Green Platform Proposes New Direction for BC

Big spending in the BC Green platform released Tuesday is targeted at education, housing, free transit and ending poverty.

But the document is really about how British Columbia could be a better place to live.

“What we are saying is we need a new vision for British Columbia,” BC Green leader and Victoria-Beacon Hill candidate Sonia Furstenau told a gathering of supporters and media at a Victoria pub. “That vision is rooted in well-being.”

The Greens are the first of the three major parties to release their platform. It highlights the need for a shift to a “well-being framework” where success is measured through a range of indicators, not just whether the economy is growing.

Among other measures, the framework would “require all ministers to provide evidence on how their work contributes to increasing well-being in British Columbia as part of each budget presentation.”

Each year’s budget would include a report on well-being in the province “assessed by a panel of external experts, including First Nations peoples, ecologists, historians, economists and sociologists” with comparisons made on time scales as long as 100 years.

“We’ve had a government, especially for the last four years, that has made announcements about how much money they’re spending,” Furstenau said. “And yet British Columbians, we don’t know if that money is actually contributing to improving their well-being, the well-being of their communities, the well-being of nature, and is it delivering good governance.”

There are Greens running in 69 of the province’s 93 constituencies — the party had a dozen more candidates lined up but failed to gather enough signatures to complete their formal nomination process. And Furstenau has been clear she expects Greens will be competitive in too few ridings to form government.

The platform is therefore unlikely to be implemented, but it is an indication of the party’s values and what kind of policies it would likely support if it were to hold the balance of power in a divided legislature after the Oct. 19 election.

The biggest expense in the 72-page platform document is $2 billion to bring everyone in the province out of deep poverty, a commitment that includes roughly doubling the current rates of income and disability assistance.

“Other provinces do much better at ensuring there is a social safety net, ensuring people are not forced to live in the kind of deep poverty and absolutely terrible conditions that we’re seeing here in B.C.,” Furstenau said.

“I just do not accept that we, collectively, can accept that kind of suffering and that kind of poverty in our community,” she said. “Instead of worrying about other provinces not meeting the needs of their citizens, what we should say is other provinces will look to B.C. and see how it is done properly.”

A similar amount is earmarked for transportation, including money to triple the number of buses within six years and make service regular and free for riders everywhere in the province.

The party costs its housing plans at $1.6 billion in additional spending, education at $1 billion, services for seniors at $321 million and drug policy at $296 million.

The housing plan includes introducing vacancy control so landowners can’t dramatically increase rents between tenants, expanding the Shelter Aid for Elderly Renters program and the Rental Assistance Program, and building more non-market housing.

Greens would expand safe drug consumption services, raise wages for early childhood educators, expand access to affordable child care and increase the number of long-term care beds by 10 per cent each year.

All together the party’s proposals add more than $8 billion in expenses, plus another $1 billion to be paid for through the carbon tax, in total increasing the provincial budget by about 10 per cent.

“The costs of implementing our platform are significant,” the platform acknowledges. “Eliminating poverty, providing free public transit, and ensuring we have a world-class education system — none of this comes without a price. But inaction is far more expensive.”

To pay for the increases, the Greens would raise $4.1 billion by introducing a tax of 18 per cent on corporate profits over $1 billion a year, $938 million by raising property taxes “to capture the complete holdings of property owners” and $394 million with a marginal tax rate of 22.5 per cent on annual incomes over $350,000.

People and businesses that have done well can afford to pay more, Furstenau said. “You won, capitalism, good job, but we’re going to start taxing that profit over $1 billion.”

The platform also says some of the policies would lead to savings in other areas, giving the example of poverty, which it says leads to higher costs for health care, crime and lost productivity. “Upstream investment is the smart choice — for people, for our economy, and for the future of British Columbia.”

Other noteworthy positions in the platform include that the Greens would switch to a proportional representation electoral system without holding another referendum until after the new system had been tried for two electoral cycles.

The current first-past-the-post system narrows the options available to voters and generates results where representatives seldom have to work with one another across party lines, Furstenau said, adding that many voters make their choices based on fear and anxiety rather than supporting a party they feel would better represent their values.

“We need electoral reform in this province and we need to have the courage to say that and to find a way to get that done as quickly as we can from my point of view,” she said.

The Greens would also review the entire tax system, strike a permanent citizens’ assembly to advise on government policy, lower the voting age to 16 and amalgamate all the health authorities other than the First Nations Health Authority.

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