B.C. Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau announces the party's 2024 platform amongst fellow candidates and supporters during a press conference at Swan's Pub in Victoria, Oct. 1.CHAD HIPOLITO/The Canadian Press
BC Green Leader Sonia Furstenau has unveiled her full election platform without a reasonable expectation of forming government, instead hoping that the party will return to their 2017 position of progressive kingmaker if voters opt for a minority assembly.
While this election’s two main neck-and-neck rivals on Tuesday trickled out more campaign promises on health and energy, the Greens laid out a plan for their best-case scenario where neither the NDP nor the Conservatives would have a majority of the legislature’s 93 seats after the Oct. 19 vote.
Ms. Furstenau’s detailed platform promises to end private health care, provide free public transit, double social assistance rates and raise spending on education to historic levels. It would hike annual spending by $8-billion, offset in part by higher taxes on wealthy individuals and big corporations.
She said there was only one campaign promise that she would insist on if the Greens ended up once again negotiating for the balance of power: Government spending and land-use decisions would need to be aligned with an objective to improve the well-being of British Columbians and their environment.
“There’s one item, and that is the well-being framework,” Ms. Furstenau told reporters Tuesday. Her party says a government’s performance should not be gauged by economic growth or spending plans, but whether child poverty is shrinking and housing is more affordable.
Like the Greens, there are also a record 40 Independent candidates on the ballot who are hoping to hold the balance of power in a minority government. Some of them are former BC United incumbents who are running after their former party dropped its campaign and urged British Columbians to support the Conservatives.
It took two months after the 2017 election to sort out who would form government. After intense negotiations, the legislature’s three elected Greens ended up handing the balance of power to the NDP in a deal that gave them official party status, campaign-finance reform and an agreement to work toward changing the electoral system.
The resulting agreement allowed premier John Horgan to form a minority government that lasted for more than three years before he tore up the deal and called a snap election.
Opinion polls for this month’s election show the NDP and the Conservatives in a dead heat to form the next government.
On Tuesday, NDP Leader David Eby pledged expanded job leave protection for people facing serious illness and extended travel assistance for those who need to go elsewhere in the province for medical care not available in their own community.
The protection would be extended from eight days to 27 weeks, Mr. Eby said at a campaign stop in Castlegar, in the West Kootenay region of B.C. This would bring the province in line with federal standards, as well as recent proposals in Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Ontario.
Travel assistance would be expanded to include mileage claims for cases in which air travel may not be available or feasible, and these payments would be paid up front. B.C.’s Travel Assistance Program currently covers travel costs such as air, rail and ferry for eligible people requiring travel for certain non-emergency medical care. Eligible services include specialist services, diagnostic procedures, cancer care and HIV/AIDS treatment.
“If you’re struggling with the cost of daily life, if you’re facing challenges with getting around, it can become so complex that you might go without getting treatment, or without seeing that specialist, without getting the care that you need,” Mr. Eby said.
Meanwhile, at a campaign stop in Squamish, Conservative Leader John Rustad pledged he would reverse the NDP government’s proposed plans to end the sale of natural gas heating equipment by 2030 and require that all new light-duty vehicles sold be electric by 2035. His party would also amend the Clean Energy Act to allow for nuclear power, he said.
Mr. Rustad was also forced to respond to yet another recent video shared by the NDP in which he makes questionable comments on climate change. In a March, 2023, interview with former People’s Party of Canada candidate Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson, he said nitrogen fertilizer is critical for food production and that “this narrative about climate” seeks to reduce its usage.
“I can only put it to the fact that, somehow, they think that we need to reduce the world population,” Mr. Rustad said in the video, which was posted to YouTube. “It’s sort of an anti-human agenda.”
The Conservative Leader told reporters Tuesday that his remarks were about policies that could lead to food shortages.