita, I think we, we beat Ontario.

GARY: Okay. So we're in deep trouble essentially, right? We're heading like California style. So I'm wondering where, where would you cut, you know, if, if the conservative party, if we have a new, like where are we cutting?

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: Are we cutting a little bit everywhere? Is that safe to say?

HEATHER: Yeah. Well, hmm. I, I guess. With my limited knowledge of accounting and mm-hmm. How that all works. Um, um, it bureaucracy is the hu is the biggest expense I think that, that you see when, so my critic role was Ministry of Children and FA Families. Okay. Okay. Slash [00:52:00] the indigenous piece. Um, and so when we did estimates and estimates is what you do after they bring down the budget, you go to the minister of the role that you're critiquing and you ask them all the questions about spending in the budget.

And so when I did that last year, um, the first thing I asked them for was a flow chart. I said, is there a flow chart? Can, can you give me a flow chart of who's in charge of what and the ministries and, um. It's impossible that that's what we concluded is it's impossible because there's so many, there's so many layers,

GARY: levels of bureaucracy.

Now, it ties into another comment you made. 'cause you talked about the, and this is kind of a, I don't know if, if this strikes a chord, it concerns me, even when I hear conservative party saying, Hey, we introduced these new bills to me. I'm like, we need to start getting rid of bills. If I ever ran for office, [00:53:00] like, how do you get rid of bills?

Or do we just perpetually have more laws and more legislation and more people that need to understand them? Because that's what it feels like to me as a lay person who's very simple. I'm like, even in my small little sphere of businesses, I run like, and I'm blessed. Most of the businesses have almost zero bureaucracy.

KYLE: Yeah.

GARY: But ev there's starting to be some, especially in farming and agriculture and dairy, right? Mm-hmm. There's starting to be these, you know, what I would consider complete BS to me, to me, rules and regulations. Are not worth the paper they're written on. Good people do the right thing, whether or not there's a rule or not.

And shysters look for loopholes and Yeah. Which begats more like I was, so I'm always thinking, hey, how, how do we ever as a country in province and municipality get rid of regulation? And we don't seem to people run on that.

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: You know, in the US we had the chainsaw guy, right. Who threw the sink out at Twitter.

But like in Canada, we don't even have that. Like,

HEATHER: that's

GARY: right. Who's gonna win day run and say, yeah. And, and I mean, pier Paul probably is that he, he's a populace, but he would say, Hey, we're gonna. Hack and whack somewhere. [00:54:00]

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: But nobody wants to think they're gonna be the one that gets hacked and whacked.

It's pretty interesting. Right, right. Even though that does need to happen. Yeah. Maybe we need less MLAs maybe in chill. Wh what? Either you or your co co-fellow, MLA one of you is getting whacked and we're just gonna have one 'cause we need to cut costs. Do you agree with that?

HEATHER: Yeah. No.

GARY: Okay. Bingo.

HEATHER: No, because you like,

you

GARY: would agree with it as long as it wasn't you.

HEATHER: I, I didn't even know the definition of busy until I took this position.

GARY: What did you, how is it different than what

HEATHER: you expected Time? I don't even know what day of the week it is.

GARY: Hey, Heather. What, how does it differ from what you expected or what's different about it?

HEATHER: You know what? I didn't know what to expect.

GARY: Oh, you

HEATHER: didn't? Sorry. Nope. I had no idea.

GARY: Well, you must have expected something 'cause you agreed to run.

HEATHER: Yeah, well I agreed to run because, um, um, so I was the chair of the nomination committee. And Susan Matthews and I went and wind in nine a whole bunch of people and asked them to run. They all said, no,

KYLE: didn't talk to

GARY: me.

Guilty is charged.

HEATHER: I'm sorry.

GARY: Guilty.

HEATHER: We didn't,

GARY: Gary is charged. Yeah,

HEATHER: yeah, yeah. And, and, um,

GARY: could [00:55:00] you imagine, Heather? It's so, but you're there instead of me. It would've been such a disaster. I would've been

HEATHER: fight

GARY: already.

HEATHER: No, Gary, you would've been awesome.

GARY: No, it would've been a problem

HEATHER: with that. Um, so, but, uh, be, I think it was because politics in Chillowak was so polarized because of the board,

GARY: the school board.

HEATHER: And so everybody's like, eh, I'm not touching that. No thanks. And so I thought. I'm already in the frying band. Might as well jump into the fire.

GARY: Okay. Me. Let's go. So connected to that, Kyle and I, we had somebody on recently who was thinking of running for council, city council. He might not want it mentioned 'cause I can't remember if he does, so I won't say.

Okay. But he talked about having political parties at council level.

HEATHER: Ooh.

GARY: Do you agree with that?

HEATHER: No,

GARY: no. Neither do I. Okay. So you and I are

HEATHER: not at all and I'll for the city, you know what it's like school board. School board. Municipal

GARY: doesn't need to be

HEATHER: one swath of the other. It should be, it should be non-partisan.

Well, I'm non-partisan in my writing as well. I mean, I, but, but I serve everybody. I mean, I don't ask, you know, what, what stripe they are when they call and say, [00:56:00] so awesome Eric. You know, er help. People need to hear thats take my oxygen. Right? It's like, yeah. So, you know, so, but I think, so the best example, when I was first elected to the school board, I sat with John Henry Harter, who, uh, was a self-declared socialist Marxist.

And he and I discovered I, as a Christian conservative, we discovered that we actually had far more in common than,

GARY: yeah, you both really

HEATHER: cared for

GARY: people. We didn't.

HEATHER: You both really cared for people Totally. But as soon as he brought the union politics in the door to the board table, it all fell apart. And so that's why as soon as you bring 'cause looking after people and looking after schools and looking after the best in interests of people shouldn't be partisan in any way, shape, or form.

And so that applies to school board. That should apply to city council as well. So I know that there's a big, there's a movement to, to get the, I'm not a fan of it

GARY: all going. I'm not a big fan of it all. I don't like the slate thing. I

KYLE: like, yeah, I don't, [00:57:00] I don't even like it provincially because it just like, people just don't even do their research on the individual people.

HEATHER: Yeah,

KYLE: you, you're running as an, as a, as a person that has, you know, you can't be a swath exactly what the party believes in everything. Right. You have your individual

HEATHER: person

KYLE: that votes. And

HEATHER: in a perfect world. We would all be non-partisan and we would just do the right thing for the right reason called, but that'll be the tribulation when Jesus comes back.

GARY: We're not gonna get

HEATHER: into eschatology.

GARY: Okay. You're too opinionated and I'm not educated enough to debate with you. Um, what's the hardest thing you've ever dealt with in your life? What's the most trying time or the hardest thing you've ever, ever had to deal with in your

HEATHER: life? Um, probably losing my husband.

GARY: Okay. Yeah. How many years ago was that?

HEATHER: That was, um, uh, 16, 17, 17 years

ago.

HEATHER: Two. He died in two th September, 2009.

GARY: Okay.

HEATHER: So however long ago that

GARY: is. You don't know what day of the week it is. You

HEATHER: sure can't do the math. I'm starting to, I'm star. Yeah. You know what the, the longer time goes [00:58:00] by. I, I used to be able to tell you how many years, how many months,

GARY: how many

HEATHER: days he'd been gone.

Right. And now I struggle to remember how many years. So, you know, it's the passage of time.

GARY: Okay.

HEATHER: Right. But that was, that was probably,

GARY: you didn't have young kids anymore at the time then they would've all been young adults.

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: Okay.

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: Okay. But to be all of a sudden, and were you married a long time?

HEATHER: Yeah, we were married for 30 years. Okay. Yeah. And we'd been through lots of trials and tribulations

GARY: Okay.

HEATHER: And weathered them all.

GARY: Okay.

HEATHER: Beautiful. Right. So, yeah.

GARY: Okay.

HEATHER: Yeah.

KYLE: Anything you wanna say to the voters, to your, represent the people that you represent or the other side?

HEATHER: Um, call me if you have a problem.

No, don't, don't. No, but no, but that's what we're there for, right? I call Cindy and Wendy who work in my office, my weapons of mass destruction.

GARY: Is that the one that I talked to at church the other day?

HEATHER: Cindy? Yes.

GARY: Okay.

HEATHER: Yeah. Yeah, [00:59:00] because they are pit bulls and they go to bat for people. You know, it's, I visited a lady in her apartment the other day, and, um,

GARY: people of tough

HEATHER: situations.

It was so sad. People of tough situations. It was so sad. And, um, her, her grasp of reality is not great, but she needs somebody to come alongside her and champion her. And so, you know, the, the stuff that we do in, um, our ridings is far more important, I think, than anything that happens in Victoria. I mean, what happens in Victoria, we're fighters.

'cause we're opposition. That's our, our official job. His majesty's loyal opposition. And that's what our job is to oppose, to bring to light, you know? But, um, but it's people in the riding that you're looking after and all the issues they've had and ministry of children and families. [01:00:00]

GARY: Okay.

HEATHER: You know, grandparents having their, having their, their grandchild taken away, yanked away and just there, I mean there's, it's so much,

GARY: it's so messy.

HEATHER: Yeah. Yeah. And so that's why you can't just, we can't have just one Emily. We have to have,

GARY: she's job security. That's really what this is about. Well, yeah.

HEATHER: Right.

GARY: No, it's fascinating I guess. 'cause I think, um, I. Just on one hand, I sometimes think politicians shouldn't get any money. I think you know what, it should just be a, a free thing you volunteer.

On the other hand, I feel like people should be paid a lot more than they are. I had, I won't, he'll remain nameless, but he said to me one time when I, I ran by him about running for your job that you took. Yeah. And he said, Gary, trust me, they will not pay you enough. You will not be happy. Yeah. Which I don't even know how much it's paid.

It's, it's irrelevant. Really. Obviously, if you do it, you're not doing

HEATHER: it for the money. It's 19 a year.

GARY: No, it's more than that.

HEATHER: One 19.

GARY: It's more than that, Heather.

HEATHER: One 19. 119.

GARY: Okay. Okay. So it is a problem.

HEATHER: [01:01:00] So it's it and, and I mean. It, I mean, it's, it's, it's

GARY: a lot of money to some people. It's, but it's not

HEATHER: enough for, its, its, it's a decent wage, but I'm never off.

GARY: No. Well that's what I'm trying to say.

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: So people don't realize that when you go, hopefully not at church, but it's probably there too. But you go to anywhere in the community, any place. Yeah. And it's like, Heather, I wanna talk about this. And some people, not everybody's unhappy probably, but everybody wants to talk to you 'cause you're a politician, so you go out for a meal.

PHONE: Yeah.

GARY: And it's like stopping by your table. And so, um, I think it's an amazing. Like, I still look at it, even the opposition or you know, people on the other side of the aisle, or like, he jokes about eby on the holiday, but like, you know, like these people are, they're literally, it's a public service thing.

It's, and it's a big responsibility. It, and I appreciate when people run, even if I completely disagree with them. I think, man, it's, yeah, it's an honor. Like it's really cool that you're serving and I think you're a great voice for our community. You're Oh,

KYLE: thank

GARY: you. You're definitely not a, a shell. And I think the person that kind of was like asking me just, he said, Hey, I just don't know her.

Yeah. And I said, well, look back at the record book of Chillo, act like she was taking arrows for the last, uh, 15 years [01:02:00] here.

HEATHER: Yeah.

KYLE: I mean it goes back to the bureaucracy thing of, I think that's where all the money is getting spent and wasted. It's not because the MLAs are getting paid one 19 or one 50, whatever else like that.

It's because

GARY: yeah, manager upon manager

KYLE: of departments, it's endless and people are trying to save their own jobs and stuff like that. I remember when, uh, there was all these cuts happening a couple years ago in the us Uh, I was talking to some people that worked in government and they were really upset 'cause they were losing their jobs.

Yeah. And, and I can see that if you're like losing your job and you need to go find a job and stuff like that. But ultimately that's why our taxes as high as they are, right? Yeah. Like, it's, it's insane. I, I did, uh, the math a couple months ago on if I would've, um. Um, made what I made, uh, in Florida, what I would make here, and how much more I would save in taxes.

And it was $55,000. Yeah, it's a

GARY: bad comparison, Kyle. It's a bad comparison. Why? Uh, because you'd have trillions more in debt and it's not sustainable what they're doing there. It's a bad comparison. If you have to run, if

KYLE: you're

GARY: gonna do math like this, you have to do it in a situation where people are running [01:03:00] net zero and you're actually at a balanced budget and no cov government has a balanced budget now.

Fair. So none of the taxes are correct that we're paying, like, we're still not paying enough tax here. That's what politicians need to actually be candid and say

HEATHER: what? No, I don't agree.

GARY: You don't agree?

HEATHER: No, I don't agree.

GARY: Why is that?

HEATHER: Well, small businesses are getting killed.

KYLE: Exactly. Like

GARY: I'm, of course they are.

But what I'm trying to say is, and if you wanna, if I, if I was in power, I would enact a law that you, you're never allowed to run a deficit. Never.

HEATHER: Yeah. That, that

GARY: Boom.

HEATHER: Yeah,

GARY: boom.

HEATHER: Yeah.

GARY: Like something has to give the idea of fictitiously spending, what it does is every single last old person that you, senior citizen and are riding is getting crushed on their old age security.

HEATHER: Yep.

GARY: Because of prolific spending at government levels that make people like me and whoever else that owns land or farms or stuff. More wealthy. It's criminal and

HEATHER: Well, and they're getting taxed. They're, they're, they're, they're, they've put taxes, I keep catching my arm here. They put taxes on, um, um, uh, services that [01:04:00] seniors like on their cable.

On, on uh, wool yarn, like things that there didn't used to be taxes on. Now they've put tax because this government has put us in so much debt, they're trying to figure out how they can grab cash from whatever they care grab money from.

KYLE: Exactly. So, so it is a fair comparison. Like if you compare it to Florida like this includes like, um, paying for that like really good medical care, I would've saved $55,000 and for someone who runs a small business is trying to get it off the ground.

Yeah. Like it makes a's of money. Massive difference. Yeah. That's why there's so many businesses leaving Canada or not coming into Canada to spend money. 'cause capital is

GARY: fleeing

KYLE: Canada is a problem. You're gonna get completely killed on the taxes side and yeah. That means less jobs like, and at some point it won't work.

HEATHER: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yep.

KYLE: Anyways, I think that's a wrap. You got anything else? Gary?

GARY: Is there anything that you wanted to talk about or you're good?

HEATHER: I think, yeah, I think we, I

GARY: you have covered

HEATHER: lots of ground.

GARY: You have been way more relaxed and candid than I thought you would be.

HEATHER: Oh,

GARY: so this is awesome.

HEATHER: Awesome.

GARY: I mean, [01:05:00] I wasn't expecting you to shirk stuff, but I just think, ah, when you're in political office, everything's being listened to. Did I shirk something? No, you didn't. I'm just taped. Oh, I would, I would've if I were you. So that's why you were elected. Not me. It's awesome.

HEATHER: Yeah.

KYLE: Quick note though, on the Furious Curious Company, uh, besides the coaching, we do recruiting and help connect employers and employees who value faith, family, and freedom.

And I had someone reach out to me this week, um, that said, Hey, I, I'm, I know someone looking for a job, and how much do you charge for that? And I'm like, uh, if you're looking for a job. If you don't pay anything, it's the, it's the employers that pay. So, um, but yeah, there was a candidate reached out that has six years of experience in purchasing and inventory, vendor coordination, reporting.

Basically someone who keeps the back end of your business, um, running properly. So very detail oriented, organized, um, strong in Excel customer service experience. And she's looking for a full-time office position that's around 24 to 28 per hour. So if you know someone or if you, if you're a business owner that needs that kind of person, reach out to me.

And then on the hiring side, I'm also looking for a automotive technician in, uh, service tech in Abbotsford, heavy duty mechanic and a [01:06:00] certified electrician. So if you are a, looking for a good job, working for a, a good, um, family, faith and freedom-based company, reach out and, uh, get you connected.

HEATHER: That's great,

KYLE: Heather.

Appreciate you.

HEATHER: I appreciate you guys.

KYLE: Yeah,

HEATHER: thanks for, thanks for

KYLE: having

HEATHER: me to do this.

KYLE: I'm curious what the left is gonna clip. We'll find out. Cheers guys.

HEATHER: I was

KYLE: gonna say something.

HEATHER: So

KYLE: get any other there. We need our, we need our picture.

HEATHER: Oh, yes, absolutely. I gonna

GARY: say as long as we don't clip in the privates.

HEATHER: Absolutely.

GARY: Okay. Says pardon?

HEATHER: Where am I looking? Over there,

GARY: camera. There we go. We're good.

HEATHER: Okay.

GARY: The AI will take you and make you 35 years old and, oh, very big breasted.

HEATHER: Hey, listen, I earned every single one of the lines and I white hair on my [01:07:00] head.

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