Campbell dons hard hat to woo city voters

By Dan Hilborn
Published May 11, 2005


His bus may have been 24 minutes late and there was one disgruntled voter in the crowd, but those were the only unplanned aspects to Premier Gordon Campbell's media event in Burnaby on Monday to showcase his four local candidates and promote the economy.

More than 100 hard-hat-wearing supporters, many of them realtors and developers, were on hand when Campbell stopped at the $14-million Ledgestone at Byrne Creek development in the Edmonds Town Centre neighbourhood.

"It is important to remember that during the past four years, housing has led our economic recovery," Campbell said. "Four years ago, we were the worst in Canada. I remember a friend telling me that he was worried that tradespeople were leaving the province."

In a stump speech that sounded almost as much like an advertisement for the home building industry as it was a campaign platform, Campbell reiterated many of the statistics highlighted by Burnaby-Edmonds candidate Patty Sahota in front of another new housing development with a different group of realtors and developers just one week earlier.

The big difference this time was the level of enthusiasm. When Campbell rattled off the names of the four Burnaby area candidates, the audience started clapping and cheering. Many of them chanted "four more years," while one person shouted "eight more years."

Campbell also took several shots at the NDP, claiming the province had "the lowest level of housing starts ever" in the year 2000. "We can't let the NDP kill confidence in B.C.," he said.

Campbell also highlighted several other government initiatives in the city. He said his government added 1,150 new student spaces and invested in a new athletics and health sciences centre at Simon Fraser University, and then added 24 new police officers to the RCMP detachment in Burnaby.

"This is a city with a future and an economy that deserves to move ahead," he said. "Do you want Glen Clark's ex-cabinet members back in government?"

The pro-development crowd roared "no" in answer.

Among the high-profile business people on hand for the event were Adera president Kevin Mahon, who introduced the premier, Greater Vancouver Home Builders Association CEO Peter Simpson, and Phil Hochstein, the executive director of the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association of B.C.

Mahon trumpeted the changes in the economy since the Liberals were elected. He also said that more than 50 per cent of the development's units sold last weekend when the project first went onto the market, and that's evidence of both a thriving industry plus "true leadership and sound management" on the part of the province.

Hochstein, of the ICBA, said that a project like Ledgestone probably wouldn't have been built during the 1990s because of the lack of confidence in the economy.

"The policies of this government give people faith in the future," he said, before urging the crowd to "vote early, vote often."