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Welcome to Tyee’s reader poll.

Tyee Poll: What Issue Needs to Be a Higher Priority This BC Election Cycle?

By now, we all know the housing crisis is a hot topic in this year’s B.C. election. We’ve heard about massive political donations, Site C, softwood lumber, education funding, MSP fees and toll bridges — and, of course, plenty of talk about jobs, taxes and debt.

These are all very important issues, and obviously deserve airtime. But we want to know what else you think needs to be talked about this election.

Take Indigenous issues, for example. One in six Indigenous people in Canada live in this province — there are nearly 200 First Nations communities — and much of B.C. is still unceded territory. And yet they weren’t mentioned at all during CBC’s televised debate on Wednesday. With higher rates of unemployment, reduced access to health services and education — and continued pressure to build pipelines and other energy infrastructure on First Nations land — it’s clear there are plenty of issues to debate.

Remember those health researchers fired without basis in 2012? The government accused them of data breaching and conflicts of interest and said it had handed over evidence to the police (it turned out that wasn’t true). One of those employees killed himself in the wake of the accusations, some of the employees were eventually rehired and five wrongful dismissal and defamation lawsuits were settled out of court. Earlier this year, premier Christy Clark accused NDP leader John Horgan of hacking, again without merit. Should we be talking more about flinging around baseless allegations?

And what about the planet? 2017 has been dubbed the third consecutive year to be the warmest on record. Last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported the Arctic snow melt started earlier than ever before. Are B.C.’s leaders talking enough about how to tackle climate change? Sure, there’s debate on the carbon tax and Kinder Morgan, but what about a transition to new, greener economy? Job retraining for people leaving extraction jobs? Shifts to truly renewable power? Hard caps on emissions? Radical changes to meet a momentous challenge?

And let’s not forget rising tuition, access to mental health services, or the rights of the migrant farmworkers who harvest our food.

Then there’s all those falsehoods, scandals and boondoggles from the 15 years of “public messes” under the BC Liberals…

And that’s just the beginning.

* Please note that all poll answers will be publicly viewable, but anonymous.
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Please note that Tyee Barometer polls are only intended as a quick and engaging non-scientific snapshot of our readers' opinions on various topics that fit with The Tyee's very broad editorial mandate. They are not intended to be seen as a representative sampling of BC opinion.

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