Your party has been adamant about finding out about the unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Residential School site.
Indigenous people have said that they find it disrespectful to their history and culture as a means of finding this out.
If someone were to ask you about your ancestral history and by digging up potential graves wouldn’t you find it disrespectful?
I’d be glad to tell them my ancestral history. The thing that bothers me is are the words, truth and reconciliation. Why can’t we have truth? There have been these gravesites all across Canada. So far, there’s been no bodies found. So, the B.C. government put up $12.5 million to do a forensic dig on this site for the truth.
It’s all we’re asking. We’re not seeing anything. And besides, if it was your family, wouldn’t you want to know if you had children there or relatives there? Wouldn’t you want them to be buried properly with a proper service? That’s what we want. We want truth and reconciliation, and that’s where we go. We’re not racist. We don’t hate anybody.
But we want the truth. And it’s like in British Columbia right now, if you ask a hard question, you’re this, you’re that, you’re all these things, get all these things thrown at you. Why? I’m just asking for the truth. You know, taxpayers are paid all this money, and they’ve accepted the money to do a forensic dig, and now suddenly. Well, we can’t do it. We don’t want to. It’s disrespectful.
If it was my family personally and I thought, “man, if my cousin or uncle Bob is in that grave, I want to know. And then I could have give him a proper burial service that is respectful”. And that’s where we stand.
What is the assurance that they will be buried with respect?
If my family was dug up, I sure make sure I buried them properly. You know, this is what this was supposed to be. This forensic dig, if there are people there, dig them up and respectfully bury them with their families across where they’re from, and to me, that’s respectful to take your lost, dead and bury them properly in the family service to me that’s respectful.
How will your party deal with tariffs, will you put American booze back on B.C. shelves?
If it was up to me I would have already been dealing with the tariffs like Carney promised before he got elected instead of just walking away.
Like it or not, U.S. is the biggest trading partner on Earth, biggest economy on earth. You got to deal with them. Trump’s gone in two years. We’re still going to be here. So why fight, get a deal. And unless we can work on a deal, every year comes with a deal again, up to review. So, every year we can talk more deal. But let’s just get something happening. The rest of the world seems to have been able to trade with them. Why can’t we?
Also, I talked to a guy that makes wine and he says it’s cheaper, even with the tariffs, he makes more money selling to the U.S. than he does to anywhere else in Canada because, he can’t sell across the country. So isn’t that dumb? We’re the only country on the face the earth that tariffs ourselves.
Fact Check: Canada is not the only country that interprovincial taxes. Many other countries have state taxation.
Interprovince tax exists to keep provinces sovereign and prevent monopolies. How do you proceed on that front?
Everybody’s so worried about this. They always want to go socialist, communist, socialist. The countries with the largest business in. Whether you like it or not, they’re the richest countries, they have the highest living standard, they have the best health care, they have the best dental, best everything. But people, somehow hate these rich guys. We hate these big monopolies. I know there’s a few monopolies around right now that are actually cheaper than going for the other stuff. So I don’t know, this monopoly stuff.
Which monopolies?
General Motors.
Fact Check: General Motors in not a monopoly. They are part of an oligopoly. It means only a small number of large companies dominate the market rather than a single firm. While an oligopoly does not give the same level of economic control as a monopoly, though a small group of firms in an oligopoly can still exert significant influence over prices and output.