Role of the Family 

The party states that:
– the family unit is essential to the well-being of individuals and society, because that is where children learn values and develop a sense of responsibility.
– therefore government legislation and programs should support and respect the role of the British Columbian family and the rich heritage of this province where the family unit has traditionally been valued and supported by government.
– it believes in the right and duty of parents to raise their own children responsibly according to their own conscience and beliefs. We believe no person, government or agency has the right to interfere in the exercise of that duty except through due process of law and only where it can be reasonably

Health Care & Elder Care 

The party states that the Health Care System in British Columbia is not adequately meeting the needs of all British Columbians. There is currently a long waiting list for many medical procedures.  In addition, many rural residents now have to travel long distances, sometimes in extreme winter conditions, to access certain types of health care.

The party therefore advocates:
– covering the cost of hospitals cost in British Columbia by payments from the Provincial Government on a “Performance” basis, to cause hospital administrations to become conscious of costs and revenues and help them to seek the most cost-effective way of dealing with their patients, and in many cases to offer more, rather than fewer services. This will help reduce waiting lists for surgeries
– when private health care providers can provide a service more cost effectively and/or in a more timely manner, sending patients to those private health care providers and covering the cost of their services through the BC Health Care system. This is currently being done with most doctors, who operate private, “for profit” clinics in British Columbia
–  making copies of all invoices paid by the Provincial Government, including all payments to Government owned facilities as well as all payments to private health care providers available to the patient or surviving relative. This will enable the residents of British Columbia to see what their health care is costing the taxpayers and will make medical practitioners aware that their invoices are being seen by the customer
– creating an office of Provincial Surgeon General to oversee the complete provincial health care system and ensure fairness in payments to hospitals and clinics as well as to arbitrate patient complaints.
– addressing the shortage of doctors and nurses by fast tracking the accreditation of foreign trained  professionals and by increasing the number of training spaces in provincial educational institutions
– encouraging the establishment of walk-in clinics, including clinics offering 24- hour service, and then encouraging emergency room personnel to refer non emergency patients to those walk-in clinics, where they can be treated more cost effectively
– opening or re-opening hospitals that have been closed in smaller communities in rural British Columbia, where numbers and/or distance from existing hospitals warrant, so that fewer patients will have to travel such great distances, sometimes in extreme weather, to access primary health care. This will also relieve some of the pressure on our regional hospitals. Where numbers warrant, palliative care will be provided at these small, rural hospitals so that those approaching end-of-life can be closer to their families and be kept comfortable.
– placing emphasis on preventative medicine and promote fitness and nutrition as keys to healthier living and to reduce the demand on our health care facilities. This will include health and fitness programs in our schools, including mandatory physical education from K-12.
– establishing a Health Care Task Force that will consult with provincial health care professionals and residents, study health care services in other countries to determine what works and what could provide benefit to the residents of British Columbia
– ensuring that the five basic principles of the Canada Health Act are applied throughout Canada, even though the administration of health services comes under provincial jurisdiction. Residents of any province or territory who require medical assistance or services while visiting elsewhere in Canada should have as full and equal access to all health care facilities and services as residents of the province or territory in which the need for such services is required.

Abortion, Elective Surgery, & Socially-Assisted Death (SAD)
The party states that:
– while currently, abortions are performed by BC health care professionals both within provincially-operated facilities and private clinics, it does not believe abortions (the killing of tiny human beings) qualify as “health care”, or that BC taxpayers, many of whom are conscientiously opposed to abortion, should be forced to pay for them
– it also believes that the money spent on abortions in BC could be better spent on pregnancy care and support for new mothers. Many studies indicate negative health impacts for women who undergo abortions, including suicide, depression, birthing complications and a higher incidence of breast cancers.
– therefor the party advocates a. removing abortion from the list of taxpayer-funded surgical procedures
– the party further believes that BC taxpayers should not be forced to pay for any surgeries that are not medically necessary. (Abortion is an elective surgery and is not medically necessary).
– it advocates restoring the access to statistical information about abortions performed in all BC hospitals and private clinics, including making it mandatory to document all medical procedures in BC. This information must be available to the public through Freedom of Information requests.
– repealing provincial “Bubble Zone” legislation (Access to Abortion Services ACT of 1995) and restoring freedom of speech in BC.
– defending senior citizens and those with disabilities from attempts to institute euthanasia and assisted suicide in the province of BC.

Long-Term & Home Care
The party advocates
– opening more long term care facilities in British Columbia in order to get long term care patients out of our hospitals and into a more comfortable environment, and free up hospital beds for acute care patients
– opening more community care facilities in rural British Columbia, in order to take pressure off of our hospitals in those communities
– increasing the availability of home care support and reinstating housekeeping and other services so that more senior citizens can live in dignity in their own homes and so that that the demand for expensive hospital care will be further reduced

Education & Young Workers

Primary & Secondary Education
The party states that:
– parents are the first and primary educators of their own children. A CHP-BC Government will protect the right of parents to choose the best type of schooling for their children.
– provincial funding allocated for the education of BC children in primary and secondary schools “follow the student” and be directed to the school setting chosen by the parents. “School choice” means that the parents can choose the best school for their children and the provincial per-student allocation will be directed to that school, including public schools, charter schools, independent schools, or home schools.
– ensuring that the Ministry of Education establishes minimum academic standards to ensure that institutions or home schools are equipping students with adequate basic knowledge and skills, as well as a ‘fee per student’ that will apply to all students in BC.
– where institutions outside of the public school system are able to provide an equivalent or superior education at a lower cost, the Ministry  will adjust fees accordingly for all students, providing an incentive for excellence and cost-effectiveness
– no schools funded by tax dollars will teach/promote/condone physical harm
– ensuring that volunteers and non-licensed paid employees are allowed to perform non-academic services for independent schools. Remuneration for these services will be entirely at the discretion of the governing body of the independent schools
– negotiating salaries and working conditions of public school teachers on a province wide basis
– ending the practice of taxpayer-funded BC Schools being used to promote social engineering regarding human sexuality, sexual orientation, etc. Parents are primarily responsible for training their own children in matters of morality. Public educators are entrusted—during the valuable time children are in their care and supervision—to support parents as role models, not to usurp their authority nor to undermine the values taught at home. To this end, reversing the Corren Agreement of 2005
– abandoning widespread promotion of “anti-bullying” as a strategy to promote alternate sexual and family models will be abandoned. All students will be protected from all forms of bullying, including pressure from teachers and peers to conform to new standards of sexual labelling and attitudes.
– promoting a high standard of conduct for all students and teachers including positive references to abstinence, chastity and marriage.
 

Post-Secondary Education
In order to promote employment and job creation, the party advocates:
– encouragement of and support for BC residents and support who wish to complete their education up to and including grade twelve
– within the ability of taxpayers to fund the cost, increasing provincial expenditures on education at technical institutes, colleges and universities by providing loans for students who apply and meet the minimum requirements. These loans will be forgivable for post-secondary students who graduate from BC institutions and continue to live, work and pay taxes in BC. Forgiveness of the loans will be pro-rated over a ten year period. If any graduate ceases to be a resident of British Columbia at any time within the ten years following graduation, the unforgiven pro-rated portion of the student loan will become due and payable

Role and development of the family

The party advocates:
– support for all new parents with the costs of daycare directly, while incentivizing the private sector to create new daycare spaces. This plan includes forming partnerships with municipalities.

Health Care & Elder Care

The party states that:
– it advocates serious, substantive healthcare reform. The performance of British Columbia’s health care system throughout the COVID-19 pandemic has been abysmal. Chronic shortages in physicians, nurses and ICU capacity has become painstakingly clear. It’s time for serious reform.
– it supports choice and competition in health care, allowing choice and competition in the delivery of health care services while retaining universal access for all British Columbians and ending the government’s court case against private clinics and unleashing the power of private-sector innovation.
– it advocates reducing health care wait times. Unless the province embraces bold reforms, British Columbians will continue to suffer with unreasonable delays on many medical procedures. Reform hospital funding to incentivize output – just like many European countries (and Australia) have done to improve results.
– it advocates more doctors and more nurses, including by incentivizing post-secondary institutions to train more RNs, LPNs, and physicians by prioritizing government funding and support for these programs and students.
– it supports opposition and repeal of Bill 36. B.C.’s healthcare professionals have a right to freedom of conscience and bodily autonomy. Under Bill 36, the healthcare workers we once applauded as “frontline heroes” could be fined or jailed for refusing government decrees, including COVID vaccine mandates. It opposes this bill.

Education & Young Workers

The party states that:
– it supports parents’ choices. Parents have the right to determine how and where their children will be educated. Government must provide fair and reasonable funding to families for the type of education they choose for their children. This includes public, private or homeschooling.
– it advocates removing ideology from the classroom. Political bias and ideology have no place in B.C.’s education curriculum and must be removed immediately. Schools must be places of learning – not tools for activism and indoctrination.
– it supports protection of free speech on campus. Universities and colleges that do not support and defend freedom of expression on campus will be defunded. Taxpayer money will not be used to support places of censorship and intimidation.
– it advocates re-allocation of funding for post-secondary education. Government funding within post-secondary institutions will be re-allocated to promote and incentivize training in essential fields such as medicine, engineering, and skilled trades.

Role and development of the family

The party states that:
– families are under tremendous pressure in BC today. The generation raising young children juggles long working hours and multiple demands on their time, as their household incomes stagnate, and housing costs skyrocket
– its plan to support young families is designed to promote the opportunity for parents to achieve a balance that works for them. Parents who choose to work will be supported by enhanced access to quality childcare, and more flexible work arrangements, those who choose to stay home with their children will have an income supplement, and we will encourage flexible working options to support people to find a balance
– a first priority is to accelerate the work of building a universal childcare system. It’s well-established that the COVID-19 pandemic had disproportionate effects on women, and that we risk losing all the gains made in women’s labour force participation over the past number of decades, without targeted programs that support women. But it is not enough just to deliver childcare. In creating spaces, we shouldn’t be reinforcing a flawed system that’s overly reliant on for-profit providers. We also need to improve flexibility for parents by promoting the opportunity for parents to achieve the right balance between work and family time for their needs. It’s time to move beyond a 20th century approach for working lives and develop supports that recognise the needs of families today.

The party advocates:
– To support stay-at-home parents, providing up to $500 per month for families with children under 3 and a stay at home parent.

Child Care
The party advocates:
– a comprehensive program for childcare and increased funding for child care programs from $674 million in 2020/21 to $897 million in 2023/24. This is in addition to the $300 million funding for preschool for 3 and 4 year olds that is included in the Education budget. Funding would cover the phase-in of the various elements of this plan for a comprehensive program that would include:
• expansion of available physical spaces, prioritizing partnerships with public schools, community non-profits, and First Nations
• free childcare for working parents with children under 3;
• professional development opportunities to increase qualifications of existing child care workers, and the training of more early childhood educators in certified programs;
• establishment of professional wages for early childhood educators.
– maintenance of child care subsidies and supports as needed to ensure adequate financial support for all families.
– moving the Ministry of State for Childcare into the Ministry of Education in recognition of the importance of ECE in the educational outcomes for our children.

To support flexible work arrangements, the party advocates taking first steps towards policies that ensure that families have a viable choice between going back to full-time work, staying at home or balancing both, including:
– in consultation with business, labour and other stakeholders, exploring options for reduced work weeks and or flexible work hours. For example, encouraging employers to adopt a 4-day work week, or reduced hours for a standard work week while maintaining full-time status to maintain benefits, or modified work week arrangements.
– supporting telecommuting to save commuting time
– helping employers to continue to support telecommuting where feasible
– enhancing investments to deliver highspeed internet access across BC

Health Care & Elder Care

The party states that:
– while a crisis can bring out the best in people, it can also expose the cracks in society that are papered over during the normal times. The COVID pandemic did just that, bringing the crises in seniors care, mental health and addictions into full public view.
– the crisis in seniors’ care is a perfect storm fueled by the growing number of seniors; the costs of providing care; the inadequate capacity of the health authorities to provide the care; overworked and undervalued staff; the contracting out of seniors’ care to private for-profit care homes; and, the failure of government to ensure that the quality of care is maintained.
– mental health care is also failing at all levels, from early intervention for children and youth through to tertiary care for adults with complex psychological problems, the system is inadequately resourced, with people waiting for weeks and months to get publicly funded help, and then the help they receive does not always fully address their needs.
– a t the same time, British Columbia is in the grip of two other very serious health crises. Since early spring in 2020, British Columbia has been Canada’s epicentre for the opioid crisis. Successive governments have failed to provide adequate treatment options for addicts and dependence on toxic street drugs. Overdose deaths rose sharply during the pandemic, due to supply disruptions that caused increased toxin levels in drugs sold on the street.
– many of these problems were caused by the austerity years of the prior government, when the province thought that saving money by not investing in services for our loved ones was a good idea. The current government is taking steps in the right direction, but there is a long way to go

Primary Care
The party states that:
– British Columbians rightfully take pride in the provincial healthcare system and its frontline healthcare workers, including in the response to COVID-19.
– after COVID, one of the more important priorities is to tackle the family doctor shortage in BC. Successive governments have struggled to increase the number of family
doctors available.
– it will continue to work with physicians and other stakeholders to improve incentives for doctors to set up family practices in BC. Qualified foreign-trained physicians can also play a greater role in providing services in our province.
– it helped the last government champion the creation of primary care networks. Such interprofessional and integrated teams are providing more access to physiotherapists, nurse practitioners, midwives, dieticians and other health professionals, helping alleviate the burden on doctors, increasing their ability to take on new patients.
– primary care networks will need ongoing support in order to be successful in their goals.
– the accessibility of care is part of another of the party’s core values, ensuring that a far greater share of health care spending is shifted to support prevention.

The party advocates:
– continued roll-out of primary care networks in to expand accessibility of healthcare services, while increasing the number of British Columbians having a family doctor.
– implementation of an essential drugs program, designed to reduce the costs of prescription drugs and ensure the cost of drugs is not a barrier to health management.
– establishment of a task force to develop a plan to transition the balance of resources between acute care and preventative care, including review of the funding and range of services covered by the health care system to ensure a mix of services that better meets the treatment and prevention needs of the population.
– consultations with physicians and other stakeholders to improve efficiency, reduce administration, and incentivize service as a General Practitioner.
– working with the provincial College of Physicians and Surgeons to create a pathway for qualified foreign-trained physicians to practice in BC.

Elder Care
The party states that:
– for years serious questions have been raised around accountability, monitoring and financial oversight in BC’s long term care homes. The COVID pandemic exacerbated and
spotlighted these issues, showing that our seniors bore the worst outcomes of the pandemic. They deserve much better than the care they’ve received.
– it advocates a broader discussion about how people age and how to reduce isolation amongst seniors. We should be expanding our imagination about the place that seniors occupy in our neighbourhoods, our communities and our society.
– wages and working conditions in the sector need to be improved, and the issue of for-profit ownership in the public care system should be revisited. Public money supports people in care homes whether they are run by health authorities, not-for-profit organizations or private companies.
– it should be ensured that the companies that exist today are meeting the standards required for adequate care. There is far too little accountability about how public funds are being used. It would establish annual inspections, and require standard financial statements and audited expense reports of all private facilities, so that there is confidence that public funding is being used to create better health-care outcomes for seniors, not creating more profit for shareholders.
– most of all, the sector should be shifted away from a for-profit private company model. Our seniors are not a commodity that should be earning some investor a profit – they are our parents, our grandparents. It’s time we shifted our tax dollars away from for-profit long-term care in BC, and instead built a high quality and accessible system of seniors care in this province.

The party advocates:
– beginning to shift the sector away from a for-profit private company model to a mix of public, non-for-profit, and community-based services and co-ops
– ensuring that public funding is only being used to support direct care for seniors, and enhance accountability by requiring annual inspections, financial statements and audited expense reports
– establishing caregivers as a recognized healthcare profession with the salary they deserve
– supporting pilot projects that bring young people and seniors together and integrate seniors more deeply into communities
– giving the Office of the Seniors Advocate more independence and an expanded mandate.

Mental Health Care
The party states that:
– increasing numbers of British Columbians are struggling with their mental health and we need to treat it like any other health issue by properly resourcing it in our public system.
– mental health care is failing at all levels, from early intervention for children and youth through to tertiary care for adults with complex psychological problems. In addition to concerns arising from the pandemic, young people are also facing compounding crises of climate change and affordability. Young people are the emerging leaders of our province and they should feel hopeful and excited about their future.
– protection of our mental health as exists for physical health begins by increasing accessibility to mental health services. Data clearly shows that lack of access to mental healthcare is most pronounced in those with lower incomes, fewer years of education, as well as among vulnerable and minority groups.
– the lack of mental health options for the majority of the population led to many problems even before COVID-19. If we are serious about building back better as a province then increasing the accessibility and affordability of mental health services needs to be a priority going forward.
– lack of access has led to our medical system becoming the de facto provider for those with mental health concerns. However, this system does not have the capacity to appropriately treat these individuals, leading them to over-utilize the medical health system because their mental health needs are not being treated.
– for many patients, even just a few appointments with a mental health professional can significantly improve mental and physical health. We need to invest in mental health services at every stage of British Columbians’ lives so that they can be supported to live healthy, fulfilling lives.

The party advocates:
– investing to build an affordable and accessible mental healthcare system where cost is not a barrier to seeking help.
– allocating $1.0 billion over a four-year cycle to address mental health care within the medical services plan. Funding should be provided for a comprehensive suite of initiatives including: (1) establishing accessible mental health treatment option s for all those struggling with anxiety or depression; (2) early intervention, youth mental health initiatives, integrated primary care specific to youth and mental health enabling families to easily navigate resources in a supportive environment; (3) community-based options for responding to those who need mental health care and their families such as Clubhouse International; and (4) enhanced counselling outreach services to work with the homeless community.
– allocating $200 million per year to invest in facilities to provide mental healthcare services and community-based centres for mental health and rehabilitation; and, accelerating capital plans for the construction of tertiary care facilities and detoxification beds; and protecting operating funding for facilities.
– developing and implementing a Loneliness Strategy.
– a public information campaign to increase awareness and provide information on where to get help.

Opioid Crisis
The party states that:
– British Columbia is in the midst of its worst overdose crisis ever. About 170 British Columbians die every month from overdoses related to the illegal and toxic drug supply. Since a public health emergency was declared in 2016, over 6,000 people in B.C. have died of preventable overdose. COVID-19 has made the situation more dangerous for people who use drugs by disrupting supply sources and reducing services in place to help people remain safe. Drug policies need to support public health and be based on a compassionate and evidence-based response. Key in this approach is providing people who use drugs with adequate resources to minimize the risks of drug use and support individual and public health.
– harm reduction interventions, such as providing sterile equipment, supervised consumption services, overdose prevention sites, and naloxone are cost-effective and key to ensuring that people at risk of overdose are kept alive. Harm reduction has been proven to reduce the risks of transmissible disease, prevent overdose fatalities, reduce public disorder, and create links for people to access healthcare services and enter treatment.
– decriminalization of personal possession of drugs is a policy option that is increasingly being called for by experts. Recently called for by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and B.C.’s Provincial Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, decriminalization will reduce the stigma of drug use, which creates barriers to accessing important health services. It would allow us to reduce the costs of policing and the criminal justice system, which we can reallocate into improved evidence-based treatment programs and education.
– in the face of an illegal, toxic drug supply, safe supply is a crucial intervention to keep people safe. By providing access to alternatives through physicians and nurses, safe supply helps people at risk of overdose connect with healthcare professionals and reduce the risk of overdose death.
– one of the most pressing crises of our generation has so far not received the attention and action it deserves. Through courageous, evidence-based leadership, we can change this and save lives.

The party advocates:
– scaling up safe supply beyond its current level by (1) working with the colleges of physicians and pharmacists to encourage their members to participate in existing programs; (2) funding a wider range of safe supply resources, including low-barrier ways of dispensing (e.g. dispensing machines); and (3) ongoing consultation with people who use drugs in order to create low-barrier and accessible programs.
– enhanced funding for harm reduction services and creating COVID-friendly plans to ensure people have access and don’t use alone.
– decriminalizing the simple possession of drugs through: (1) de-prioritizing policing of simple possession through implementing Dr. Bonnie Henry’s recommended amendments to the Police Act, and; (2) strongly pursuing decriminalization with the Federal government for B.C.

Education & Young Workers

Education
The party states that:
– B.C. is entering a time of rapid economic change, in which many of the jobs our children will have don’t yet exist, and that they will be using technology that has not yet been invented to solve the incredible challenges society
– the education needs to be redesigned to prepare our children for this future, and instill in them a commitment to lifelong learning. Adaptability, perseverance, problem solving and creativity are some of the most important skills our children will learn.
– sixteen years of austerity has left classroom sizes large, teacher salaries struggling to compete nationally and school districts struggling to find the dollars needed to ensure a quality education for all students.

To ensure quality education, safe school environments, and flexibility for parents, and students, the party advocates:
– ensuring that every school district has the resources to develop credible and robust remote learning and hybrid learning options, to help ensure that even when learning from home, students are able to keep a connection to the school they attend and the community they live in
– supporting the mental health of students with $24 million in new funding to enhance the number of counsellors in schools, starting with the current school year
– developing and implementing a province-wide plan to address racism that exists in schools, and commit to additional, ongoing funding to deepen the work of reconciliation and Indigenous education across K-12

To help support the integration of early childhood education (ECE) into our public school system, the party advocates:
– allocating $300 million in new funding to begin phasing in up to 25 hours of free early childhood education programs per week for 3 and 4 year olds, rising to $550 million as capacity expands
– providing $100 million in new funding to create a new capital program in the Ministry of Education to fund renovation and additions to existing schools to support ECE spaces

To help address affordability, to ensure that no child attends school hungry and to better integrate nutrition into our curriculum, the party advocates a new $25 million fund for school districts to develop a food program for their schools in their district, including:
– proposals to be be developed by the district to ensure local needs are addressed
– conditioning funding on ensuring the program integrated nutrition into the curriculum and demonstrating how the plan would eliminate the stigma associated with accessing food programming
– working with education partners on a long term plan for improvement of provincial per-student funding, including: addressing the continued disparities in wages, class size and composition between districts; access to speech-language pathologists and school psychologists, and development of new resources for students with special needs
– beginning with the development of a new funding formula that supports a 21st century education system
– doubling the funding of the B.C. Access Grant to help support post-secondary part-time students, and those enrolled in multi-year programs

Culture, Arts & Tourism

The party states that:
– small businesses were deeply affected by the COVID pandemic. Not only with respect to costs, but also with uncertainty about the future, about not knowing whether what they have built will last or whether they will have to lay off employees
– for tourism operators, the challenges were exacerbated by border closure and travel bans
– the simple fact is that the provincial government has not done enough to address the challenges facing our small business and tourism sectors.

The party advocates allocating $300 million to create a 6 month rent subsidy program for small businesses, including:
– for qualifying businesses, covering 25% of rental costs. Criteria would include limitations to $50,000 in monthly rent costs
– retooling the provincial grant program to focus on supporting small tourism operators
– immediately working with industry to establish criteria that make sense
– accelerating the timeline to ensure grant money can start to flow immediately
– working with the not-for-profit tourism businesses, cultural facilities and attractions to develop a separate granting program that will ensure these signature businesses can survive COVID 19 and beyond.
– working with the federal government to establish a repayable loan program for the hospitality sector and for tourism operators that exceed the criteria for the small tourism operator grant program.

Role of the family

The party has published no official statement concerning its understanding of the role of the family in society.

Health Care & Elder Care

The party states that:
– the province currently has a multiple-payer healthcare system in which workers injured on the job (WCB), those injured in accidents (ICBC), the RCMP, Armed Forces, federal employees, politicians, and even federal prisoners can access care from outside the public system and obtain procedures and surgeries very quickly.
– 65,000 surgeries are done annually in BC at the dozens of private surgery centres that have been operating for decades.
– additionally, many medically necessary services like prescription medications, ambulance rides, dental care, and mental health counselling are excluded from our public system, despite their importance in health outcomes. Users pay for these services, or they purchase private insurance to pay for part or all of the costs.
– its policy would not change this model, as the remaining 70% of the healthcare system is dictated by the Canada Health Act to be paid for directly by the provincial government.
– numerous consecutive provincial governments have attempted to tackle the increasing portion of their budgets going toward healthcare. Attempts have been made at increasing efficiencies in our current system, improving the overall health education of people, reducing wait times and many other well-intentioned reforms. What were repeatedly hyped as fix-alls have barely moved the needle. Health Care consumes 40% of the provincial budget.
– with aging demographics, rising populations, and increasing availability of new lifesaving treatments, health expenditures are expected to rise by 6% annually, outstripping economic growth, and increasing the portion of the budget directed toward healthcare (to 50% or higher, without significant new taxes). This will result in a budgetary crisis, necessitating more rationing of care.
– hidden efficiencies remaining to be found can only be uncovered by competitive forces in the delivery of health care services. For example, patients are costing hospitals $1200/day taking up hospital beds, when they could be getting care better suited to them in a long-term facility that bills the government $300/day instead. Hospital admissions are costly, and serve as a bottleneck in the system which impacts the delivery of care in unanticipated ways, such as emergency rooms which are over capacity. This increases wait times, and results in patients even being seen in hallways as physicians struggle to cope with fewer available beds.
– institutional diversity in delivery of care would allow for entrepreneurial doctors, nurses and nurse practitioners to group together and open their own specialty facilities that specifically target the needs of underserved hospital patients. Diverting these patients to more appropriate care facilities will free up hospital resources to improve outcomes in the areas they are best suited for.

The party advocates:
– putting the needs of patients and their families first and protecting charter rights in all legislative decisions
– maintaining the existing multiple payer system for total health care costs
– liberating healthcare by legalizing private delivery options
– promoting preventative, primary and long-term care
– reduction of bloated healthcare administration costs without reducing delivery expenditures, tying funding to outcomes and reducing funding for programs that do not deliver acceptable returns compared with their cost. We will use legislative action to legalise private delivery options and ensure transparency in pricing, which will immediately create a rush to provide patients with the lowest cost, highest quality healthcare possible.
– looking at countries globally who have better healthcare outcomes and are comparable to Canada in other ways, including Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Japan, Iceland and Switzerland
– increasing the number of family doctors within the province, including increased compensation for doctors serving underserved areas until the shortage is eliminated, the use of non-government delivery of services to increase the diversity and creativity of compensation package
– reducing waiting times, including by attracting more doctors
– channelling more patients to long-term care
– applying the ruling of Chaoulli v. Quebec, to the effect that preventing individuals from procuring their own care is a violation of their charter rights, in BC

Education & Young Workers

The party states that:
– K-12 education has consistently underperformed its objectives for many years. This has been met with a chorus of groups demanding more funding, and this funding issue has consumed virtually all discourse on public education for decades. Depending on how it’s measured, funding has both been increased and decreased for varying periods of time.
– it questions whether the dollar amount of funding really the most important factor in whether our children will receive a quality education, and that there is little evidence to prove that it makes much of a difference either way.
– it believes that to ensure access to a quality education for every child, parents should have more choice in determining the way it is delivered. It’s already well-recognized that a one-size-fits-all approach results in far too many students being left behind. The logical extension of that view is that the availability of more approaches will leave fewer students behind.
– COVID-19 and the closure of schools offered an opportunity to test out a number of alternative approaches like online learning, student pods, homeschooling and private tutoring – to wildly varying degrees of success. We believe education should be an innovative process in normal times as well, where the exploration of new methods can lead to discovery of better matches for individual children.
– a quality education should not depend on the geographical location or the financial means of their family. Educational choice is how the playing field can be leveled between the underprivileged and those lucky enough to live in close proximity to the best schools. Indeed, the present system has failed to achieve this for long enough.

The party advocates:
– moving as much decision-making as possible away from the Ministry of Education and toward local school districts, where parents can have more of a say in policies and procedures, including consulting with educational providers about how a system whereby public education funding can follow the student, on an opt-in basis, can be introduced and be used at parents’ discretion within an expanded menu of educational options.

Culture, Arts & Tourism

Post-Secondary Education
The party states that:
– post-Secondary subsidies are particularly costly to taxpayers, consuming roughly $4 billion dollars annually.
– these subsidies are intended to make tuition more affordable. However, schools are in business to make money and like all businesses they have difficult decisions to make in covering their costs. To match supply with demand, these subsidies do not reduce the cost of school, but are simply added to the amount students are generally able to pay and paradoxically increase the costs of education. In other words, the subsidies increase demand for post-secondary education and push prices higher. The result is higher tuition costs, students leaving school with larger debts, higher taxes, and a less productive economy.

The party advocates:
– phasing out subsidies to post-secondary would be phased out over a 10 year period, reducing expenditures by $400 million annually

Role and Development of the Family

Child Protective Services, Child Welfare
The party states that:
– as governing party it is committed to ensuring children and youth whose parents are unable to care for them receive the services and support they need
– to that end, its 2024 provincial budget provides $114 million over three years to support children in government care or who are placed in alternative care (or out-of-care) arrangements with a family member or someone with an established relationship or cultural connection.
– work is also underway to improve front-line support and oversight, and information management within the child welfare system. This includes up to 72 new child welfare and oversight staff including increasing the number of roots workers from 14 to 25 staff.
– Roots workers support Indigenous children and youth living in both in-care and out-of-care homes with meaningful family and cultural connections and cultural planning, such as tracing of family lineages, identifying contacts with family and community, and reconnecting with the child’s Indigenous community. This helps build a strong foundation based on cultural, spiritual, mental and emotional traditional teachings, while supporting and encouraging connections with their family, extended family and Indigenous community. This supports the well-being of all children and youth in British Columbia to live in safe, healthy and nurturing families, and to be strongly connected to their communities and culture.
– its 2024 provincial budget further includes $10 million over three years to provide stable, ongoing funding for the Director’s Legal Counsel and Indigenous Child and Family Service Agencies Secretariat. These services support children in care and include addressing the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in care and work to improve the well-being of Indigenous children, youth, families, and communities.

Children and Youth with Support Needs
The party states that:
– as a part of its continued work to support families and advocates of children with various support needs, its 2024 provincial budget provides $26 million above the fiscal plan to support more children and youth diagnosed with autism diagnosis, as well as families accessing medical benefits for children and youth with severe disability or complex health care needs. The new funding will support over 2,800 more children, bringing the estimated total in 2024/25 to nearly 28,000 children and youth.
– autism funding supports children under age six with reimbursement up to $22,000 per year in services, and youth aged 6-18 with reimbursements up to $6,000 per year.
– benefits assists families and caregivers with the extraordinary costs of caring for a child or youth with severe disabilities or complex needs, especially through the provision of medical supplies and equipment to children with acute medical needs. New funding will support expected growth in demand for the program.
– $30 million in additional funding is provided to support children with dyslexia and related learning differences in the K-12 school system, including money to support early literacy screening for kindergarten to Grade 3 students, provide additional intervention and outreach programs for kindergarten to Grade 12 students, and better equip teachers and support staff in public and independent schools through professional development. The funding support schools in delivering early literacy screening for over 150,000 students, and provide interventions to over 9,000 students annually, as required when fully implemented.

Health Care & Elder Care

Health Care
The party states that:
– in order to build capacity within the health sector, the party’s 2024 provincial budget provides over $2 billion more across the fiscal plan
– with an aging population and large segment of the workforce retiring in the next decade, the province needs newcomers to fill gaps in the labour market. More people are needed to meet current and future demand in the health sector
– in view of the COVID-19 pandemic, which demonstrated that the province needs to be better prepared to respond to public health emergencies, its 2024 budget proposes $3 billion over the fiscal plan to support ongoing costs for measures previously funded through time-limited pandemic contingencies and federal funding, such as the costs for COVID-19 and immunization/flu vaccines, personal protective equipment, lab testing and monitoring.
– the budget also provides ongoing funding to support rural and remote access to emergency care through ground and air ambulances and support increased staffing capacity and virtual services, particularly in historically underserved communities

In-Vitro Fertilization
The party states that:
– for people wanting to start a family, infertility and other barriers to parenthood can have a profound effect on their well-being and quality of life.
– to support people who need help on the path to parenthood, the party’s 2024 budget allocates $68 million for the establishment of a program to help with the cost of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) services, including consultations with an expert clinical group to define funded IVF services including age considerations, service delivery options, and care pathways to access the service throughout B.C. The program will be launched April 1, 2025, to help with the costs of treatment and medication for a single cycle of treatment.
– the new publicly funded program will benefit hopeful parents in B.C. regardless of their relationship status, who they love and how much money they make by removing a barrier for people who may not otherwise be able to access fertility services.

Cancer Care
In its 2024 provincial budget, the party advocates investment of an added $270 million over three years to support a 10-year Cancer Action Plan, which was launched in the spring of 2023 with an initial $440 million investment to expand cancer-care teams and service hours, introduce revised pay structures to ensure B.C. is attractive and competitive for oncologists and cancer-care professionals, improve cancer screening programs, support cancer research, increase Indigenous patient support positions, and support patients who must travel for care from rural communities.

The party states that:
– the new funding will support the action plan with prevention and screening services such as HPV vaccines and cervical cancer screenings, hereditary cancer screening, and medical imaging strategies. New funding will also support improved collaboration, partnership and capacity for the cancer care workforce.
– it also proposes to improve timely access to cancer treatments by expanding specialized cancer services, such as malignant hematology, immunotherapy, theranostics, and pediatric oncology services, in order to provide treatments that are difficult to access or currently unavailable in the province.

Home and Community Care Services for Seniors

In its 2024 provincial budget, the party states that:
– to improve seniors’ quality of life by enabling them to live in their own homes for longer, it is allocating $354 million over three years in home and community care for seniors.
– home care investments also increase capacity in other parts of the health care system, and thereby align with government’s commitment to provide health care when and where needed
– investments include $227 million for home health services to help seniors and people experiencing short- or long-term disability, to manage their health care needs and remain living at home. These services are provided by regulated professionals including nurses, occupational and physical therapists, and social workers. Home health services also include services delivered by community health workers who help clients with their activities of daily living, such as bathing, grooming, lifts and transfers, and nutrition.
– a further $127 million is allocated for community-based seniors services such as Better at Home, a program that supports seniors with day-to-day tasks such as such as grocery shopping, light housekeeping, minor home repairs, snow shovelling, and transportation to and from medical appointments.
– additional capital investments of $13.0 billion are projected over the course of the next three years for health care infrastructure, including support for construction of hospitals throughout the province; new long-term care facilities with construction approved in Abbotsford, Richmond and Nanaimo among others; and more acute and cancer care facilities.

Education & Young Workers

K-12 Enrollment Growth
The party states that:
– in 2023, B.C. saw its highest population growth in 30 years. This has led to an increase of 13,000 more students enrolled in B.C. schools in September 2023 compared to the previous year.
– to support the growing number of students, Budget 2024 invests $968 million in new funding over three years, including providing more teachers and support staff in the classrooms.
– this funding includes $651 million for public school enrolment growth and $62 million for independent school education costs.
– there is also $255 million provided over three years to increase funding for the Classroom Enhancement Fund. This fund supports the hiring of additional teachers, including special education teachers, teacher psychologists, and counsellors.
– total annual operating funding for K-12 education is a record $8.7 billion in 2024/25.
– in addition, its provincial capital plan includes a record $4.2 billion over the next three years to build, renovate, and seismically upgrade schools and playgrounds throughout B.C.

(FOR REFERENCE ONLY.  PARTY HAS ANNOUNCED WITHDRAWAL FROM THE ELECTION.  CHECK CANDIDATE LISTING AND CONSIDER ALTERNATIVES BEFORE GOING TO THE POLL.)

Role & Purpose of the Family

Child Care
The party states that under the current government’s model, only 10 per cent of families are receiving access to $10/day child care.

The party advocates:
– providing direct financial subsidies to parents, ensuring that child care costs are capped at $10/day for all lower and middle-class families
– providing tax credits for people whose children are cared for by parents, grandparents or other relative
– integrating child care facilities into schools and hospitals, while expanding options through public-private partnerships and incentivizing the private sector.

Health Care & Elder Care

The party advocates making B.C. first, not worst, in health outcomes, by putting the interests of patients ahead of bureaucrats. This includes for example:
– ensuring that treatment beds are available for those who need them, when they need them, rather than turning them away with DP waitlists turn patients away. The party undertakes to ensure there are enough treatment beds for everyone who needs them.
– providing compassionate involuntary care, where and when needed. The party states that it is not compassionate to turn a blind eye and leave the severely mentally ill and addicted to languish on the streets with no ability to care for themselves. It undertakes to compassionate involuntary treatment possible for those at risk of harming themselves or others.
– ending the chaos in B.C. The party states that provincial cancer care is now the worst in Canada, with treatment so bad that patients are shipped to the U.S. for treatment. It undertakes to end this.
– hiring back unvaccinated healthcare workers. The party states that although the provincial healthcare system is in shambles, the current government fired thousands of healthcare workers whose support is needed now more than ever. It undertakes to immediately re-hire the unvaccinated fired healthcare workers.

Education & Young Workers

Early Childhood Education
The party states that:
– it recognizes the essential role of Early Childhood Educators (ECEs) and child care providers
– it therefore advocates immediate implementation of a fair wage grid for child care workers to reflect their qualifications and the critical service they provide.

K-12 Education
To bring common sense back to education, the party advocates:
– bringing back letter grades. The party states that the new grading scheme implemented by the current government makes no sense to anyone. It undertakes to will bring back common-sense letter grades that everyone can understand.
– banning cellphones in class. The party states that although cellphones in class are bad for learning, the current government refuses to introduce a province-wide ban. The party undertakes to ban cellphones in classrooms so that children can get back to learning, not scrolling.
– building permanent schools, not portables, The party states that more kids than ever are stuck in portables. It undertakes to build more schools so that children kids can learn in real classrooms.
– consulting parents. The party states that parents deserve to know what’s going on in their kids’ schools. It undertakes to bring back transparent and age-appropriate curriculum and ensure parents are included in the education system.
– getting results. The party states that although under prior governments the province’s students led Canada in education, B.C. is now well below average. It undertakes to focus on ensuring that children learn the basics and get back to improved results.

Post-Secondary Education
To ease the housing crisis for students, the party advocates:
– requiring universities to prove they have room to house BC students before accepting students abroad