PLATFORM

The FULL Green Party of British Columbia 2024 platform can be found here.

The BC Greens are guided by six founding principles. All our policies are developed with these principles as a focusing lens.

Ecological Wisdom
Sustainability
Respect for Diversity

Social Justice
Participatory Democracy
Nonviolence

Building a Sustainable, Equitable, and Resilient BC

British Columbians want to enjoy healthy, safe lives and a good standard of living, surrounded by the rich, natural beauty of our province. We want to give our children and grandchildren the same opportunity. We want a future we can believe in. We want to sustain our environment, our economy, and our communities.

People

The last few years have seen an increase in the number of people without access to a Family Doctor, increasing mental health issues, a worsening opioid crisi, and increasing unaffordability for both housing and in our daily lives. We need a government that prioritizes people over corporations. We need real action on social and environmental justice.

BC greens will invest in people and transform primary healthcare, improve access to mental health, and invest in public education and teacher support.

Planet

The planet has suffered from uncontrolled extraction and exploitation for the past century and needs to rebuild its life-supporting ecosystems. We should not continue to subsidize the profitable fossil fuel industry (doubled under NDP) while ignoring the needs of our planet and people. We must transition to a green and equitable future where we tackle the climate crisis at the scale science and communities require. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, we must implement a climate lens (impact) for every government budget, infrastructure investment, and policy decisions.

Prosperity

Our economic systems have prioritized the wealthy while failing to cater to even the most basic human rights of housing and meaningful work. While we, the people, feel the pressure of inflation and increased unaffordability, large corporations continue to experience record windfall profits. Our economy needs a healthy recovery and a new normal.

We need to build housing for people, not investors, We need to invest in local businesses and ensure they thrive, and we need to build resilience by divesting our portfolio from fossil fuels into alternate green energy.

Putting People First

Transform Primary Healthcare

Reform healthcare with patients at the core. We believe in a model like the ‘Dogwood Model’ which focuses on team-based, longitudinal care, ensuring that every British Columbian has access to a primary care home. It’s time we prioritize patient outcomes over selective data and bureaucratic measures

Establish a network of Community Health Centres across the province.
MSP Coverage for mental health profes sionals.
Access to doctors, nurses, mental health professionals, and specialists like dietitians and physiotherapists within their community
Spaces will be leased and administered by the province, allowing healthcare professionals to focus on patient care

Invest in People, and Families

We are in a growing income inequality, an unaffordability crisis, an opioid crisis, and increasing homelessness. While the other parties are choosing to dehumanize people who use drugs and other unhoused people, we are guided by evidence and rooted in the belief that government should focus on saving lives and ensuring services are available to all British Columbians.

Universal livable basic income
Improved support to people living with disabilities
Expand access to safer, regulated pharmaceutical alternatives
Regulate treatment and recovery programs
Invest in accessible and free childcare
improved funding for public and post-secondary education,
Improved healthcare coverage to include mental health and other benefits.

Housing for People, not profit

Despite attempts by NDP to cool the housing market housing remains nowhere near affordable, particularly for young people. Far too many British Columbians have struggled to find affordable homes to rent or own and have been shut out of the housing market.

There is much more that we need to do to ensure that our housing is affordable for people who live and work in our cities, and isn’t being treated as a vehicle for speculators to profit from.

Our goal is that everyone has a home that they can afford and that meets their needs.

Housing-first approach - accelerate investments to affordable, supportive and social housing
Invest in Co-ops, rent to own.
Capital fund to support the acquisition and maintenance of rental housing by nonprofits to maintain affordable rental units and address the financialization of the rental market

Caring for the Planet

Climate Safe Future

There is clear scientific consensus that preventing further fossil fuel development is essential to achieving a climate-safe future. To ensure this BC Greens will:

End fossil fuel producer subsidies
Prioritize local clean energy investments
End the permitting of new fracking wells.
Reject any new LNG projects.
Support affordable, energy-efficient housing and community-scale renewable energy
Fairer Carbon tax and ensure polluters pay their fair share

Protect Old Growth Forests

British Columbia has some of the world’s last remaining temperate forests, and we must strive to protect these beautiful ecosystems. We must uphold Indigenous rights and sovereignty with free, prior, and informed consent for all projects.

We need to take back control of our forests from major corporations and ensure forestry meets the needs of local communities, both economically and ecologically.

Protect our remaining high-value Old Growth Forests forever
generate more jobs and revenue from what we harvest - value added products and services

Fast, Frequent and Free Transport

Transportation affects every aspect of our lives, where we live, how we connect with others, and whether we can access opportunities. Fast, frequent and free transit will shift how people move, reduce household costs, and enable a giant leap forward on meeting our climate goals.

Free public transit, province-wide
Hourly service on key regional routes
Double the number of city buses within 4 years; triple within 8 years

Building Prosperity

Invest in local Businesses

As larger corporations are taking in record profits, small businesses are suffering. BC is well-placed to be a hub for high-tech careers like software development, research, engineering, film, and more. We need to support local innovators with big ideas, by making funding pathways available and encouraging business models like cooperatives that put local workers first. We must also invest in BC owned businesses, especially clean energy projects.

Build Resilience, Measure success

Our economy should prioritize local solutions to our needs, and the local jobs that come with them. We We need to rethink how we measure success and health of our economy.

GDP was an accounting tool that originated in the 1930s to measure the size of the US economy. Somewhere along the way, governments started to treat it as a measure of the health of our economy and human wellbeing—a purpose for which it was not intended.

Adopt health and wellbeing budgets with genuine progress indicators focused on economic, health, social and environmental factors, and require Ministries to justify spending in accordance with measurable progress on these indicators.

Clean, Sustainable Jobs

British Columbians should be able to take advantage of the countless opportunities for meaningful, secure jobs that a low-carbon economy can create. The Just Transition to an ecologically sustainable future need not disrupt the livelihoods of those in extraction industries. We must fund and aid these transitions in a manner that is just and equitable to power our future economy.

Develop a clean jobs program
Create a Youth Climate Corps
implement a Just Transition program for workers in the energy industry - set up funds for skills development, re-training, and early retirement.
Partner with colleges, technical institutes and private organizations to develop training programs to expand employment in the green retrofit space.