Caroline Elliott: I’m taking the hard road. Here’s why.

We must be unafraid to restore the British Columbia we knew and loved.

We have an urgent need for change in British Columbia, and we need more people with the courage to make that change happen. That’s why I’ve decided to seek the leadership of the B.C. Conservative Party.

I’m fortunate in many ways. I have a kind, supportive husband I love, and sweet, healthy young kids. I have a home near trails I get out on as often as I can.

Through my think-tank work and advocacy, I get to lay out a vision for a better province and country in a way that fulfils the credentials I’ve worked hard for on issues I care about. I have a consulting career I’ve built up over decades of relationships and knowledge gained by working on some of B.C.’s biggest projects, across key sectors, and through my time working in government.

It’s a good life by any measure, and that’s a hard thing to justify changing.

But.

Our province has been driven in the wrong direction for some time now. Not just slightly off-course, but drastically so. It is being pushed aggressively downward by a government on an ideological crusade that has constantly put its activist beliefs before the well-being of British Columbians.

And it is affecting every part of our lives.

An economic approach that has driven countless industries into the ground, and that constantly finds new ways to say “no” instead of welcoming job-creating investment into our resource-rich geography that any other jurisdiction would embrace.

An impossibly high cost of living that sends our best and brightest to look for opportunity elsewhere instead of building their lives here and contributing to the province they love.

A secretive reconciliation agenda that decries our country’s very existence, divides us into Indigenous “rightful owners” and non-Indigenous “uninvited guests,” weakens our property rights, undermines our democracy, and kills our prosperity.

An education system that denigrates our history, and that teaches our kids to “decenter colonialism,” develop “mindsets of cultural humility,” and apply “anti-racist lenses,” even as they lose their proficiency in numeracy and literacy and fall years behind where they were two decades ago.

A catch-and-release approach that puts the rights of violent criminals over the rights of citizens to feel safe in their own public spaces, and a race-based sentencing approach that says an offender’s ancestry determines their level of culpability.

Soul-destroying addictions policies that prioritize giving people drugs over getting them well, and that abandon those with serious mental health and addictions issues on the streets to be preyed upon.

A Public Health Office that prioritizes projects to “unlearn white supremacy” and that lists authors of its medical reports by their ancestry rather than their medical credentials, while British Columbians succumb to overdoses, emergency rooms shut down, and our loved ones suffer and even die on waitlists.

A reckless spending spree that has grown our public sector bigger than ever while absolutely nothing has gotten better, leaving our kids to pay for insurmountable levels of debt while there’s nothing to show for it but under-built and overwhelmed infrastructure, a declining standard of living, and an exodus of our young talent to other jurisdictions.

I’m running for Premier because the fix to what ails this province requires so much more than tinkering at the edges of taxation and regulation. It requires more even than ending decriminalization or repealing DRIPA. It requires root-to-branch removal of a pernicious NDP ideology that has permeated every single aspect of government.

It’ll require real courage, because it isn’t going to be easy. And that’s exactly what I’ve spent my life doing: standing up on hard issues others wouldn’t touch. Things like opposing the government’s extreme reconciliation agenda, its race-based hiring and promotion policies, its economy-killing “CleanBC” plan that produces little environmental gain for a lot of pain for B.C. families, its war on growth and investment that has driven our economy into the ground, its brazen ideological takeover of our education system, and more.

It’s that same mindset I’ll bring to this task: an ambition for this province to be not just better than it is, but the best in our country. A recognition that it isn’t about just one leader, but a whole team of unapologetic fighters who are committed to walking B.C. back from the brink, driving hard for prosperity, and bringing a sense of hope for the future. And a track record of being unafraid, taking on tough challenges and making hard choices, when there is every reason to take the easier path.

That’s who I am; it’s who I’ve always been, and it’s what I’m offering now to the province I love.

Caroline Elliott has a PhD from Simon Fraser University in democratic theory and Canadian government and is a co-founder of Without Diminishment. She is seeking to lead the Conservative Party of British Columbia.

(Editor’s note: During the campaign, Caroline will be taking a leave of absence from her editorial role at Without Diminishment. All candidates for B.C. Conservative leadership are invited to share their vision for British Columbia’s renewal with the readers of Without Diminishment. Op-ed submissions to: withoutdiminishment@gmail.com.)