The federal NDP unveiled their B.C. plans, on Wednesday but the “specific commitments to British Columbians” were by and large neither specific nor aimed exclusively at this province.
For the most part, the document is a highlights package drawn from Monday’s national platform in order to draw attention to local concerns like salmon and the film industry.
The only precise B.C. numbers were pledges to provide 13,000 additional families provincewide with access to home care and another to create 22,000 new child care spaces annually by the end of a four-year plan.
The federal New Democrats, currently running in third place in national polls, also promise to “reaffirm and enforce the oil tanker moratorium on BC’s inland coast, including the North Coast Inside Passage and Hecate Strait” and “maintain the moratorium on oil and gas exploration off the BC coast where the ecological threat is significant.”
They touch on the current state of the province’s forests by pledging to “overhaul the federal government’s inadequate program to mitigate the impacts of the mountain pine beetle and other insect epidemics.” The softwood lumber agreement would be history, according to the document, and raw log exports restricted.
And in case anyone was still unclear about where the NDP stand on the idea of a carbon tax, the BC platform boils it down: “We will not accept a Dion carbon tax on top of Gordon Campbell’s carbon tax.”
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Budd Campbell
3 years ago
CHILD POVERTY A BIG ISSUE IN BC
B.C. has the worst child poverty rate in Canada. Partly that's because wage increases here have lagged those in Alberta despite the 4% unemployment rate. Employer resistance to raising wages is higher here, and more effective, and is backed up by the Liberal GOvt in Victoria.
Layton's platform calls for increasing the child tax credit to as much as $400 per month for lower income families, which would directly address this problem. So while the program he proposes in national in scope, there are few places its beneficial impacts would be of greater importance than in B.C.
mcdull
3 years ago
I m not a new democrat
I m not a new democrat supporter and I will hold my nose when voting for them this time because to Uneven Steven we really are just fodder. To Stephan we are just an annoyance.
cboo44
3 years ago
Federal NDP Platform
It just doesn't matter what "Smilin' Jack" says. He is pandering to everyone he can, at every opportunity. It's just old fashioned political nonsense that nobody believes. The federal NDP is a catch-basin for every minority sub-sect with an axe to grind and the party is desperate enough to accept them. Witness the Maryjane Party members and the Islamic Sharia Law proponents in the Ontario wing of the party.