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Stephen Fowler

Children, Childcare, & Youth in Care

Childcare

BC Greens's promise

Invest up to $897M/year by 2023/24 in childcare programme; Expand available physical spaces, prioritizing partnerships with public schools, community non-profits, and First Nations; Provide free childcare for working parents with children under 3.

 - Professional development opportunities to increase qualifications of existing child care workers, and the training of more early childhood educators in certified programs;

 - Establishment of professional wages for early childhood educators;

We will maintain child care subsidies and supports as needed to ensure adequate financial support for all families.

We will move the Ministry of State for Childcare into the Ministry of Education in recognition of the importance of ECE in the education outcomes for our children.

— From The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC.

Early childhood development

BC Greens's promise

Provide $300M in new funding to phase in up to 25 hours / week of free early childhood education programmes for 3 & 5 year-olds, rising to $550M as capacity expands; Provide $100M to create a new capital programme in the Ministry of Education for school renos to add ECE spaces.

Stay-at-home parents

BC Greens's promise

Provide up to $500/month for families with children under 3 and a stay-at-home parent.

Youth in care

BC Greens's promise

Implement a basic income for youth aging-out of care.

Climate Change & the Environment

BC Parks

BC Greens's promise

Enhance funding for BC Parks and the Conservation Officer Service; Improve infrastructure and ensure natural ecosystems are not being degraded; Create more campgrounds to meet demand, ensuring grounds don't cut into existing protected areas.

Carbon tax

BC Greens's promise

Immediately reinstate the schedule carbon tax increase and return to regular and predictable increases in the carbon tax of $10/year.

Climate resilience

BC Greens's promise

Provide $100 million over 4 years to fund climate adaptation initiatives; Build capacity in communities so they can respond safely and effectively to extreme weather and natural disasters; Protect communities from wildfires and flooding through forest management & fuel treatment.

Conservation

BC Greens's promise

Establish a strategy to manage wetlands; Ensure legislative oversight through legislated objectives for fish and wildlife; Enhance funding for wildlife conservation, habitat protection, & habitat acquisition; Provide legal protection for endangered species.

Prioritize protection of wildlife and their habitat across government including through:

 - Establishing a strategy to manage our wetlands;

 - Protecting coastal ecosystems with a Coastal Law and Strategy;

 - Ensuring appropriate legislative oversight through creating legislated objectives for fish and wildlife;

 - Moving the fish and wildlife branch from FLNRO and the Ministry of Environment;

 - Urgently match and exceed historic provincial funding levels for the fish and wildlife branch to match the unprecedented challenges we now face;

 - Ensuring that science about the status of our wildlife and environment is independent from political interference and made freely available to the public;

Enhance funding for wildlife conservation, habitat protection and habitat acquisition and dedicate all fishing, hunting, guide-outfitting, and trapping license fees for this purpose.

Create an endangered species law that establishes legal protection of species and their habitat to ensure their recovery and survival.

Take action on fish farms to protect wild salmon:

 - Support the full implementation of the Wild Salmon Advisory Council recommendations and Cohen Commission recommendations, working urgently to enforce all measures within provincial jurisdiction;

 - Negotiate strongly with DFO to complete the recommendations under federal jurisdiction;

 - Working with DFO, First Nations, local communities, and industry, provide stimulus and incentives to create a close-containment land based fish farming industry and cancel open-pen fish farm tenures.

Establish a made-in-BC Environmental Charter that lays out:

 - Substantive rights to clean air, clean water, and healthy ecosystems

 - Procedural rights that allow everyone to participate in decisions that affect the environment;

 - Information rights that ensure we all have the access to all information relevant to decisions that affect the environment;

 - Application of the precautionary principle to decisions that affect the environment.

— From The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC.

Electric bikes

BC Greens's promise

Remove PST from electric bikes; Require offices and commercial premises to provide secure bike parking with charging capabilities; Create more safe storage options including bike lockers at key locations like transit hubs.

Electric vehicles

BC Greens's promise

Require 100% 0-emission non-commercial vehicle sales by 2035; Remove PST on electric vehicles; Work with industry on new incentive programmes; Build public charging infrastructure on all highways; Require multi-unit buildings to have charging infrastructure.

Work with industry to set new [zero-emission vehicle] targets for commercial vehicles and on and off-road medium and heavy duty vehicles

— From The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC.

Emissions

BC Greens's promise

Commit to being carbon neutral by 2045; Set sectoral targets; Set an interim target for 2025; End oil and gas subsidies, and redirect money to innovation & businesses to help meet our commitments; Develop an accountability framework to ensure targets are met.

Support the creation of a biofuels strategy and clean hydrogen roadmap as part of the energy mix we use to replace fossil fuels in our transportation sector.

Integrate a GHG emissions lens into all government procurement processes.

— From The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC.

Enact Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE)-enabling legislation.

— From The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC.

Retrofits

BC Greens's promise

Increase short-term incentives for retrofits; Partner with colleges, technical institutes, and private organisations to develop training programmes to expand employment in green retrofits, focusing on supporting sectors impacted by COVID & a just transition for oil & gas workers.

Water

BC Greens's promise

Allocate $50 million for a dedicated Watershed Security Fund; Expand watershed boards across the province; Implement a Water Sustainability Act; Work with local governments and school districts to upgrade municipal infrastructure and replace household pipes; Ban fracking.

Allocate $50 million to create a dedicated Watershed Security Fund that will create sustainable jobs in communities across BC in watershed restoration, monitoring, technology, training, and education.

Expanding the model of the Cowichan Watershed Board across the province and establishing shared decision-making authority with watershed boards, with watershed sustainability as a core mandate.

Conducting comprehensive watershed planning in conjunction with First Nations, communities, government agencies, stewardship organizations and industry and including watersheds as a part of a landscape-level ecosystem-based management approach to development.

Implementing the Water Sustainability Act to secure the environmental flows needed to sustain healthy and functioning rivers, lakes and watersheds.

Working with local governments, school districts and other stakeholders to upgrade municipal infrastructure and replace household pipes through grants and incentives.

Exploring science-based solutions to reduce water acidity.

Implementing a ban on fracking, a [...] process that has been shown to contaminate freshwater, trigger earthquakes, leak methane, and poses an unacceptable risk to human health.

— From The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC.

Education

Funding for public education

BC Greens's promise

Work with education partners on a long-term plan to improve per-student funding.

[...] This would include:

 - Addressing the continued disparities in wages, class size and composition between districts;

 - Access to speech-language pathologists and school psychologists, and develop new resources for students with special needs.

 - This starts with the development of a new funding formula that supports a 21st century education system.

 - Double the funding of the B.C. Access Grant to help support post-secondary part-time students, and those enrolled in multi-year programs.

— From The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC.

Meal programmes

BC Greens's promise

Create a $25 million fund for school districts to develop food programmes for their schools.

Proposals would be developed by the district to ensure local needs are addressed;

Funding would be conditional on ensuring the program integrated nutrition into the curriculum and showed how the plan would eliminate the stigma associated with accessing food programming.

— From The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC.

Mental health and schools

BC Greens's promise

Provide $24 million in new funding to enhance the number of counsellors in schools, starting in the current school year.

Post-secondary

BC Greens's promise

Double the funding for the BC Access Grant to help support post-secondary part-time students and those enrolled in multi-year programs.

Racism and reconciliation

BC Greens's promise

Develop and implement a province-wide plan to address racism in schools, and commit to additional, ongoing funding to deepen the work of reconciliation and Indigenous education across K-12.

Schools and COVID

BC Greens's promise

Fund operating grants for school districts at the same level as 2019/2020, so that lower enrolment during COVID doesn't result in less funding; Maintain additional COVID funding for PPE & online learning; Give every school the resources to develop remote & hybrid learning options

Healthcare

Acute and preventive care

BC Greens's promise

Establish a task force to develop a plan to transition the balance of resources between acute care and preventive care.

The task force will review the funding and range of services covered by the health care system to ensure  the mix of services better meets the treatment and prevention needs of the population. The task force will deliver its recommendations to the government by May 2022.

— From The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC.

Care homes & assisted living

BC Greens's promise

Shift sector away from for-profit private companies, to a mix of public, not-for-profit, community-based services, & co-ops; Require annual inspections, financial statements, & audited expense reports; Recognize caregivers as a healthcare profession with the salary they deserve.

Support pilot projects that bring young people and seniors together and integrate seniors more deeply into communities;

Give the office of the Seniors Advocate more independence and an expanded mandate.

— From The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC.

Contraception

BC Greens's promise

Make contraceptive products free for those under 25 and remove PST on all contraceptive products.

Healthcare staffing

BC Greens's promise

Consult with physicians and other stakeholders to improve efficiency, reduce administration, and incentivise becoming a General Practitioner; Work with the College of Physicians and Surgeons to create a pathway for qualified foreign-trained physicians to practice in BC.

Inclusiveness

BC Greens's promise

Advance cultural competency training for existing healthcare practitioners and support training of new Indigenous doctors while prioritizing opportunities to expand public healthcare services within communities, as lead by Indigenous leadership.

Prescription drugs

BC Greens's promise

Develop a proposal to implement an essential drugs programme beginning in 2022, designed to reduce the costs of prescription drugs and ensure the cost of drugs is not a barrier to health management.

Sexual assault

BC Greens's promise

Establish permanent core funding for the Victoria Sexual Assault Centre.

This funding would be part of a larger strategy that establishes a new funding model for medical and police integrated sexual assault services, ensuring communities across BC can establish clinics that meet their needs.

— From The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC.

Housing & Homelessness

Housing affordability

BC Greens's promise

Accelerate investments to affordable, supportive, and social housing; Extend leases for extant co-ops and create a land bank for new co-ops; Establish a capital fund to support the acquisition and maintenance rental housing by nonprofits; Close the bare trust loophole.

These steps include:

 - Taking a housing first approach and accelerate investments to affordable, supportive and social housing on a priority basis;

 - Expanding supports for co-op housing through extending leases for existing co-ops about to expire, create a land bank for new co-ops, and provide security of tenure for co-ops on leased land;

 - Work with local governments to expand the "missing middle", such as townhouses and triplexes;

 - Establish a capital fund to support the acquisition and maintenance of rental housing by nonprofits to maintain affordable rental units and address the financialization of the rental market;

 - Close the bare trust loophole

— From The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC.

Housing speculation

BC Greens's promise

Change the speculation tax to include more foreign owners and satellite families.

Rent and evictions

BC Greens's promise

Introduce a rental supplement to close the cap between affordable rent and what renters actually pay and introduce means-tested grant that applies to low and moderate income earners who are paying more than 30% of their income in rent.

Stratas

BC Greens's promise

Convene a taskforce, including insurance brokers, insurers, and strata owners, to deal with the rising cost of strata insurance and develop solutions as soon as the BC Financial Services Authority finishes their investigation.

Human Rights & Equality

Accessibility

BC Greens's promise

Introduce a BC Accessibility Act; Establish a housing office charged with assisting people with disabilities and youth aging-out to find suitable accommodation.

Conversion therapy

BC Greens's promise

Ban conversion therapy.

Gender pay gap

BC Greens's promise

Introduce equal pay legislation.

Policing

BC Greens's promise

Restart the Police Act review; Review procedures for wellness checks in consultation with BIPOC and health professionals, with a goal of expanding use of integrated mental health crisis teams.

Restart the police act review [...] This would include a review of: all provincial police force contracts, a comprehensive analysis of funding, the depth of policing activity in BC and the roles and responsibilities of law enforcement.

Review procedures for wellness checks in consultation with Indigenous and BIPOC organizations, with a goal of expanding the use of integrated mental health crisis teams in BC for mental health wellness checks.

Invite the BC Human Rights Commissioner to do a study on the impact of police violence and racial discrimination on Indigenous peoples in BC.

— From _The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC_.

Racism

BC Greens's promise

Support better demographic data collection to better understand disparities in our society, for health, education, housing, and employment outcomes in particular; Carry out the requests of the BC Advisory Committee on the UN Decade for People of African Descent.

Indigenous Issues

Indigenous child welfare

BC Greens's promise

Move urgently away from the MCFD structure by supporting indigenous-led child welfare programmes in their communities that provide wraparound services and supports to help families stay together.

Reconciliation

BC Greens's promise

Ensure the Action Plan on reconciliation is adopted and supported with adequate resources; Ensure that there is meaningful progress towards reconciliation.

Self-determination

BC Greens's promise

Work with First Nations towards energy independence, including creation of Indigenous owned utilities.

Jobs, the Economy, and Affordability

Agriculture

BC Greens's promise

Establish a long-term food sustainability strategy to decrease reliance on import supply chains; Make food production & food security part of the Agricultural Land Commision's mandate; Create a publicly owned agricultural land bank available to lease by new farmers.

Incentivize agro-ecological farming practices.

Support small-scale farms to adopt new technologies to reduce carbon emissions.

Identify options to make farming a more attractive and sustainable endeavour:

 - Ensuring that farmers have access to local processing facilities and that they share in the returns from processing.

 - Enabling the growing of high value crops, such as cannabis, to supplement farm income.

Provide $10 million per year to fund research and establish regional agricultural bureaus to provide expertise and support to local farmers to apply innovations on-farm and adapt to a changing climate.

Restrict and regulate foreign ownership of ALR land.

— From The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC.

Employment standards

BC Greens's promise

Establish a task force to advise on modernizing employment standards and reducing inequality.

The task force will include representatives of the technology sector, business, workers, and economists.

The task force will recommend ways to modernize our employment standards to adapt to the changing nature of work and technology, and assess jurisdiction and advise on strategies for working with the federal government to ensure that multinational companies are paying their fair share of taxes in BC.

The terms of reference will include considering profit-sharing as a means to ensure businesses who are profitable are paying their workers a living wage, and that workers benefit from the profits that are too often only accrued at the top of an organization.

— From The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC.

Financial assistance

BC Greens's promise

Begin a transition towards basic income by increasing income support levels; Make the $300 crisis supplement permanent; Eliminate the asset test; Reduce clawbacks on earned income; Establish a 1-year period so those on income assistance can earn extra income without clawbacks.

Food security

BC Greens's promise

Recognize income and regional disparities in food insecurity across BC and work to enhance access to high quality, healthy food for low-income British Columbians, including developing systems for First Nations that honour Indigenous knowledge and values.

Infrastructure investment

BC Greens's promise

Partner with local governments with cost shared funding for bike lanes, trails, parks, community spaces, and pedestrian-only streets.

Restauraunts & hospitality

BC Greens's promise

Make the expanded patio programme permanent.

Small businesses

BC Greens's promise

Allocate $300 million to create a 6-month rent subsidy programme for small businesses; Cover 25% of rental costs for small businesses limited to $50,000/month rent costs.

Sustainable jobs

BC Greens's promise

Establish a $500 million fund to support sustainable jobs; Develop a clean jobs programme; Implement a just transition programme for workers in the oil and gas sector and other industries in transition.

Develop a clean jobs program focused on enhancing BC's natural assets, tree planting, conservation, remediating environmental liabilities, as well as climate adaptation and improving community resilience to climate change.

— From The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC.

Tech & Innovation

BC Greens's promise

Establish a $1B strategic investment fund to support innovation, with an emphasis on a 0-carbon economy; Partner in innovation clusters in areas where BC has strategic advantage.

Tourism

BC Greens's promise

Retool the provincial grant programme to focus on small tourism operators, and work with the industry to establish criteria; Work with not-for-profit tourism, cultural facilities, & attractions to develop a separate granting programme.

Work with the federal government to establish a repayable loan program for the hospitality sector and for tourism operators that exceed the criteria for the small tourism operator grant program.

— From The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC.

Wages

BC Greens's promise

Establish a permanent Fair Wages Commission to recommend consistent and predictable increases in the minimum wage and reduce political interference.

Work week

BC Greens's promise

In consultation with business, labour, and other stakeholders, explore options for reduced work weeks and/or flexible work hours.

Mental Health, Drugs, & Addiction

Mental health support

BC Greens's promise

Invest in an affordable and accessible mental healthcare system; Allocate $1B over a 4-year cycle to address mental health care within MSP; Allocate $200M/year in facilities to provide mental healthcare services and rehabilitation; Develop and implement a Loneliness Strategy.

Invest to build an affordable and accessible mental healthcare system where cost is not a barrier to seeking help.

Allocate $1.0 billion over a four-year cycle to address mental health care within the medical services plan. Funding should be provided for a comprehensive suite of initiatives including:

 - Establishing accessible mental health treatment options for all those struggling with anxiety or depression.

 - Early intervention, youth mental health initiatives, integrated primary care specific to youth and mental health enabling families to easily navigate resources in a supportive environment.

 - Community based options for responding to those who need mental healthcare and their families such as Clubhouse International.

 - Enhanced counselling outreach services to work with the homeless community.

Allocate $200 million per year to invest in facilities to provide mental healthcare services and community-based centres for mental health and rehabilitation; and, accelerate capital plans for construction of tertiary care facilities and detoxification beds. Protect operating funding for facilities.

Develop and implement a Loneliness Strategy.

Conduct a public information campaign to increase awareness and provide information on where to get help.

— From The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC.

Overdoses

BC Greens's promise

Enhance funding for harm reduction services and create COVID-friendly plans to ensure people have access and don't use alone.

Policing of drugs

BC Greens's promise

Decriminalize simple possession of drugs, through implementing Dr. Bonnie Henry's recommended amendments to the Police Act; Strongly pursue decriminalization with the Federal government.

Safe supply

BC Greens's promise

Scale up safe supply; Work with the colleges of physicians and pharmacists to encourage their members to participate in existing programmes; Fund a wider range of safe supply resources, including low-barrier ways of dispensing; Ongoing consultation with people who use drugs.

Resource Extraction & Export

Forestry

BC Greens's promise

Make sure profits from forestry go to First Nations and local communities instead of large corporations; Manage forests holistically; Protect remaining high value old growth forests; Generate more jobs and revenue from forestry.

Reform forestry management in BC so that it serves the long-term needs of local communities and supports a truly sustainable industry, where community and ecosystem values are the primary focus of management.

Take back control of our forests from major corporations, ensuring forestry is meeting the needs of local communities. Our forests are a public resource that belongs to the people of BC, and we need to start managing them that way. To achieve this goal the BC Greens would:

Reinstate government authority in decision-making at provincial and local levels, beginning with enhancing the authority of district managers to refuse or amend permits.

Begin a process of tenure reform to redistribute tenures from a few major companies and grow the proportion of tenures held by First Nations and community forests.

Establish a forester general position, an officer of the legislature who is non-partisan and reports to the House annually.

Establish a Chief Scientist as a counterpart to the Chief Forester to ensure multiple values are adequately incorporated into timber supply analysis.

Enhance capacity in FLNRO and establish more community based Ministry of Forests staff, to support the sustainable management of local forest resources and provide well-paying community jobs.

— From _The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC_.

Shift the management framework through reforming legislation, away from an exclusive focus on timber supply to managing for all the values that our forests hold.

Adopt a wider variety of logging practices, including selective logging and longer stand rotations.

Undertake landscape-level ecosystem-based planning, reforestation and restoration in partnership with local communities and First Nations.

Protect communities from wildfires and flooding through landscape level ecologically-centered, forest management and fuel treatment projects.

Restore government capacity to ensure forest stewardship, monitoring and enforcement, and enhance funding for forest inventory research and primary research.

— From _The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC_.

Immediately move to fully implement the recommendations of the old growth review panel in partnership with First Nations. This includes:

 - An immediate end to the logging of old growth forests in high risk ecosystems across the province.

 - Enacting legislation that establishes conservation of ecosystem health and biodiversity of BC's forests as an overarching priority.

Establish funding mechanisms to support the preservation of our old growth forests.

— From The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC.

Ensure that small producers have access to fibre and incentive value-added product innovation, including non-traditional uses of wood fibre including bio fuels, and productive uses of residual fibre.

Apply the carbon tax to slash-pile burning to reduce carbon emissions form our forestry sector and ensure that we use residual materials.

Put an end to raw log exports.

Ensure the benefits of B.C. resource flow to local communities by directly sharing more resource revenues with local First Nations, municipalities, and regional districts.

Better support (sic) forestry workers and communities, including through expanding investments into retraining and support finding new job opportunities.

Investigate opportunities to diversify milling and secondary manufacturing to better use existing timber.

Promote more sustainable development of forest resources, including investing in tourism opportunities and low-carbon economies.

— From _The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC_.

Fracking

BC Greens's promise

Ban fracking.

Government support for workers

BC Greens's promise

Implement a just transition programme for workers in the oil and gas sector and other industries in transition, working with them on a pathway to a guaranteed job in the clean economy.

Transit & Transportation

BC Ferries

BC Greens's promise

Ensure that BC Ferries can maintain service levels despite long-term losses from COVID; Bring BC Ferries back into the government as a Crown Corporation; Conduct a full review of BC Ferries operations focused on providing an efficient, public service.

Emissions

BC Greens's promise

Invest in electrifying transit systems, including partnering with the federal government to accelerate support for BC Transit and TransLink to electrify their bus fleets.

Infrastructure

BC Greens's promise

Ensure no disruption in future transit expansion due to the pandemic.

Transit service

BC Greens's promise

Create a South Island regional transportation strategy; Prioritize investment in transit service; Ensure that TransLink & BC Transit can maintain service levels despite losses from COVID; Redesign the transit funding model for stable long-term funding; Consider mobility pricing.

Work with local governments to establish a vision for sustainable transportation in an era of expanded population grown on the South Island, including through:

 - A regional transportation strategy;

 - Establishing a regional governance body to overcome fractured decision-making and deliver integrated planning for the growing region;

 - Investing in support expansion of public transit options to help people move around more easily;

 - Building frequent and affordable public transportation links between cities, such as between Cowichan and the CRD.

Prioritize investment in transit service coming out of COVID-19 to support economic recovery, improve livability of communities, and reduce GHG emissions.

Ensure that the projected long-term losses facing TransLink, BC Transit and BC Ferries are dealt with so that service levels are maintained, allowing ridership to quickly bounce back through the economic recover period.

Ensure no disruption in future expansion due do the pandemic.

Work with local and regional governments to redesign the transit funding model and establish an equitable, stable long-term funding model for transit.

 - This review would include consideration of mobility pricing.

Develop climate and sustainability criteria, including consideration of cumulative impacts, that will be applied to all future capital projects including transportation infrastructure investments.

— From The BC Greens' Plan for a More Equitable and Sustainable BC.

Misc. topics

Local government funding

BC Greens's promise

Work with local governments to reform local government finance system, so as to move it away from reliance on property taxes.


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