As we get to the last week of the Fall sitting, the BC NDP government tabled amendments to the Strata Act to remove rental and age restrictions. This was a recommendation of the Rental Housing Task Force I participated in in 2018. This recommendation has not been acted on until now. It was one of the more contentious...
Premier David Eby begins to move his housing agenda forward two new bills in the last week of session. Bill 43 aims to increase supply. However, significant questions remain about what kind of supply is being built. In addition to market housing supply, will these changes lead to affordable non-market housing such as...
For more than a year, families with neuro-diverse children have been demanding the Minister of Children and Family Development, Hon. Mitzi Dean, scrap a proposal that ends individual funding for supports and instead creates a hub model. The Minister has consistently told British Columbians that she is listening to...
For a so-called progressive government to allow the provincial income and disability rates to languish $10,000 below the poverty line is totally unacceptable. The BC NDP government likes to tell a story about this themselves and the fact that they have allowed disabled people to continue to live in poverty is...
Well, I wish I could tell you different, however, the BC NDP continues manipulate the Parliamentary calendar to suit their sloppy management of their own legislative agenda. As a companion to my comments from earlier in November, here are the comments I made on November 21, 2022 in response to the Government House...
The good news is that the Ministry of Children and Family Development has taken the first step in improving Indigenous child welfare in British Columbia. As the Minister said in her introductory speech of Bill 38: Indigenous Self-Government in Child and Family Services Amendment Act, "this proposed legislation would...
The BC NDP are carefully managing the entrance of their new leader Premier-designate David Eby, and they are cancelling important democratic processes to make it happen! Even though Mr. Eby won the leadership event weeks ago the province has been operating with maybe one, or two, Premiers. One Premier who essentially...
Bill 41 makes seven key changes to the Workers Compensation Act to better support workers (detailed below). Five of these changes fulfil recommendations from the Patterson report; all of the recommendations work to bring BC in line with other Canadian jurisdictions. - This legislation establishes a more independent...
The Saanich Inlet is a special place. It has fed countless generations of my family it must be protected. I rose and spoke to the importance of this place to my family and to the thousands of people who live around the inlet. [Transcript] SAANICH INLET The environmental degradation of the Saanich Inlet is personal....
The Minister of Mental Health and Addictions has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a broken system of mental health services. At the centre of that is an outdated Mental Health Act. Several organizations such the Representative for Children and Families, the Ombudsperson, and several other community...
My colleague Sonia Furstenau and I have received hundreds of emails from concerned citizens living around the Saanich Inlet about the proposed expansion of the Bamberton quarry. (Learn more at https://adamolsen.ca/2022/10/public-comment-open-for-bamberton-quarry-expansion-application) The fact that a proposal to...
I have been hearing about the challenges that school districts are facing managing the unfunded inflationary pressures that are piling up. Especially in districts of stable or declining enrollment newly elected school board trustees will be tasked with challenging decisions about what is going to get cut. The BC NDP...
I spoke to Bill 36: Health Professions and Occupations Act. It must be the heftiest, all 645 clauses, that has been tabled in my time in the British Columbia Legislative Assembly. This is new legislation comes out of the work of a steering committee created by the Minister of Health, Hon. Adrian Dix, and including the...
Child welfare in British Columbia has long been a shameful part of our provincial history. As the Ministry of Children and Family Development Fact Sheet noted despite the reality that Indigenous people are less than 10% of the population, Indigenous children represent 68% of the children in care. The provincial child...
Despite Minister Adrian Dix’s claims he is addressing the primary healthcare crisis in British Columbia, thousands of my constituents in Saanich North and the Islands do not have access to a family doctor. The pace of Minister Dix’s response is creating a gap and the corporations are lining up to exploit it. While the...
In September, former Saanich North and the Islands MLA and Sidney businessman Clive Tanner passed away. In my statement this week I stood to recognize Mr. Tanner and the significant contribution he made to our community and province. [Transcript] Today I stand to celebrate the life of a community leader and former...
This week, the report of the Special Committee to Review the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act that was published earlier this summer was officially table in the Legislative Assembly. As a member of the Committee, I had an opportunity to speak to the process and the contents of the report. As the...
Currently there is no province wide protection for bear dens. While they are protected on Haida Gwaii and in the Great Bear Rainforest, and some protection by logging companies for the vast majority of the province bear den habitat is vulnerable to logging. The private members bill that I tabled today corrects that,...
The Coastal GasLink pipeline controversy continues as the BC NDP allow the company to drill and blast under the Wedzin Kwa (also known as the Morice River) while it is full of spawning salmon. The company faces a host of compliance issues with environmental regulations, meanwhile the Minister of Environment and...
On behalf of the B.C. Green Caucus, I responded to the Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, Hon. Murray Rankin's Ministerial Statement on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ National Day of Action. [Transcript] Mr. Speaker, first I would just like to acknowledge both of the...
In my first Question of the Fall session I asked Minister of Forests, Hon. Katrine Conroy about the growing controversy surrounding the wood pellet industry. Journalists in both the United Kingdom and here in Canada are investigating the claims of the British Columbia government and Drax, a large multinational...
ÍY SȻÁĆEL (Good Day), Welcome to my weekly update for June 5th, 2022! This will be the last weekly update of the Spring legislative session. I will produce a monthly newsletter until the Legislature resumes sitting in October. There is a lot of content in this newsletter. Please scroll to bottom as I am sharing important information about...
I am grateful to Gud Takin Jaad, Rose Williams for preparing this statement about the official name change of Queen Charlotte City back to Daajing Giids. [Transcript] The statement was written by Gud Takin Jaad, B.C. Green caucus intern and proud Haida. In 2019, the Skidegate Haida immersion program submitted a...
Today, I tabled legislation to ban the use of prolonged solitary confinement in provincial correctional facilities for both adults and youth. Solitary confinement is defined by the United Nations (UN) as any confinement, seclusion, or segregation of individuals for more than 22 hours a day without meaningful human...
The Gwa’sala-‘nakwaxda’xw Nation are in the process of taking back jurisdiction of child welfare as per federal legislation. They have been attempting to get access to historical information from the provincial Crown governments Ministry of Children and Family Development but have been consistently blocked by the BC...
The BC NDP have long claimed to be the only party that speaks for workers. Increasingly we are seeing they cannot back up their claims. They have failed to protect educators and healthcare workers from COVID-19 and as the climate crisis is causing more and larger wildfires, British Columbians who work outdoors will...