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British Columbia's two main party leaders spent Friday crisscrossing the Okanagan — and the contrast between their pitches couldn't be sharper.

NDP leader David Eby came to Kelowna with a promise to cap what big grocery chains can charge.

Speaking outside a Save-On-Foods, Eby unveiled a proposed "Price Guard" that would put a ceiling on retail margins for food staples: milk, eggs, butter, cheese, chicken and turkey.

His party says the plan — plus clearer per-unit pricing and limits on anti-competitive practices — could save families up to $700 a year.

Eby pointed to grocery prices running 27 per cent higher than five years ago while the families behind the big chains grew their combined wealth by billions.

Meanwhile, Conservative leader Lorne Doerkson was in Summerland, standing beside a home lost in this summer's Bald Range wildfire.

His pitch: a $500 million Crown-owned fleet of water bombers, plus artificial intelligence tools and an innovation fund to fight wildfires.

Doerkson argued the aircraft would cut long-term emergency suppression costs — and that the planes could be rented to other jurisdictions to offset the purchase.

One leader promises to set prices from Victoria. The other wants to buy planes that put out fires.

Families really are being squeezed at the till.

But the conservative question is whether government-set prices ever work — or whether they just move the squeeze from your wallet to the shelf.

Price controls have a long, sorry history of producing shortages, not savings.

Cap the margin and the margin disappears from somewhere: fewer staff, smaller selection, or suppliers who decide B.C. isn't worth the trouble.

And the deeper cause of high food prices — taxes at every step, red tape on producers, and input costs driven by policy — gets no mention.

Doerkson's plan has its own questions: half a billion dollars is real money, and a Crown fleet brings maintenance, staffing, and procurement risk.

But at least it buys something tangible for a province that watched communities burn this summer.

With the provincial vote on October 24, Okanagan voters get to decide which theory of government they believe: the one that manages prices, or the one that manages problems.

Choose carefully.