NAME: Trevor Hamiltion
PARTY: BC Conservative
ABOUT: Hamilton is a resident of Mission, a husband, father to three children and two step-children and a small business owner. In his youth he was a G7 protesting progressive. Hamilton came to conservatism after witnessing the dramatic failures and horrible unintended consequences central planning and big government delivered in my lifetime.
1. What are the biggest issues currently facing the District of Mission?
Infrastructure, the hospital and drugs. These are all areas the provincial government can and should play a role. The short-sighted ambition of City Hall has put our sewage system and reservoir in peril and left our major intersections a clustered mess during rush hour. The costs to fix this now are astronomical and cannot be accomplished in one fell swoop. The pipes are top priority, followed by upgrading our major roadways and then increasing our supply of available water. Mission, with its growing population, requires a fully equipped hospital.
What we have now is insufficient and unacceptable. The needle exchange program and lack of law enforcement surrounding drugs is victimizing our town and leaving the people suffering from addictions languishing in the streets.
2. Why does your party have the best solutions on these issues, and what are the biggest gaps in your opponents’ platforms?
The infrastructure and institutions we are lacking to deal with these problems are exactly within the scope of what a central government should be providing.
While the other parties throw money around trying to buy votes and create jobs, the services they are supposed to provide and the jobs they are responsible for filling have fallen into ruination. The Conservative Party is the only party insisting the government properly finance and repair the systems and institutions it is fundamentally and exclusively responsible for before embarking on speculative pet projects and feel-good spending campaigns. Until we repair the neglect in these areas, the problems will only worsen.
3. What should government do to help people recover from the economic effects of COVID-19?
End the lockdown, assure people it will never happen again in a free society and allow people to make their own decisions and get on with their lives. Freedom produces wise decision making where coercion produces pushback. The debt we have incurred over this short period of time is going to prove debilitating for future generations.
In this regard, we need to balance the budget and reduce and eliminate regulations in order to allow the people of this province to start creating wealth and generating needs for services. Prosperity doesn’t come from the government, it comes from a free, hard-working, ambitious people.
Our children and grandchildren need us to step up now more than ever and fix what the government has broken.
4. The provincial government provides vital servicers to thousands of vulnerable people. What personal experiences give you insight into how government services affect the lives of voters?
Personally, I avoid having the government in my life as much as possible. I have watched as disability clawbacks put my friend in a state of perpetual poverty, dependent on a system that demanded she not be able to improve her life or get ahead in any meaningful way.
I have watched my friends, whose parents were broken by residential schools, repeat the same mistakes only to have their children ripped away and be left without any type of adequate counseling or guidance on how to properly parent and get away from substance abuse.
I have seen my Grandmother’s prescription costs increase four times while her pension remains the same.
I have witnessed the government fail at essentially everything it claims to be a proponent of, giving people false hope and broken lives. Instead of being reactionary and topical, the provincial government needs to be more resolute in its fundamental purpose and more honest about its capabilities.