 very special thank you to the Coast Salish who's traditional territory we are meeting on today and congratulate Al Richmond our incoming president from the caribou of course folks in the caribou went through a really tough fire season and Al and the community did so much to lead the community through that so I'm looking forward to working with you Al and of course Sav another Burnaby boy was I used to represent Sav actually he was reminding me that in his first election I don't know how many out here have you out here have ever lost an election but I certainly have more than one and he Sav in his first try lost an election and I wrote him a note just to say hey keep at it and I haven't always not regretted that Sav I have to say but but he has done such an incredible job we're also lucky that he did keep at it and has represented the people of Burnaby with such distinction represented British Columbia communities at the FCM and of course led this UBCM over this past year it's been a privilege Sav thank you very much when whenever there's a handover of power I'm reminded of that old story from from Soviet Russia you know the the the new leader takes over and goes to the pre his predecessor and says all right I need some advice and they and the pre predecessor says to the his his replacement will look here's two envelopes in the first crisis when that hits I want you to open the first envelope and then when the second crisis hits I want you to open the second envelope and so of course he goes and he has the first crisis comes along and he opens the first envelope and it says whatever happens just blame me and so he does as he's told and he survives the crisis and he moves on a couple of years later there's a another terrible crisis that hits hits the community and he goes and he opens the second envelope and the second envelope it says write two letters to your successor now I'm pretty sure that Sav has not had to do that for Al and when I look at the longevity of so many members who half of you who are returning mayors and councillors and members of regional districts and local government across the province clearly you are more than capable of weathering a few crises and a few difficult times and all those of you who are new welcome to this tremendous organization and the good work that it does for our entire province it's been a real pleasure a real pleasure to meet with you I am I have another story to tell and and this one is actually true and I could tell you a story of course about how bad things are and how it's only going to get worse but of course if I was going to do that I would have made that speech yesterday morning not today the I am I very much believe that when we talk about the future in British Columbia and anywhere in the world as leaders people look to us not for complaints and despair about the future they look to all of us all of you and me and all of the leaders in British Columbia for hope they look to us for reasons for optimism they want to know that there's a plan that we have a plan to help them through good times but more importantly to help them through some of the some of the bad times and you know this year this summer has been an extraordinary one all across the province and you know in cities all over the place we have had the best year for film that British Columbia has ever seen tourism is way up and many communities have seen a better tourism year than they've ever seen Whistler in the month of August as an example had more visitors than they did in the year of the Olympics in February 2010 in in parksville they hosted parksville which is a city of I think 12,000 people they they hosted 108,000 people for beach fest over a period of five weeks in tumblr Ridge a city of about 2700 people they hosted 8,000 people at the dinosaur museum alone British Columbia is really thriving and not just in the urban centers but all over the province in golden for the first time in 15 years one of the counselors told me they are starting to see their enrollment in their school grow as their community renews and young people come back the people in communities that depend that look to the car car shop to see how it's doing their sales are up 7% and you know what they're selling they're selling white trucks the kinds of trucks that men and women can put their own labels on as they get their small business going and get out there to go and create jobs and that's happening all over the province but it isn't all good news there has been as you know an extraordinary summer for lots of other reasons in BC to first of all there was the windstorm that hit the island the Gulf Islands the lower mainland and up the coast 710,000 accounts were reconnected by BC Hydro by our men and women that work as linesmen for that for our company in this province 710,000 accounts were reconnected in just 72 hours that is by the way twice as many people connected in half the time that they did in Toronto when they had their recent shutdown not long ago thank you to them thank you to the men and women who fought our firefighters fires wildfires all across the province in this incredibly difficult wildfire season here they were I I'm sure many of you some of you would have gone up if you were in a in a community that was affected and seen those young men and women walking into the burning forest with a can of gas in one hand and an axe in the other and they did it because they care about our province and they want to protect the communities that we all care so much about and thank goodness they do because I think a lot of us might have to dig really deep to try and find the courage that they had to do that and and mayors in Oliver Ron Havana's and Oliver Mike Richmond Pemberton Bruce Milne in seashell microtan and Port El Bernie Doug Finlayer in West Kelowna all of you did an amazing job during these this fire season I want you to know we are so grateful because you worked hard and most importantly you led no community no community in British Columbia this year personified leadership as much as Midway did Mayor Randy Caps and his community of 500 500 people in the entire community and 240 of them volunteered now that is really that is why leadership matters in British Columbia and what but though you know the lesson from this fire season is one that we would do very we would regret forgetting and that is what the fire fire experts all told us as they wrote there in the front lines this fire was moving in ways that people had never seen before people had never seen it behave the way that it has and part of that is because of climate change the National Research Council United States tells us that for every degree the average temperature goes up we will see quadruple the amount of land burn in Western North America now we can all hope that we are wrong that they are wrong but worrying about that will not help the only thing that will change that is if we decide to lead if we decide to lead in the fight against climate change and if we decide to lead in the fight to make sure that our communities are safe from for forest fires and not just forest fires but other disasters in appointing it Naomi Yamamoto we are the only jurisdiction in North America that has one cabinet member who is solely devoted to making sure that we are better protected in the case of disaster from wildfires from flooding windstorm response earthquakes and on that last one we are better prepared 17 billion dollars in seismic infrastructure upgrades that are already underway or completed but there is so much more for us to do next June we are going to hold the largest disaster bill drill in British Columbia history we all have to come together to make sure that 4.6 million British Columbians are working together to make sure that we are ready and it isn't acceptable that some people decide to sit that effort out and what I'm talking about are the folks that throw a cigarette but out the window or someone who decides to leave their camp fire burning even when there's a ban on in the community where they're camping people that fly drones and keep our forest fires forest fighters out of the air that is why I've asked Mike Morris to consider all of the range of consequences that we can use to deal with those kinds of offenders because thousands of people are depending on our forest firefighters and our community leadership to be able to make sure that we can be protected and we cannot allow people like that to get in our way and as I've said I don't think people count on any of us to complain they count on us to be ready and so I've got a few announcements I want to talk to you about today five of them that I think are going to mean that we are able to look farther down the road and really prepare our province for all of the circumstances that we might confront and part of that though is the fact that British Columbians expect all of us to live within our means and this is what it means for us in the provincial government it means controlling spending it means keeping government small it means shaving down our debt day by day and the first step in that of course was getting out of deficit and we've done that with three consecutive balanced budgets in a row that the next thing after you balance your budget you got to take care of your debt so the next thing for us is our operating debt we already have our operating debt down to one of the lowest levels it's been in a very very long time in four years as we stick to our plan British Columbia will have eliminated our operating debt for the first time since 1975 and that is where a debt-free British Columbia begins that is how we begin to be able to endow our children with a province that is unburdened by decisions that our generations and generations before us made but couldn't afford to pay for but we cannot at the same time that we make sure that we are balancing our budget and controlling spending forget about the importance of vital infrastructure for our province and communities right now we have more than seven billion dollars worth of projects out in the field that's bridges it's hospital transit schools things that are happening in all of your communities and then there's BC hydro BC hydro will be investing 2.4 billion dollars a year every year for the next 10 years that's dams its transmission lines its distribution and its jobs all over the province and federal politicians are doing a lot of talk about infrastructure spending well guess what here in British Columbia we're getting it done and when you consider all of those projects it adds up to a hundred and fifty thousand jobs over 10 years from infrastructure site see alone is going to create 10,000 of those jobs and I know that there are some of you in this room and outside it who opposed building site see as much as I passionately support doing it I understand your position what I don't understand is the position of those who say they don't have the courage to take a position it is not leadership to say on the biggest infrastructure project in British Columbia's history one that will create 10,000 jobs and have impacts across generations in creating clean energy it is not leadership to say you're just not sure because leadership is about growing a diverse economy it's about having the courage to say yes in getting to decisions it's about having the courage to want to put people to work and some of those decisions are hard ones but as we put people to work as we've been doing we have to reach out and find people who want to come back to British Columbia we spent some days out of the Calgary stampede this year with a booth called come home to BC 83,000 people came to the booth cuz these 83,000 people are from your communities these 83,000 people are from Nanaimo and they're from Comox they're from Kelowna they're from the caribou they're from the Kootenays they're from Vancouver they said thank goodness British Columbia is ready to welcome us back because we are ready to come home we are ready to be reunited with our families and we want to be home in communities that we love where we grew up places to which we are profoundly attached 83,000 people probably some of them just pretending to be British Columbians but we will be we will be we will be delighted to have them back you won't see a wall being built along the Rockies those opportunities are here for people to come back to your communities to all of our communities because we're starting to see economic growth really thrive in the province we're starting to see those first LNG projects take shape rural communities are really coming back but we cannot forget that we are outliers here in British Columbia in Canada in the United States in Asia in Europe what we are seeing are huge deficits debt that they can't control fragile economies huge numbers of people unemployed and facing unemployment and that uncertainty is crowding the future of millions of people all over the world we are surrounded by that uncertainty but we have made a singular achievement all of us together as leaders in BC and that singular achievement has not happened by accident it's happened because we worked for it because all of us had a plan yours in your communities and ours in the province as a whole we had a plan and we stuck to it and that plan is now bearing fruit all of the hard-working British Columbians who sacrificed along with all of us to make sure that we could build a better future and now it's our chance to talk to British Columbians and to communities about finding the dividend from that hard work that's the result of a plan and it's the result of all of us working together to make sure that we could secure our future in Kamloops Peter Millibar and his council undertaking a core review to make sure that they're not spending a dollar without really thinking hard about it knowing that there's only one taxpayer in the province Kitimat nobody nobody is more proud of the new smelter than Phil Garmouth when he sees that he sees a thousand jobs secure in the long term people will be paying taxes building their families in Victoria Lisa helps task force on economic development and prosperity she's reaching out to try and find new ways to attract investment to that beautiful city our capital on the South Island Lee brain and Prince Rupert Lee has an incredible vision Charles Hayes who died on the Titanic in 819 12 had a vision to and he wasn't able to complete it his vision was to make Prince Rupert a port for the world to open up the Northwest well Lee has taken on that vision with gusto so that he can make sure that he realizes that future for Prince Rupert that so many so long ago may have already given up on because he knows that when he sees his chamber of commerce grow by 46 percent it means that small businesses are coming and small businesses are growing and that is his vision and a vision of many leaders in the Northwest a part of our province that is saddled economic growth for far too long but none of this has been easy and I know it's never been easy for local government leaders either it's never easy to get through uncertain times but we've done it and we've done it together so now let's talk about how we can start paying that dividend back to the people of the province because we still have other challenges to tackle challenges that we can't tackle without money challenges with crime in urban and in rural centres places like Williams Lake and Terrace that need help just as much as places like Surrey and Abbotsford and here's what I think we need to do I think first we need to be tough on criminals we need to make sure that that guns and gang strategy that has been so successful that's put hundreds of gangsters in jail that's kept guns and kept drugs off the street that that needs to keep going we need to keep that work because crime is like a weed in your garden it doesn't stop growing just because you think you've got it beat and you decide to take the gardening season off crime just keeps coming back and we have to keep on doing it. We also need people to come forward anyone in communities who knows anything about the criminals we need we need your help in trying to solve these crimes Harry Braun had it right from Abbotsford he said we need to end the culture of silence and third I think most importantly we have to be tough on the roots of crime we have to prevent it we have to deprive criminals of their most important resource and that is our children we have to make sure that we are in schools helping kids get out of gangs and helping make sure they don't get into gangs because it's like stealing their oxygen if we can take children away from gangs we can stop gangs from growing in our communities and so today we're committing a further five million dollars over two years to build on the success of the guns and gang strategy to build on the success of the rap program in Surrey and to work with you in whatever community you're in to make sure that we can beat gangsters where they live and make your community safe again now there are a few communities in British Columbia that do what I think is more than their fair share of heavy lifting to make sure that we're all prosperous all across the province and they make a huge contribution to count kid to Canada as well and some of those rural communities are really struggling canal flats tumbler Ridge Cornell Houston communities that are going through real transition and they're not the first and that's why I asked Donna Barnett as the chair of our rural task force and our rural advisory council to go out and work with a group of marriage from across the province and talk about what we can do to try and support communities that are going through transition to think very hard about how we share the wealth better that is created in rural communities with the rural communities that created it and got it out of the ground in the first place they came forward with some principles some guiding principles for the rural dividend and so today I'm happy to announce that we are committing 75 million dollars over the next three years to create a new dividend for communities under 25,000 people I know that those cheers were not for me they were for Donna Barnett Donna will you stand up there we are that's the person who deserved it because you know we have protected British Columbia's economy by diversifying it over the years we have an incredibly diverse economy we have incredibly diverse markets and we've all worked really hard to create that but we have to help rural communities continue to diversify and that's what this rural dividend is going to be all about it's about sharing the wealth it's about doing like Whistler and Squamish are talking about when they think about how they can take their incredible tourism success and make sure that they're extending that across the south caribou all of these opportunities that we have in our communities are things that we haven't necessarily done a great job of sharing we haven't done a great job of sharing with First Nations that's another thing we need to correct make sure that First Nations on whose traditional territory we make resource operations work are also fully sharing and becoming a part of our economy First Nations communities rural communities and urban communities now speaking of urban communities we have had an incredible success in technology something Lisa helps Gregor Robertson and and people all over British Columbia certainly up in Kelowna will be able to tell you companies like Amazon that have moved in Sony Digital has named Vancouver their global headquarters up from LA and that is the hard work that we've done in our trade offices in your communities and by making sure that our tax policy is one that's going to work Victoria's tech scene is exploding at the moment Okanagan tech scene is over a billion dollars today and now we have this chance this moment in time where we've established British Columbia as a tech hub where we need to start thinking hard about how we can make sure that tech companies also start relocating to much smaller communities but they can't do that if you don't have high speed internet so in this year's budget you know that we committed 10 million dollars over the next two years to expand a high speed internet and I'm going to give you a quick update today more than 70 communities will benefit from the first eight projects that have now been approved starting with projects in the Kootenays in Goldbridge and in Port Alice right across the province and of course as you know Grand Isle the folks in Grand Isle were able to make their first phone call on a cell phone I think at 3 p.m. on August 21st the mayor not the mayor one of the counselors was telling me he didn't know who to call so he called City Hall I know everybody up there is complaining we've ruined their their peace and quiet sorry about that Grand Isle but that's one of those things that we need to make sure that we extend all across the province so that every community has the same opportunities that we do in the lower mainland in the South Island and because that kind of infrastructure is really the foundation for attracting new jobs and investment we all know that and that's why we created the that's why we've been participating in the small communities fund green infrastructure water projects road improvements 55 projects have gotten over the ground gotten off the ground in the last year and it's a pleasure to add to that today with another 90 million dollars that will be equal cost shared between the province and the federal government and applications are open now so get on your iPhone and and before I close I have one more one more announcement to make because my mayor Doug Finlayer has moved and moved a motion through UBCM and I want you to know Doug and and all of you I heard you we have we do have to protect interface communities and we have to protect we have to prevent wildfires across the province and this year we committed to removing five million dollars worth of that fuel that is close to our communities we will have more money for it in our budget in February I promise you that as part of a larger plan but in the meantime I'm announcing another 10 million dollars in bridge funding for the strategic wildfire prevention initiative that we will co-manage with you at UBCM now on that particular front you may know I've reached out directly to the prime minister to make sure that the federal government is part of this they need to be there for us in preventing wildfires here in British Columbia there's another file they need to be there on us though with us though on too and that we cannot do without them that is the softwood lumber agreement it has uh it expires next month we have one year to reach a new agreement with the U.S. and I want you to know if you are from a forest community whether that's Vancouver or Surrey or Williams Lake or Burns Lake I want you to know that whoever the newly elected prime minister is my very first call is going to be to talk about softwood lumber so let me close with this because I started with this point about how I think people look to us for hope they look to us for reasons to hope they want to know that we're living within our means and they want to know that we'll be there in times of need and they expect all of us to create a growing and diverse economy but I think most of all what they expect of all of us is that we'll find ways to work together and I read a I read a reread an old book this summer that I hadn't read in a long time it's by Victor Frankel I got to tell you a little backstory about it that may at first seem unrelated Victor Frankel was becoming a very famous psychiatrist in Vienna in the late 1930s he was on the cusp of having his name written in history as one of the great thinkers of the modern age and just as he was about to write that book he was hauled off to a concentration camp he survived that camp and I think for three three and a half years and every day he woke up without a doubt expecting the absolute worst and in his book what he does is he recounts how despite that every day he got up and decided to be his best and the message of his book is not really about that story the story of his life the message in the book is something that I've been reminded about every time I have met with one of you over the last few days it's the fact that it is not our job to go out and be great and to make our place in history so that we will be remembered forever it is our job to find out what the world wants from us to listen to that call from our communities to recognize what need it is that we can fill and to step up and answer it and every one of you goodness knows because local government is not always a rewarding job or a rewarding second job for many of you each one of you has stepped up because you heard a call you did not do it because you wanted to go down in history you did it because you wanted to make a difference because you saw a need because you answered that call and not everybody has the courage to do that and we do not know what circumstances we will confront but we can do this we can decide that whatever happens in this uncertain world we can decide to be ready to be ready to confront the world to be ready to confront its challenges to be ready to make sure we are there for the people of British Columbia when they need us that is what leadership is and that is what every single one of you to me represents thank you so much