Ian Paton was elected in 2017 as a BC Liberal.
That changed in 2023 when the party re-branded to BC United. But after only a few weeks of the informal campaign this summer, BC United withdrew from the election with leader Kevin Falcon on Aug. 28, asking BC United candidates to support the Conservative Party of B.C.
Some BC United MLAs, such as Paton, were asked to join the BC Conservatives, while others resigned or ran as independents.
From his campaign headquarters in Tsawwassen, Paton said recently he's running for a third term “because I have had a passion for trying to make things better for the people of Delta South. The fact that I chose to run as a city councillor way back in 2010 and then carried on as I got asked to run provincially and basically for the same reasons. The fact that I’ve lived here my whole life, I kind of understand the area probably better than anyone in politics,” he said.
“I want to do this again because it’s been a little frustrating to be part of the official Opposition for seven years. I feel I’m with a party now that has a good chance of winning this election which will give me the opportunity to be in the front row hopefully in the legislature and be able to bring changes to Delta South in the way of financial changes, transportation upgrades, all sorts of things that I’ve been fighting for seven years in official Opposition.”
Here are his responses to the Optimist's five election questions:
Q1. What do you think is the major issue currently facing Delta farmers?
Answer: The major issue facing Delta farmers is of course, climate change, which we’ve faced throughout the province the last several years. Things just aren’t the way they used to be in the 1950s and 1960s where we had a steady bit of rainfall during the summer, mixed in with some nice, hot sunny days. So we’re starting to see agriculture 5 facing the ups and downs of climate change and drought … agriculture relies 100 percent on sunshine and water.
When I was a kid growing up farming in the 60s and 70s, virtually nobody had irrigation systems in Delta and now if you don’t have major irrigation systems in Delta to get water on to your crops, you’re not in business very long.
So, one of our big issues in Delta is getting a source of fresh water that doesn’t contain salt in it. We’re starting to get too much salt coming up the river to our irrigation pump station. Now, we’re wanting to move the pump station a little bit farther up the Fraser River, toward the Alex Fraser Bridge, so we get better, cleaner, less-salty supply of water for our irrigation system.
Q2: Including, but not limited to the future crossing of the Fraser River, what do you see as the main transportation issue facing Delta South?
Answer: One of the number one issues is getting better bus service for our employees for a huge industrial area of Tilbury Industrial Park. The other thing is, with the (new Fraser River) bridge plan that we (then BC Liberals) had moving forward, there was going to be the opportunity for future rapid transit rail to come over that bridge and eventually get a rapid transit track to south Surrey and possibly to the Tsawwassen ferry terminal.
With the NDP, they’re saying it’s going to be a tunnel (to replace the George Massey Tunnel) so if they move ahead with this tunnel the only thing we’re really getting out of it is a walking/biking path down the middle of the tunnel, which I find kind of creepy quite frankly. If you’re a person wanting to navigate through that tunnel at night, it’s just going to create a tunnel for graffiti and what not.
Q3: What can or should be done to ease the housing crisis?
Answer: We need to understand that in order to bring down the cost of houses, we have to make them cheaper to build, so I think we need to look at how we can provide incentives to the people that are actually building them, to lessen the wait time for permits, the red tape involved, the development cost charges, and create an environment where houses can get built for less money than what they’re getting built for now.
Q4: Canada has seen record immigration recently. How have you or would you respond as MLA to this federal issue?
Answer: As you said it’s a federal issue, so it’s not really my purview to jump into something like this. I can tell you this much, immigration has played a huge role in keeping our economy going, especially in agriculture. Without immigration, without people that want to work in our small coffee shops, our fast-food chains, our agricultural, picking, working on harvesters, driving tractors, we just don’t have local people doing that, like we did in the 60s and 70s.
So, we’re reliant on these people that have immigrated from other countries, that certainly don’t mind working in agricultural jobs or working in the retail, fast-food industry. We’re certainly short on staff. You see that every day when you go into, whether it’s a tire shop or whether it’s a department store, we need more people that are willing to work for possibly not huge wages.
Q5: Both the Conservatives and the NDP have said that they will or may cancel B.C.’s carbon tax. So, is there any difference between your parties on this and what happens to the price of gasoline if the 17-cent-a-litre carbon tax is removed and how will you make up the lost revenue?
Answer: I keep jumping back and forth between when I was BC United and BC Conservative, but I think their policy and platform on carbon tax is very similar. We have said, right from the get go. The NDP only said this literally, only days ago, major, major flip-flop. We’ve been saying that for over a year, that we’d get rid of the carbon tax, especially for agriculture. The transportation of farm goods and production of farm goods … is adding to the cost of food in our grocery stores with carbon tax.
