Prince George, B.C. – Vanderhoof native and BC Conservative leader Dan Brooks’ province wide listening tour makes a pit-stop in Prince George tonight.

“I’m interested in talking to the people of Prince George to build the party, to listen to the things that they have to say and the things that they want to see in provincial government,” he says.

“And what we need to do as far as policy and a platform to win their support.”

BC Conservative leader Dan Brooks – photo 250News

Brooks says the new platform will be the cornerstone for the party’s 2017 provincial election campaign.

He says one piece of the platform will include slapping a ban on corporate and union donations in this province.

“Yes, absolutely. So that money doesn’t buy influence in the legislature and in the ministers offices,” says Brooks. “All the other modern democracies in the world do that, including the federal government.”

Looking ahead to the next election, he says the goal is to reach the maximum of 87 provincial candidates.

“But we’ll also be very realistic and making sure we have quality candidates before we have quantity of candidates,” he says. “So we will wait to see how this turns out.”

Brooks says the party will first focus on provincial ridings where vote splitting isn’t possible.

“We’ve done some analysis of the 2013 election and there are about 30 ridings where if you add the Conservative and Liberal vote together and divide it by half you still beat the NDP,” he says.

“And so we’re going to be focusing a lot of our efforts to make sure we have candidates in those ridings first,” adding many of them are in rural B.C. including “Vanderhoof and Nechako Lakes, Peace River, Okanagan Shuswap.”

Hosted by the Spruce City Wildlife Association (SCWA), Brooks will also be speaking on recent hunting changes and LNG.

The event will take place at the SCWA’s hatchery at 1384 River Road and go from 6:30-8:30 p.m.