This is a page from the 2026 British Columbia Provincial Election.
Robert Crooks
BC Communist candidate for Vancouver-Strathcona
Affordability
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Childcare
BC Communist promises
Make a genuine long-term commitment to a public universal, affordable, high quality child care system desperately needed by working class families.
Implement an Early Childhood Educator (ECE) Wage Grid paying at least $35 – $45/hr.
Expand school-age spaces and facilities in elementary schools in partnership with public, non-profit and Indigenous groups.
Stabilize and expand existing $10-a-Day programs with long-term budgets based on an equitable funding formula.
Ensure childcare is accessible to shiftworkers.
Food costs
BC Communist promises
End removals from the Agricultural Land Reserve, encourage food production in urban areas.
Increase provincial funding to ensure that all school districts can offer hot breakfast and lunch programs for all K-12 students.
Implement price controls on essential grocery items.
Fuel and vehicle costs
BC Communist promises
Nationalize the energy industry to offer fuel to people at subsidized prices.
Expand public transit and make it free.
Post-secondary costs and loans
BC Communist promises
Post secondary should be free; educating our youth is one of the best investments a country can make.
Cancel all student debt.
Poverty
BC Communist promises
Abolish income tax on earnings under $50,000.
Roll back the tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations given in 2001 by the Campbell Liberals and fund education, housing, transit, and social services through progressive provincial taxation.
Implement a Guaranteed Annual Livable Income.
Public transit
BC Communist promises
Free public transit for all.
Create an accessible province-wide bus transit system. Immediately create and enforce transit-only lanes in major cities to speed up transit and encourage more bus ridership.
lace transit under public ownership and democratic control.
Seniors' benefits
BC Communist promises
Raise social assistance, disability rates and pension by 100%.
Legislate to limit rents to 20% of household income.
Tax measures and rebates
BC Communist promises
Shift the tax burden off working people and make corporations pay their fair share.
Abolish income tax on earnings under $50,000.
Roll back the tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations given in 2001 by the Campbell Liberals and fund education, housing, transit, and social services through progressive provincial taxation.
Climate Change & the Environment
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Adaptation to climate change
BC Communist promises
Cut hydrocarbon emissions now.
Prioritize renewable energy and conservation.
Cancel the 100% US-owned taxpayer-funded Ksi Lisims
Conservation and environmental protection
BC Communist promises
Cancel taxpayer subsidies to the LNG industry, make them pay higher levies to profit from the people’s resources.
Implement just a transition – retrain fossil fuel sector workers for other jobs in green energy union wages.
Make polluting corporations pay for reversing the environmental damage they’ve caused.
Forestry industry
BC Communist promises
Keep BC resources and jobs in BC.
Use public investment and ownership to create good union jobs while protecting old-growth forests and respecting Indigenous title and consent.
No resource extraction without fair and equal negotiations between workers and Indigenous peoples whose lands have been stolen.
End raw-log exports and expand public, value-added forestry and manufacturing.
Protect mills and resource communities from corporate closures.
Forests and forest conservation
BC Communist promise
Bring natural resources and strategic industries under democratic public control.
Mining and minerals
BC Communist promise
Bring natural resources and strategic industries under public ownership and democratic control.
Power generation
BC Communist promise
Expand public ownership over natural resources and begin a serious transition to renewable energy.
Public transit
BC Communist promises
Free public transit for all.
Create an accessible province-wide bus transit system. Immediately create and enforce transit-only lanes in major cities to speed up transit and encourage more bus ridership.
lace transit under public ownership and democratic control.
Education
Compare
Childcare
BC Communist promises
Make a genuine long-term commitment to a public universal, affordable, high quality child care system desperately needed by working class families.
Implement an Early Childhood Educator (ECE) Wage Grid paying at least $35 – $45/hr.
Expand school-age spaces and facilities in elementary schools in partnership with public, non-profit and Indigenous groups.
Stabilize and expand existing $10-a-Day programs with long-term budgets based on an equitable funding formula.
Ensure childcare is accessible to shiftworkers.
Indigenous learning
BC Communist promises
Indigenize the BC education curriculum to foster solidarity and collaboration with Indigenous resistance struggles and to promote inclusivity, cooperation, and justice.
Equalize funding for education both on and off reserve
K-12 curriculum
BC Communist promise
End censorship in school libraries.
K-12 funding
BC Communist promises
Increase public education spending by $1000 per student to reach the Canadian average.
End funding and provincial tax breaks for private and religious schools.
K-12 staffing
BC Communist promises
Protect elected school boards from provincial interference.
Reduce class sizes, hire more teachers, education assistants and support staff, and properly fund special education, school maintenance, renovations, and public post-secondary education.
LGBTQ+ students and bullying
BC Communist promise
Protect and fully implement SOGI-123 (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) policies in all school districts, and private and religious schools.
Post-secondary costs and loans
BC Communist promises
Post secondary should be free; educating our youth is one of the best investments a country can make.
Cancel all student debt.
School construction and upgrades
BC Communist promise
Provide the funding and equipment to help protect the health and safety of all students, staff and teachers during infectious disease outbreaks.
Trades & manufacturing
BC Communist promises
Expand the production of value-added wood products and other building materials for public housing construction.
Use public procurement to support domestic production.
Introduce strong plant-closure legislation to protect workers and communities when corporations threaten closures or layoffs.
Health & Healthcare
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Drugs and addiction
BC Communist promise
Demand action by federal and provincial governments to fully provide pharmacare, optical and dental care, and mental health and addiction rehabilitation.
Emergency wait-times
BC Communist promise
Give paramedics regular pay, not “standby pay”.
Family doctors and primary care
BC Communist promises
End the NDP government’s moves to expand for-profit virtual care and long-term care and to subcontract healthcare services.
Ensure every family has access to a family physician.
Gender-affirming care
BC Communist promise
Protect and expand access to gender-affirming healthcare for trans people.
Health staffing
BC Communist promises
Stop the erosion of public healthcare through P3 private contracting.
Prioritize the expansion of hospital beds, reduction of surgery wait times, training of family physicians and nursing staff, and improve conditions in long-term care homes.
Provide incentives for healthcare students from northern and isolated areas to practice their profession in their home communities.
Provide a streamlined avenue for low-income healthcare students to study medicine in Canada, or abroad such as at the world renown ELAM school in Cuba.
Hospitals
BC Communist promise
Properly fund hospitals to end emergency room closures.
Housing & Homelessness
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Home purchases and ownership
BC Communist promises
End housing speculation.
Expropriate units that sit empty for more than two years for use as social housing.
Homeless services
BC Communist promises
Prohibit renovictions, demovictions, and economic/no-fault evictions.
Prevent eviction or foreclosure because of unemployment, strikes, or lockouts.
Stop encampment clearing until permanent housing is available.
Housing prices and supply
BC Communist promises
Build 100,000 units of new renovated social and low-income public housing.
Support expansion of modular housing.
Rental housing
BC Communist promises
Immediately establish vacancy controls which tie rents to the unit.
Legislate to limit rents to 20% of household income.
Jobs, Businesses, & Labour
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Agriculture
BC Communist promise
Offer full labour standards protection for domestic, agricultural and migrant workers.
Economic growth
BC Communist promises
Expand union jobs through public investment in social services and infrastructure.
Raise BC minimum wage to $30, fully adjusted to annual inflation rates.
Expand BC shipbuilding and manufacturing to build our ferries, public transit equipment, and renewable-energy infrastructure here in the province.
Forestry industry
BC Communist promises
Keep BC resources and jobs in BC.
Use public investment and ownership to create good union jobs while protecting old-growth forests and respecting Indigenous title and consent.
No resource extraction without fair and equal negotiations between workers and Indigenous peoples whose lands have been stolen.
End raw-log exports and expand public, value-added forestry and manufacturing.
Protect mills and resource communities from corporate closures.
Labour protections
BC Communist promises
Guarantee security for workers affected by layoffs, including 100% recall rights and wage protection.
Protect and expand union rights to picket during labour disputes.
Expand sectoral bargaining to all industries.
Allow the right to strike around political demands and allow sympathy strikes.
Mining and minerals
BC Communist promise
Bring natural resources and strategic industries under public ownership and democratic control.
Trades & manufacturing
BC Communist promises
Expand the production of value-added wood products and other building materials for public housing construction.
Use public procurement to support domestic production.
Introduce strong plant-closure legislation to protect workers and communities when corporations threaten closures or layoffs.
Public Safety, Police, & the Justice System
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Non-policing-based solutions
BC Communist promise
We need a preventative not punitive approach to crime.
Policing
BC Communist promises
Reduce police spending, and remove the provincial authority to order municipalities to increase policing budgets.
Place the police under public oversight and democratic control.
Remove police from schools.
Disband the BC government’s RCMP “Critical Response Unit” (“Community-Industry Response Group” C-IRG), which monitors environmental groups, and Indigenous land defenders and water protectors.
Protests & protest policing
BC Communist promise
End injunctions and charges against environmentalists.
Reconciliation & Indigenous Nations
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Indigenous learning
BC Communist promises
Indigenize the BC education curriculum to foster solidarity and collaboration with Indigenous resistance struggles and to promote inclusivity, cooperation, and justice.
Equalize funding for education both on and off reserve
Society & Government
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Elections and democratic engagement
BC Communist promises
Replace “first past the post” with mixed member proportional representation.
Set MLA salaries at the average wage of a BC worker.
Implement a ward system to elect city councils in major cities.
Libraries & community centres
BC Communist promise
End censorship in school libraries.
Protests & protest policing
BC Communist promise
End injunctions and charges against environmentalists.
Transgender rights and supports
BC Communist promises
rans rights are human rights – take swift legal and political action against those who threaten the 2S/LGBTQ+ community.
Protect trans youth from discrimination and abuse.
Transit & Transportation
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Fuel and vehicle costs
BC Communist promises
Nationalize the energy industry to offer fuel to people at subsidized prices.
Expand public transit and make it free.
Public transit
BC Communist promises
Free public transit for all.
Create an accessible province-wide bus transit system. Immediately create and enforce transit-only lanes in major cities to speed up transit and encourage more bus ridership.
lace transit under public ownership and democratic control.
Biography
submitted by the candidate or their team
Robert Crooks is the leader of the Communist Party of BC
Robert Crooks was elected to be the leader of the Communist Party of BC in 2025. Originally from Treaty 1, Robert first became active in politics as a tenant organizer in the West Broadway neighbourhood of Winnipeg. From this work came the understanding that the issue of housing is not about supply or building costs, but is symptomatic of a socioeconomic system that prioritizes profit over people’s needs.
After becoming involved with the Communist Party, Robert began to spread his political activity into anti-imperialist peace organizing. He is currently serving his third consecutive term as an executive member of the Canadian Network on Cuba, an organization that collects material aid for Cubans and runs political campaigns to counter the misinformation prevalent in the corporate media regarding the island and its leadership.
Community is central to Robert’s work. In Winnipeg, he volunteered to help teach English to newcomers and served on multiple boards of directors for different arts and cultural institutions. Until taking on his current role with the Communist Party of BC, he worked as a front line worker and then as the development coordinator for a youth-serving community organization in Winnipeg’s Point Douglas, a neighbourhood with some of the highest child poverty rates in Canada.
Now living in the Vancouver Strathcona riding, Robert is doing his best to contribute to the great work that has been and continues to be done in the neighbourhood.
“This riding is home to the Downtown Eastside, where the misanthropic tendencies of capitalism and colonialism are on full display,” said Robert. “This neighbourhood is also known for its amazing, caring people who treat one another with respect and love regardless of differences. The problems we face here are the same as in neighbourhoods all over Canada, and all across the world. Homelessness, deteriorating social services, food insecurity, inaccessible healthcare and the attempt to address these issues with more police aren’t unique to Vancouver Strathcona. They are the symptoms of the moribund capitalist system. The only way we can defeat it is to work together to solidify the power of the people through organization, to take on the developers, the investors, the six-figure politicians and overpaid cops to win our rights through political struggle.”
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