Lessons in leadership
Interviews (and invites) from the left coast.
They call British Columbia’s 24th premier, W.A.C. Bennett, a populist visionary. Through sheer force of competence, he rammed through megaprojects that dragged a fragmented, slow-growth frontier into the modern era, built roads and ferries, and forged a $200 billion-a-year economic behemoth.
As the province has spent the last few years flirting with de-industrialization, and the return to its origins as some backwater under the mud-hut wing of the NDP, it’s as important as ever to be reminded one can simply do things.
Don’t just sign the pipeline MOU. Build the damned thing.
Don’t just claim private property rights aren’t at risk following secret land deals. Repeal DRIPA. Prove it.
Don’t just say you’re cleaning up immigration while holding deportations on the honour system. Send home the millions on expired visas to re-unlock the future for Canadian under-60s, who have been left to plummet down the social mobility ladder, and forced to grab desperately for 1/5th of the Canadian Dream once on offer to their parents.
In stark contrast to the amorphous status-quo of today, it’s no reason Bennett is viewed as a revolutionary. As a builder who refused to let British Columbia remain a sleepy outpost, that attitude is anathema to everything now embraced by those who revel in managed decline, profit from artificial scarcity, and sit high above or far away from streets now unrecognizable.