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...
Question Period
Will the Minister review the Mental Health Act?
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 At the centre of that is an outdated Mental Health Act.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...
Will the Minister require an environmental assessment for Bamberton quarry?
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...
Unfunded inflationary pressures threatening public education system
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...
Slow response to primary healthcare crisis leaves constituents desperate
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...
Why is the BC NDP allowing Coastal GasLink to drill under Wedzin Kwa while salmon are spawning?
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...
Does B.C. Minister of Forests believe burning wood pellets produces clean energy?
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...
Why is BC NDP government limiting the Gwa’sala-‘nakwaxda’xw historical information on child welfare?
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...
What is BC NDP doing to protect workers from poor air quality due from wildfires?
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...
Ministerial Statement: Marking one year since confirmation of unmarked graves at Kamloops
As we approach the one year anniversary since Kúkpi7 Rosanne Casimir (Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc) announced the preliminary findings of 215 graves of children at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School I stood and marked the occasion in a response to a Ministerial Statement delivered by Minister Murray Rankin. This...
Why is BC NDP investing $800 million on a new museum and only $500,000 in repatriation?
The BC NDP need to get their priorities straight. They announced an $800 million new Royal BC Museum, when millions of British Columbians are struggling to keep up with the increasing costs of basic needs like food, transportation and housing. And, for months British Columbians have been demanding the BC NDP address...
Modernization of the Mental Health Act and the Police Act is necessary, will the BC NDP do it?
It has been 25 years since the British Columbia government did a comprehensive update of the Mental Health Act. In 2021, the BC NDP made a record investment in mental health programs and services. However, the Act governing them is outdated and based on ideas and values from a previous generation. Another Act that...
Why is the BC NDP ignoring the environmental racism and harms caused by fracking?
Both the BC NDP and BC Liberals support gas liquefaction for the export market. However, a growing body of research is showing that fracking, the process to extract gas from the ground, causes significant harm to human health. Indigenous communities, children and pregnant people are disproportionately impacted by the...
Service for adults with eating disorders severely inadequate on Southern Vancouver Island
Services for adults with eating disorders across the province are delivered by health authorities with one exception - Island Health. For some inexplicable reason those services are delivered by the Ministry of Children and Family Development. For years, the services have been inadequate but during the pandemic the...
What is the BC NDP doing to protect renters from real estate investment trusts (REITs)?
Large corporate institutional landlords, known at real estate investment trusts (REIT), are purchasing rental apartments at a shocking rate. In many cases, they are renovicting the tenants and dramatically increasing rents. This is another example of the financialization of housing and it is putting many renters...
What is the BC NDP doing about growing corporatization threatening primary health care?
Nearly 1,000,000 British Columbians do not have access to a family doctor or team of primary health care practitioners. More are notified each day that their doctor is retiring or shutting down their practice due to exhaustion and frustration. There is a lurking threat that the BC NDP is doing nothing about, large...
With LNG Canada looking to expand, how does it fit BC NDP climate commitments?
When the consortium of multi-national corporations decided to invest in LNG Canada they only approved half the project (2 trains). They government regulatory process had approved them for 4 trains. Now they are looking at the possibility of growing their investment to the full 4 trains. The problem for the BC NDP is...
Indigenous food security threatened by glyphosate spraying of forest lands
I followed up my previous question to Hon. Katrine Conroy (Minister of Forests) about her defense of the aerial spraying of glyphosate on B.C. forest lands. Ultimately, the food security that the provincial government talks about does not include Indigenous practices of hunting, fishing, and gathering of wild foods...
BC NDP Forests Minister defends spraying glyphosate and other poisons
The BC government continues to use glyphosate and other poisons to clear forest lands of unwanted vegetation. Unwanted only by the forest industry. The species that this government is killing are the same species that Indigenous Peoples have harvested, and continue to harvest, since time immemorial for food and...
BC NDP continues supporting fossil fuel expansion in a climate emergency!
Following the tabling of the Declaration Act Action Plan, I rose in Question Period to ask Premier John Horgan how his BC NDP government can justify the expansion of fossil fuel extraction and liquefaction infrastructure knowing the human rights violations, environmental and Indigenous rights. In my follow-up question...
The BC NDP promised to make prescription contraception free, two budgets later we’re still waiting!
In the 2020 election the BC NDP promised to make contraception free for all British Columbians. As a cisgender male, free or near-free condoms are widely available, vasectomies are covered by MSP, however for women, trans-men and gender diverse people, getting prescription contraception requires a visit to a medical...
Where are the investments in non-market housing options?
With housing costs soaring in British Columbia the BC NDP's market driven for-profit affordable housing is not working. Affordable housing is out of reach for many British Columbians. The BC NDP flagship housing program is called the Housing Hub, it invests $2 billion worth of public money in market rental...
Will B.C. insist companies we subsidize stop using steel made by Russian oligarchs?
We learned this morning that Coastal Gas Link (CGL) and Trans Mountain Pipelines have purchased steel pipe manufactured by Envraz PLC, a company owned, chaired and run by Russian oligarchs. It is an important question and in the my delivery of my supplemental I unfortunately missed the main point, thinking and talking...
Where is the money in Budget 2022 for Indigenous reconciliation and conservation financing?
In Budget 2022, the BC NDP government invested $12 million over 3 years to create the long-awaited Declaration Act Secretariat to better organize the provincial reconciliation efforts. That budget though will just cover the salaries and administration of the office. We know that government funds its priorities and so...
Why is Minister of Children and Families growing bureaucracy and not supporting families?
I continued my questions to the Minister of Children and Family Development asking why she continues to ignore families who want the government to maintain individual supports while investing $25 million this year in building a hub system that has failed in Ontario instead of investing it directly in the families in...