The BC Federation of Labour released the following statement today about tomorrow’s provincial election:
Working people across BC will go to the polls tomorrow. With a race as tight as this one, every vote will count. And the outcome will have a big impact on all our lives.
These have been hard times for workers in every part of Canada and the US: rising costs for housing and the necessities of life, strains on the health care system we rely on and a growing concern our kids won’t have the same opportunities we did.
No wonder people are talking about change. The question is, what kind of change do we want: change that keeps moving us ahead and keeps working people front and centre, or change that will see a dismantling of everything we’ve fought so hard for?
Here in BC we’ve had something going for us a lot of people don’t: a government that cares about working people and takes concrete action to make life better for us.
For the past seven years — first with John Horgan and now with David Eby — we’ve been able to make crucial progress for working people with NDP governments.
- Workers across BC can now count on at least five days of paid sick leave per year.
- The rebuilding of our skilled trades workforce is well under way, offering opportunities for rewarding careers throughout the province.
- It’s easier and simpler to join a union to improve your working conditions and bargain for a better deal.
- The workers’ compensation system is stronger and fairer– with improved workplace safety and better supports and benefits for injured workers.
- We have the highest minimum wage of any province in Canada, now indexed to inflation, so BC’s lowest-paid workers don’t fall behind.
- Unlike governments elsewhere, the BC NDP has chosen to defend the public services we rely on and make it easier for working people to get ahead.
- Families are saving thousands of dollars a year thanks to measures like keeping public car insurance and BC Hydro rates in check and expanding affordable childcare.
- The province’s improvements to housing policies and historic investments in building homes are finally cooling off one of the world’s most over-heated housing markets, with rents finally starting to come down.
And the BC NDP has a clear vision that keeps building on this momentum: investing in schools, hospitals and transportation, increasing our health workforce, building more affordable housing, expanding skills training, responding to the climate crisis, pursuing reconciliation and more.
This campaign has made it clear that a re-elected BC NDP government is the best choice to help British Columbians get ahead. And it’s just as clear that John Rustad has no interest in making life better for working people.
His record as a senior cabinet minister in the Christy Clark BC Liberal government says as much: slashing services, laying off huge numbers of health care workers, closing schools and courtrooms, giving big tax breaks to the wealthy while they hiked the fees and taxes the rest of us pay.
The BC Conservatives’ plan — hastily thrown together with multi-billion-dollar holes in its budgeting, and released just days ago after hundreds of thousands of British Columbians had already cast advance ballots — is an insult to voters. Rustad's alarming support for user-pay health care and his opposition to rent control and paid sick leave should make any worker think twice about supporting him.
And the BC Conservatives’ clumsy attempts to cover up the disturbing fringe beliefs of their candidates (not to mention Rustad himself!) tell you their plans are far more extreme than what they’ve announced publicly. They’d drag us backward: not just years, but decades.
The challenges working families face are still here, and they’re still serious. But we’re making progress. And on October 19, we can build on that progress by re-electing David Eby and the BC NDP.