Nihaal Singh: Rescuing the spectator generation

Project B.C. says British Columbians deserve better than different colours of the same political mediocrity.

(The view of Downtown Vancouver from Lonsdale Quay.)

Introducing Project B.C.

As young British Columbians, we are told to sit down quietly and reject bold reforms in the name of “public palatability,” and to preserve the status of failed political operatives. As a result, we have allowed Conservatives to cede the battleground to radical progressives, allowing them to shape British Columbia on their own terms.

British Columbia is losing a whole generation; world-class talent is leaving because people are watching prosperity slip away. We are being told the economy is growing, but the truth is that it is failing for the people who actually live here.

In 2024, B.C.’s economy grew by just over one percent, while our population grew nearly three times faster. Youth unemployment has climbed to its highest level in more than a decade, with almost 15 percent of young British Columbians unable to find work, and the number is even worse for students. B.C. is the only province in Canada where youth employment still has not recovered from the pandemic.

Our cities, which were once symbols of prosperity, dynamism, and opportunity, are now plagued by decline.

Our cattlemen, farmers, and fishermen are taken for granted and expected to feed British Columbians while Victoria ignores their voices.

Our suburbs are struggling to thrive with poor infrastructure and rising property taxes, while government fails to deliver the basics.

All of rural, urban, and suburban British Columbia have been failed by successive governments and a weak political class. We deserve better, and they have failed to give us exactly that.

Incrementalism has failed to take on radical anti-growth agendas imposed upon us by a conglomerate of shadowy and spineless politicians. At the core of our issues lies our blind acceptance of the tyranny of the status quo.

Some may describe it as political “autopilot mode.” In some contexts, it is “institutional inertia,” and in others it is the practice of insanity: applying 1990’s-esque political slogans such as “free enterprise” as band-aids to an amputation of our values, culture, and ability to unapologetically advocate for ourselves.

For too long, British Columbia has been treated as a regulatory outpost on the edge of Canada by successive provincial and federal governments, and our role in Canada’s Confederation has been overlooked and undermined.

Neither the political guard nor the government can coherently state what B.C. should resemble in ten years, and it is not because they have not thought about it. Endless meetings in Downtown Vancouver and at the Union Club have yielded no results for this province, apart from giving self-congratulatory platitudes to those who have turned a blind eye to the decline.

Sadly, one of the defining features of life in British Columbia is the disconnect between what people pay and what they receive. While we can point to the NDP’s disastrous policies of decline, we must also reckon with the timid incrementalism that the alternatives over the years have presented, masquerading as “legitimate solutions.”

Project B.C. meets the moment and will unapologetically advocate for bold reforms to ensure that British Columbia is never again a spectator to its own potential.

Project B.C. is not a political party; it is what you get when political parties choose timidity over temerity, when “free enterprise” is used in a cowardly manner as a political ideology instead of an engine of prosperity.

It is what you get when British Columbians look beneath the political spin and failed public relations strategies and realise we are faced with institutions that no longer protect our interests, an economy that no longer rewards hard work, and a government of economic saboteurs.

We have seen the largest investor confidence crisis in B.C. history, the undermining of basic private property ownership, and a growing debt burden that will fall on the shoulders of a generation being robbed of a future. Our young talent looks beyond British Columbia for opportunity, to regions that value the ideas they bring.

Identifying the problem, while important, simply is not enough. Action is needed, and we will deliver exactly that.

Freedom, Prosperity, and Strength are our mission.

That is what the next generation wants.

We are not the beneficiaries of national prosperity or institutional stability. When the world was supposed to be “our oyster,” we were rug-pulled with COVID lockdowns, runaway government spending, a failing immigration system, and a radical breakdown of societal fabric. Now we face a housing crisis, a ballooning debt burden, and taxes upon taxes.

Not only have we been robbed of the promise of a nation, but also the promise of a generation, one where the torch of leadership is passed on and we are told to “go forth and build.”

We are shaped not by comfort, but by crisis, and our generation is now standing at the fault line of a prosperous British Columbia, or one plagued by decline.

This affects every British Columbian. They feel it when they try to build a house and are stuck navigating career desk jockeys in planning departments and abiding by a building code that may as well be written in hieroglyphics. They feel it when they start a business and are met with layers of regulations, taxes, and bureaucratic drag. They feel it when lumber mills are closing, jobs are lost, companies are taking their operations to the United States, and families are left wondering how they are going to get their next meal.

The cosmetic reforms, recycled slogans, and incrementalism cannot disguise the absence of a bold governing philosophy capable of meeting the modern challenges of our time. B.C. requires nothing less than a governance renaissance, a restoration of competence, strategic clarity, and ideological coherence.

So why now?

Project B.C. has emerged now because the province has reached a hinge point in its history, a point where the decisive actions taken today will define B.C.’s future for the next generation.

British Columbians deserve better than a political marketplace offering different colours of the same mediocrity. The window is closing, capital is leaving, and while our competitor jurisdictions are streamlining, we are debating whether we should permit housing, infrastructure, and industries critical to B.C.’s economic survival, and whether we will leave something behind for the next generation to build upon.

Freedom means taking a chainsaw to the bureaucratic barriers that restrict upward mobility and suffocate opportunity.

Prosperity means unleashing the productive power of industry: the business community, workers, and innovators who have been sidelined by governments hostile to growth.

Strength means a province capable of unapologetically defending its interests: economic, constitutional, and cultural.

British Columbia does not lack the ingredients for greatness; it lacks leadership with the courage to wield them.

Project B.C. exists to close that gap, to end the diminishment, to rebuild what was previously squandered, and to ensure that British Columbia is no longer a spectator to its own future, but the architect of its own splendour.

Nihaal Singh is a director for Project B.C. He has experience as a former Conservative political staffer and as a consultant in the digital asset and innovation space in Canada and the United Kingdom.