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Good morning! Wendy Cox in Vancouver here this morning.

By Tuesday, some 304,000 mail-in ballots had already been received by Elections BC and a further 470,000 people had voted in advance polls. But that still leaves the vast majority of B.C.'s 3.5 million registered voters yet to make their choice formal for the people they wish to represent them and the future they want for the province.

For those who haven’t yet made up their mind, The Globe can help. Mike Hager has put together a side-by-side platform comparison of where the parties stand on the most prominent issues of the campaign.

Mike’s work shows that the devil is in the details when trying to make a choice. All of the parties have positions on economic renewal, climate change, seniors care, housing and other areas of concern. But how they envision the future of each reflects the ideological divide.

On economic recovery, the Liberals are looking to their year-long PST holiday to spur spending and economic growth. The NDP have dismissed that approach as reckless and instead have promised an income-tested grant of $1,000 to families making less than $125,000 per year and $500 to single people earning less than $62,000. The Greens intend to bankroll some of their ideas based, in part, on their estimated $1-billion the province would save by immediately ending subsidies to the oil and gas industry.

On climate change, the Greens say they’d move to make the province carbon neutral within 25 years. The NDP would take 30 years and the Liberals haven’t suggested a timeline. The Greens would ban fracking, but the NDP and the Liberals don’t target fracking. Instead, both would invest in carbon-capture technologies.

On balancing budgets, all the parties agree that won’t happen soon and now is not the time for austerity. The Liberals have said they would balance within five years of there being a vaccine. The NDP has said, without specifics, that they would balance once the economy rebounds. The Greens don’t mention a balanced budget in their platform at all.

But on other issues, the parties seem to agree at least partly on some subjects.

All three parties have pledged to increase the number of long-term care beds for seniors. The Greens would work to end public money in privately owned care homes, while the NDP would focus future investments in publicly owned care homes. The Liberals said their investments would be available to public, private and non-profit operators.

All three parties also seem to agree that public money should be invested in a provincial childcare program, but how they would do it differs. The NDP says it will expand its $10-per-day program, while the Liberals say their program would range between $10 to $30 per day. The Greens take a different approach, pledging to make childcare free for parents of children under 3 and to make preschool part of the public education system.

Mike goes into more specifics in his piece today. We hope it will help as many voters as possible make their decision formal by voting between now and Saturday.

This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief James Keller. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here. This is a new project and we’ll be experimenting as we go, so let us know what you think.

AROUND THE WEST

SASKATCHEWAN ELECTION: With less than a week left on the campaign trail for Monday’s provincial election, the leaders of Saskatchewan’s two main political parties are appealing to supporters to cast ballots in their favour – and to do so early. Five days of advance polling began Tuesday. Stations will be open from noon until 8 p.m. – an hour longer than usual. Elections Saskatchewan said it added 50 more advance-polling locations than in the 2016 vote to ensure safe physical distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Saskatchewan Party Leader Scott Moe, who campaigned in Saskatoon on Tuesday, encouraged voters to cast their ballots early to avoid potential crowding at polls on election day. NDP Leader Ryan Meili, in a video posted to social media, started his day Tuesday by also urging supporters to vote in advance. The 15,000 people working for Elections Saskatchewan will be wearing masks, and the agency strongly recommends voters do the same. It says face coverings aren’t mandatory, but some advance-polling locations require they be worn.

Meanwhile, Mr. Meili campaigned Monday in Regina next to a former bus depot that belonged to the Saskatchewan Transportation Company before it was shut down by the Saskatchewan Party government. Arriving at the announcement on an out-of-service STC bus, Mr. Meili promised to restore a provincial bus service if his NDP is elected to form government. Back in 2017, the Saskatchewan Party government cited a decline in ridership and high cost of operation as to why it decided to shut down the bus system. In a statement, the Saskatchewan Party accused Mr. Meili of turning to scare tactics in the final week of the election campaign. “Scott Moe has been clear: taxes will not be raised, Crowns will not be privatized, and we will continue to make key investments in essential services and Crown utilities,” said party spokesman Jim Billington.

Mr. Moe campaigned in Battleford on Monday, touting his party’s support for the region over the past 13 years in government. He also highlighted a promise to cut the small business tax rate if the party is re-elected to a fourth term.

OIL INDUSTRY PROPERTY TAXES: The Alberta government is giving a property tax holiday to oil producers, which collectively owe an estimated $173-million to rural governments. Those companies will no longer be required to pay property taxes on new wells and pipelines, and also won’t have to pay a well-drilling equipment tax. Rural municipalities are concerned the government has done little to help them claw back money they are already owned from oil companies.

CONFUCIUS INSTITUTE: Canadian schools and universities that maintain ties with China’s Confucius Institute say they see no reason to reassess those partnerships, despite new questions over what role the Chinese-government-backed education organization has in some Vancouver-area schools. Several institutions contacted by The Globe and Mail said their partnerships with the Confucius Institute provide valuable cultural and language training, and the institute has no role in core school programs. The Globe reported last week on the Confucius Institute programs within the Coquitlam school board in suburban Vancouver. An examination of documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests found the Confucius Institute has helped some schools in the district buy supplies and laptops for Mandarin classes that are part of the curriculum. It also found that assessments of the programs asked for feedback on attitudes toward the institute in the community.

NARWHAL DISCOVERY: A Goodwill thrift store in Calgary received a rare artifact in in its donation pile: a greenish-brown box containing the tusk of a narwhal that was hunted four decades ago. Goodwill Industries of Alberta trains staff to keep an eye out for unusual or valuable items. The tusk is destined for the University of Calgary’s Arctic Institute of North America.

SASKATCHEWAN CLIMATE CHANGE STRATEGY: The Government of Saskatchewan’s climate-change strategy has reduced the threshold requirements of carbon dioxide equivalent from upstream oil and gas production facilities, to allow smaller facilities to opt in to the provincial plan and opt out of the federal carbon tax. In July 2020, government directed that the emissions threshold for voluntary registration be lowered from 10,000 tonnes CO2e to zero tonnes CO2e for upstream oil and gas aggregate facilities.

ALBERTA LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR: Alberta had Canada’s first lieutenant-governor of Chinese descent, as well as the first Indigenous vice-regal. The province’s new lieutenant-governor, Salma Lakhani, is another first – the first Muslim in Canada to hold the position. But she says she hopes the country is beyond marking such first and she hopes that’s not what she is known for. “To say a ‘first’ is a barrier we have to break down. [Instead, we should say], ‘She got appointed on her own merit and she happens to be Muslim.’” Ms. Lakhani was born in Kampala, Uganda, and moved to Edmonton in 1977. She’s been active in groups such as the Lois Hole Hospital for Women in Edmonton, the city’s child crisis prevention shelter Kids Kottage and the Aga Khan Foundation Canada.

OPINIONS

Gary Mason on cancelling the Site C dam: “In referencing the report that is coming, [Premier John] Horgan said, ‘We’ll take a good hard look at the evidence, and if the science tells us and the economics tells us it’s the wrong way to proceed, we’ll take appropriate action.’ While that statement may have buoyed the hearts of thousands opposed to the dam, cancelling it at this juncture seems unimaginable. On the other hand, the thought of a cataclysmic failure of the dam’s wall down the road – not to mention the small army of engineers from BC Hydro that is already working, right now, to triage the dam – must keep Mr. Horgan up at night.”

Robyn Urback on Ottawa’s proposed municipal handgun ban: “A patchwork of municipal bans, however, is merely gun-control theatre: Enforcement would be nearly impossible, especially in cities without their own police forces, and the move would likely just move legal gun activities to neighbouring municipalities (that is, if municipalities decide to adopt a ban at all; mayors of cities including Toronto, St. John’s and Mississauga have expressed skepticism about the idea, and Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan have outright rejected it). Existing RPAL owners would have to be grandfathered in to the new regulatory scheme, and those using handguns illegally would continue just as they always have: ignoring the law.”

Mo Dhaliwal on Surrey parting ways with the RCMP: “Just last week, BC Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson announced that if his party won power in the current election, he would hold a referendum on the transition, despite the fact that the work has already been under way. This constant chorus of political rhetoric has become background noise to many Surrey residents, the apparent cost of challenging the status quo in a city that’s too often treated like a political token. But for evidence that the RCMP is no longer compatible with the city, one needs to look no farther than the reporting just last month about the Mounties' nationwide ‘beard ban.’”

Konrad Yakabuski on the Site C dam: “Both the incumbent New Democrats and opposition Liberals have avoided talking about Site C in the runup to Saturday’s provincial election. That is not surprising. Both parties are complicit in pushing ahead with a development experts warned was far too risky."

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