BC Conservatives left a flyer at my door promoting their candidate in a North Vancouver constituency. Were the BC Conservatives to form government, British Columbia would be far different. Not better, but definitely different.
Here I comment on their policy proposals:
| WHAT THEY PLAN TO DO | WHAT THAT MEANS |
| Remove “red tape” and lower taxes and make government smaller. | Red tape reduction is a euphemism for deregulation. What we need is effective regulation. The Harper Conservatives showed us that smaller government means: — privatization of public assets, — fast tracking oil & gas projects by letting industry do whatever they view as profitable, — environmental programs crippled or ended, — government scientists muzzled or eliminated, — lobbyists rewriting operating rules for industries; — deregulation of food supplies (hello Listeria), — badly regulated rail services (remember Lac-Mégantic), — reduced capabilities for CRA to deal with serious tax avoidance and evasion, (Panama Papers revealed 900+ Canadian taxpayers engaged in tax avoidance, yet no charges after five years.) |
| Stimulate the economy with infrastructure projects | We have no shortage of infrastructure projects underway. Perhaps too many. Like the $40 billion Trans Mountain Pipeline, the $15 billion Coastal GasLink pipeline, the megamillion LNG projects, the $20 billion Site C dam, the $1.4 Pattullo Bridge replacement, the $4 billion Massey Tunnel replacement, the $4 billion Surrey-Langley Sky Train project, $3 billion Broadway Subway project, the new $2+ billion St. Paul’s Hospital, the $400 million Kamloops cancer centre, the $225 million Bruhn Bridge project, etc. |
| Get gas prices under control by axing the carbon tax | Conservatives blame carbon tax for high gas prices, but stay silent on oil industry price gouging, which gives revenue to corporations that is not returned to consumers. Meanwhile, 80 per cent of Canadians, according to the Parliamentary Budget Office — get more money back from the rebate than the price on carbon costs them. |
| End the ICBC monopoly | Don’t break what has already been fixed. “B.C. now has some of the most affordable auto insurance in Canada while also providing anyone injured in a crash with significantly improved care and recovery benefits when compared with the old model.” |
| Stabilize the housing market by promoting development of new housing supply. | Before May 2017, LibCons showed their willingness to sell public lands to developers at below market prices with no guarantees of affordable housing. The real estate industry has been very good at building housing units that sell for more than a million dollars and very bad at building homes that many in the community can buy or rent. Vienna offers a real solution: public housing. |
| Provide parents full choice on how and where their children are educated. | Cons don’t want to use the word privatization, but that’s what they favour. They are offended by policies of innovation, tolerance and inclusivity in public schools and they fear students who are taught to question, analyse, interpret, and evaluate, and then draw sound conclusions. Conservatives prefer indoctrination and want critical thinking left to the higher purpose people. |
| Support new parents with daycare cost by incentivizing private-sector daycare spaces. | Here, the BCNDP has been moving along the right path. But they’ve been doing it so slowly that some parents are paying $200 a month per son or daughter, while others face costs of more than $1,100 for each child. The Conservative promise to incentivize private childcare providers may create more of the expensive options but the idea of $10 a day childcare will disappear. |
| Crack down on violent crime and frequent offenders. | Crime is primarily the outcome of multiple adverse social, economic, cultural and family conditions. The roots of crime are complex and interrelated, but can be summarized in three main categories: • Economic Factors/Poverty • Social Environment • Family Structures. BC and Canada each have responsibilities for managing the justice system, but federal Criminal Code rules govern bail. Offenders are entitled to be released from custody unless the Crown justifies their continued detention. |
| Criminalize all “hard” drugs, end safe supply for addicted people, and force addicts into treatment. | Punitive drug policies are polarised, simplified, and based more on ideology than evidence. Portugal’s approach was not to simply decriminalise; it redefined addiction as an illness and provided extensive treatment and recovery support, moving people who use drugs away from the judicial system and towards professional care. Comprehensive medical, psychological, and social support need to accompany decriminalisation to address factors such as homelessness and unstable housing, ill mental health, poverty, racial inequities, and inadequate access to health care, all of which might drive people into drug use. |
| Prioritize training and hiring of nurses doctors and privatize health services. | Saying “We will hire more doctors and nurses” is far too simplistic. These professions are only parts of the healthcare system. We need appropriate facilities, technical equipment, and people trained in many categories. Smaller government won’t achieve that. Private healthcare offers huge profits for investors and corporations, but a flood of financial disasters for individuals. Conservatives love the private healthcare system imposed on Americans. But healthcare costs are the #1 cause of bankruptcy for America’s families. One hundred million Americans are saddled with medical debt. The Canadian system aims to provide near-equal access to necessary medical treatment, regardless of patients ability to pay. |
| LOCAL CONCERNS | COMMENTS |
| Bridge traffic | Here the NDP earns a large FAIL. While we can’t pave our way out of traffic congestion, we also cannot live with the same number of lanes crossing Burrard Inlet as there were in 1960. Population of Metro Vancouver is almost 5-times greater in 2024 and traffic from Howe Sound, Sunshine Coast and Nanaimo has also multiplied. Gridlock by design is politically dangerous policy. |
| Conservatives blame cost overruns on Metro Vancouver’s construction of a waste water treatment plant on “the NDP’s incompetence.” | It’s a screw-up, but not one to lay at the feet of the NDP. Greater Vancouver Sewerage and Drainage District is responsible for the treatment plant, not the province. GVS&DD Board is comprised of 37 directors representing 18 municipalities and one electoral area in the region. All GVS&DD Board members are also members of the Metro Vancouver Regional District Board. |
| Construction of a homeless and drugs shelter “in our riding!” | You can’t complain about homeless people sleeping on the streets and in the parks if you’re not prepared to provide shelters where they are needed. Finland began an aggressive program of building supportive housing and matched those with medical and social services for homeless people. Whereas in many other European countries, more and more people are living on the streets, in Finland, they are actively searching for them. However, Finland’s right-wing politicians aim to cripple this successful program. They say it is too expensive. What they mean is that it is too effective. |
None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody – a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns – bent down and helped us pick up our boots. — Thurgood Marshall
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Categories: Election BC 2024
in-sights.ca 
Thanks for the point–by-point look at the Conservative platform, Norm.
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Actually, when all the costs for the 21.7 km SkyTrain expansion (Broadway subway and Langley) extension, the cost will be now over $12 billion.
Metro Vancouver’s ills is basically zero public oversight and we let local politicos squander tax monies at will.
The NDP have utterly failed to deal with many of the problems cited by Rustad’s conservatives and allowed then to fester. anti-vax/anti-science types will leave us all as cold as a corpse.
Sadly having weighed Eby’s NDP (Vision-Vancouver Provincial) and Rustad’s Conservatives (Trumpian wannabees), I will vote Green.
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Thanks Norm for your dissection of the BC Conservative platform. Your posting should be shared widely. You could probably insert BC United for BC Conservative and repost. The two parties share a lot of the same bad ideas😕.
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The problem with BC politics, the three main politcal parties differ only to those they dish out the taxpayer’s money to.
BC United is just Gordon Campbell’s grifter party, which sole reason d’etre is divesting BC’s assets to politcal friends and insiders.
The conservative party is nothing more than half-wit anti-vaxers and anti science types, mainly copying Trumpian politics. They are not Conservative, rather MAGA Canadian.
The NDP are now Vision(less) Vancouver Provincial, which politcal credo seems to be enrich land speculators and land developers.
As I stated before, I will vote Green as I feel not one leader of the above politcal parties, is fit to be Premier of BC.
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If you buy into the Conservatives’ red-tape reduction program (more accurately called deregulation, please listen to this podcast.
https://swindledpodcast.com/podcast/114-the-fungus/
People died because regulation of this industry was ineffective. Greedy business people thought profitability was more important than the safe supply of medications.
Strict regulation of industries that can do harm is vital.
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Notice how many fatal traffic accidents lately, have involved the deregulated trucking industry? You better, because if Rustad gets elected, this will triple!
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