B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad speaks at an announcement in Surrey B.C., on Sept. 23. Voters in British Columbia will go to the polls for a provincial election on Oct. 19.ETHAN CAIRNS/The Canadian Press
On the third official day of the B.C. election campaign, the leaders of the province’s two main political parties unveiled policies aimed at tackling the steep cost of renting or owning a home, as well as the inability for many to get quick access to health care.
B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad began Monday in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey announcing a tax credit for renters and homeowners, through which people would eventually be able to claim up to $3,000 a month of their rent or mortgage payments as an exemption when filing their provincial income tax.
If his party forms government in the vote set for Oct. 19, he said it would only look to offer this relief to households earning less than $250,000 a year and allow them to begin claiming up to $1,500 a month of this expense in 2026, with that eligible amount rising annually by $500 a month until the limit is reached in 2029.
Mr. Rustad estimates that the average family receiving the full credit by the end of the program could see more than $1,600 in annual rebates. But, he estimates, this tax credit could take $3.5-billion out of provincial revenues.
When asked about how he would restore a provincial treasury that would also be burdened by his plan to cancel the carbon price, he said his party has no plans to increase other forms of taxation.
“We’re going to be taking a serious look at the budget and some of the spending initiatives, and we’re gonna be looking at how we can reduce some of those initiatives to create growth,” Mr. Rustad said.
“But the biggest thing that we’re going to need to do is we need to get our economy going, we need to get forestry back on its feet, we need to get mining opening, we need to make sure that small business can be successful in this province, we need to see high-tech investment in this province.”
He also slammed the New Democrats for first proposing a $400 rebate for renters under former premier John Horgan in 2017 and only allowing the relief this year.
Meanwhile, at a Monday campaign stop held in a constituent’s home in Burnaby, BC NDP Leader David Eby heard from families about their challenges in securing a family doctor and announced several measures aimed at easing the pressure.
If his party forms government again, he said, it would expand the scope of practice for pharmacists, allowing them to test and prescribe for more common ailments, such as strep throat and urinary tract infections. First announced in 2022 and launched in June, 2023, as the Minor Ailments and Contraception Service, the expanded role of pharmacists is expected to free up primary-care doctors for other patients.
A new NDP government would also provide immediate provisional licences for doctors, nurses and midwives trained in Canada, and the same licenses within six weeks for those trained in comparable regions globally, Mr. Eby said.
As well, it would move to reduce time-consuming paperwork by eliminating employers’ practice of requiring doctors’ notes for absences of fewer than five days, end the use of fax machines for renewing medications, and streamline the referral process for people to see a specialist, though the NDP Leader did not provide details on how that would be done.
Last week, the province announced that 835 new primary-care doctors have been added since the launch of a new physician pay model in February, 2023. More than 248,000 people have been connected to a family doctor or nurse practitioner since the provincewide launch of the Health Connect registry in July, 2023, and improvements implemented this past April are expected to accelerate that pace, with about 160,000 more people being connected to family doctors in the next six months.
“We believe that, by the end of 2025, we will have worked our way through the backlog of everybody in the Health Connect registry who has registered to get a family doctor,” Mr. Eby said Monday.
Doctors of BC president Ahmer Karimuddin said the voluntary association representing roughly 16,000 physicians, residents and medical students in the province welcomes any government initiative that will free up the capacity of doctors to spend more time on patient care without compromising patient safety.
“Long term, B.C. needs an ongoing and extensive training, recruitment, and retention strategy to ensure B.C. is the clear choice for doctors and other health professionals when deciding where they want to work,” he wrote in a statement to The Globe and Mail.
Also on Monday, the NDP shared a video of Mr. Rustad saying he regretted getting three doses of the “so-called vaccine, the COVID mRNA shots.” The video was purportedly taken from an online meeting on June 18 with the BC Public Service Employees for Freedom Society, whose members say the provincial government’s vaccine mandates were a violation of Charter rights.
“When I talked to [Provincial Health Officer] Bonnie Henry about it, I started to realize that it wasn’t so much about trying to get herd immunity or trying to stop the spread, but it was more around shaping opinion and control on the population,” Mr. Rustad said in the video.
Mr. Eby said Monday that the Conservative Leader’s health policy is “driven by conspiracy theories from the internet,” and implored voters to consider on what their elected representatives base their decisions.
“How will he react to a measles outbreak in British Columbia? What will he say?” the NDP Leader asked of Mr. Rustad. “Will he encourage people to get vaccinated? Measles kill kids. These are not minor considerations.”
The Conservative Leader dodged several questions from multiple reporters about his stand on the COVID vaccine.