By Roy L Hales
Though only a little more than 2% of the electorate voted for him in the last provincial election, John Twigg is back. This time he is running for the Conservative party of BC – which has not contested this seat for decades. Twigg especially wants to talk about self sufficiency in food, policing and banking.
John Twigg, Conservative candidate for North Island riding in Vancouver Island - submitted photo
Veteran journalist and lobbyist
He is a veteran journalist who previously served as Premier Dave Barrett’s press secretary (1972-75), and was the Financial Editor for the Regina Leader-Post (1978-85). He also successfully lobbied for the creation of the West Coast Trail and Nitinat Triangle portions of Pacific Rim National Park, as well as pioneering the concept of community gardens in Victoria’s James Bay.
He has been living in the Campbell River area, for the past 25 years.
Self sufficiency in food, policing and banking
“Why are you running in this election?”
Twigg replied, “When you run you get opportunities to answer questions like the one you just asked. I use this opportunity to raise what I think is one of the major concerns for British Columbians, that’s to get more self sufficiency. When we look around the world at the troubles that are already there and getting worse – and I think the people on Cortes relate to this – I think British Columbia urgently needs to have self sufficiency strategies.”
“Certainly in food, of course we have lots of water, but we also need self sufficiency in policing and in banking. I’ve been advocating the revival of the BC provincial police force parallel to the RCMP and all the municipal forces. I also want to revive the Bank of BC and issue currency. That may sound a little outlandish but, for the province’s centenary in 1958, Premier W.A.C. Bennet issued a silver dollar without approval from the Bank of Canada. So, yes, BC could have its own parallel security, police force, self sufficiency in food and many other things that are important to maintain the civil order in society.”
“There are other reasons too. I would like more jobs and better management of resources. There is more than one reason I’m running, but the main one is to get out this message of raising BC’s self sufficiency.”
Why another police department?
Twigg explained, “Depending on how bad the civil disobedience got, the RCMP alone might be insufficient. Or, as they respond to federal authority, they might go to one place and we think they should go to another. We have that problem already in urban areas, with street crime and drug addiction.
“We’re depending on federal forces. Here in Campbell River we’ve got the RCMP. They’re a pretty good police force, I happen to know some of the people in it, but we don’t controi it. They liaise with the city. If BC had its own police force, we could say ”Look, we need to deal with this, or we’ve got to do that.’”
Our own currency
“It’s similar with money supply. If there was a run on the Canadian dollar and it became worthless, or they stopped printing more money, or what would happen to commerce if there was no e-commerce? It is a back-up stability thing to be able to print our own money and have it accepted.”
He added, “There is a trick to it. How do you get it acceptable, for other people to trade in? – You make the money acceptable as payment for your provincial taxes. It gives the currency fluidity, I’m a former financial editor; I’ve been to the Bank of Canada. I know this kind of stuff… It sounds like a crazy idea because some people haven’t heard of it before, but actually, it is solid.”
Doesn’t adding another currency just make things more complicated?
‘We’ve already got more than two currencies now. US dollars are widely accepted in BC. Other foreign exchange is widely accepted as well,” said Twigg. “It is not like we would only have a BC currency, we would have a parallel currency that would be widely accepted.”
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