In my 2023 Response to the Speech from the Throne I cover a variety of topics including Indigenous relations, housing, healthcare, climate action, biodiversity and ecosystem health. This is by no means a fulsome response to all the topics covered in the Throne Speech but I will highlight other aspects I did not get to...
I introduced several pieces of legislation, including repealing the $10 fee for freedom-of-information (FOI) requests, protecting bear dens, and banning prolonged solitary confinement in corrections facilities. These pieces of legislation are aimed at making British Columbia a more transparent and safer place to be...
Over the last few months, I have written and spoken a lot about the erosion of our democracy because of a lack of respect by our provincial government for established and time-tested legislative processes. Among other offences, they have manipulated the parliamentary calendar for their own partisan purposes, time limited and closed debate on...
In December, thousands of delegates from 192 countries gathered in Montreal for COP15, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. This is a critical topic for world leaders to be discussing. While they negotiate at the global level it is important to recognize that many of the actions that need to be taken to protect biodiversity will...
In my last newsletter of 2022 I highlighted a number of initiatives that I will be working with my colleagues in the provincial government, community leaders, and constituents from Saanich North and the Islands in 2023. This is not an exhaustive list. If you see any glaring omissions, let me know at Adam.Olsen.MLA@leg.bc.ca. Agriculture &...
I am a W̱SÁNEĆ person, living in the W̱JOȽEȽP (Tsartlip) village. We have a familial relationship with the Southern Gulf Islands. For generations, my ancestors lived with, and belonged to, the ṮEṮÁĆES (relatives of the deep) in the W̱SÁNEĆ territory. The ṮEṮÁĆES Revitalization project is important work underway in the Gulf Island communities to...
The BC NDP's 7-year, $800 million proposal to re-build the Royal BC Museum ended up being the most explosive issue of 2022 for the government. It demonstrated a major misunderstanding about museums, highlighting how the sacred items of cultural significance stored on their shelves have been reduced to collectables, just curiosities from another...
Throughout the year, I have repeatedly expressed concerns about how our provincial government has shown contempt for democratic debate and our democratic institutions. This is evident in how they manage legislative agenda. In the legislative assembly, this issue is often seen as "insider baseball," meaning it is important to those who work there,...
ÍY SȻÁĆEL (Good Day), Season’s Greetings and best wishes in 2023! In this final edition of the year, I take an extensive look back at my blog posts and highlight a handful of emerging themes. I am sure there are items missing from this year in review, however, I think you will get a sense of the volume of work ahead in Saanich North and the...
If you have been in the Saanich Inlet recently, or live on its shores, you may have seen a growing quarry on the industrial site at the former Bamberton cement plant. Adam grew up on his father’s fishing boat in the Saanich Inlet and remembers trawling past the Bamberton industrial site thousands of times. The site had been a contentious property...
As I write this, world leaders gather in Montreal for the next two weeks for COP15, the United Nations summit on biodiversity. They are discussing our fractured relationship with the natural environment. For my colleague, Sonia Furstenau (MLA, Cowichan Valley) and I in the BC Green Caucus, biodiversity has been a key issue since we signed the...
On Nov. 18, David Eby was sworn in as the 37th premier of British Columbia. The change comes following the resignation of John Horgan and the ensuing leadership event that raised many questions for MLAs and British Columbians alike. Frankly, this change in leadership disrupted a chaotic fall legislative session, one plagued by a mismanaged agenda...
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...
ÍY SȻÁĆEL (Good Day), Welcome to my weekly update for November 6, 2022! Another busy week in the BC Legislative Assembly is complete and now we begin two weeks in the constituency before returning for one final week of the Fall sitting. As the Assembly does not sit on weeks with statutory holidays, we were scheduled to be closed for next week so...
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...
VESSEL MANAGEMENT CONSULTATION OPEN FOR PUBLIC FEEDBACK! For years the proliferation of deep-sea vessels using the Southern Gulf Islands as a parking lot has caused environmental and social challenges. We have heard stories of environmental degradation, excessive noise, light and greenhouse gas emissions negatively impacting the Salish Sea. For...