Positions

Housing and Land Use

Non-market housing. Co-operative, public, supportive, and community land trust housing sits outside the speculative price spiral, providing permanent affordability and a housing path that does not depend on market timing.

Provincial non-market housing capital. Advocate for sustained BC Housing, CMHC, and federal program funding to finance co-operative, public, supportive, seniors, student, and workforce housing on Vancouver Island.

Community land trust funding. Push provincial and federal governments to capitalize community land trusts that can acquire land before it is lost to speculation, securing it permanently for affordable housing.

Stronger anti-speculation laws. Advocate for provincial and federal tools against land banking, vacant lots, speculative flipping, and chronically underused developable land.

Provincial rent and renoviction enforcement. Advocate for stronger Residential Tenancy Branch staffing, faster hearings, and meaningful penalties for illegal evictions.

Restricting short term rentals. Short term rental conversion removes long-term rental supply at a time of severe vacancy shortage. Provincial legislation passed in 2024 restricts most short term rentals to principal residences, and full municipal enforcement of those rules protects rental supply and neighbourhood stability.

Small-scale multi-unit housing. Provincial Small-Scale Multi-Unit Housing legislation requires municipalities to permit multi-unit housing in zones formerly restricted to single detached homes, ending decades of single-family-only zoning that constrained housing supply.

Transit oriented development. Concentrating density around frequent transit reduces car dependence, lowers per-household infrastructure costs, and builds the ridership base that sustains frequent service. Provincial Transit-Oriented Development Areas legislation establishes minimum density requirements within walking distance of major transit, and meaningful local application along Nanaimo's transit spine is the lever most directly available to council.

Walkability and mixed development. Streets designed for people walking, cycling, and rolling produce healthier residents, more local commerce, and lower road maintenance per trip. Mixed-use development restores the pattern of homes above shops and services within walking distance that strict use separation eliminated.

VIU student housing expansion. Advocate for provincial and federal capital support for purpose-built student housing at Vancouver Island University, taking pressure off the surrounding rental market.

Health Care

Acute care bed capacity. British Columbia operates fewer staffed acute care beds per thousand residents than the OECD average and below most Canadian provinces. Capital expansion at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, including the Patient Tower and BC Cancer centre, must be matched by operating funding for the nurses, physicians, allied health professionals, and support staff required to actually open those beds. Capital without operating dollars produces empty wards and hallway medicine.

Hospital operating funding. Advocate to the province and Island Health for the staffing levels required to fully use new hospital capital investments, including nurses, physicians, allied health, social work, and support roles across all clinical services.

Cancer care staffing. Support provincial funding for medical and radiation oncologists, medical physicists, radiation therapists, oncology nursing, diagnostic imaging, and the patient throughput required to use the BC Cancer centre at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital as designed.

Vancouver Island medical school and training seats. Advocate for Island-based training capacity in medicine, nursing, paramedicine, social work, mental health and addictions, and allied health. Retention follows where clinicians train.

Family doctor recruitment. Advocate to the province for team-based primary care, payment reform that values longitudinal practice, recruitment incentives, and the clinic infrastructure required to attract family physicians, nurse practitioners, and allied providers to Nanaimo.

BC Ambulance staffing and response times. Push the province and BC Emergency Health Services for paramedic staffing levels, rural and remote coverage, and emergency department offload capacity that match call volume and acuity.

Mental Health, Addictions, and Public Safety

Treatment on demand. Push the province to fund detoxification, stabilization, residential and outpatient addiction medicine, opioid agonist therapy, and long-term recovery capacity sufficient that no person seeking care is told to wait weeks for a bed.

Complex care housing. Advocate for provincially funded, clinically staffed housing for individuals whose concurrent mental health, substance use, acquired brain injury, or behavioural presentations exceed what unstaffed supportive housing can safely manage.

Youth mental health and addictions care. Push senior governments and Island Health to expand early intervention, youth detoxification, family-based interventions, and school-linked services that catch presentations before they harden into chronic adult conditions.

Involuntary treatment for drug rehabilitation and violent mental health disorders. Voluntary engagement remains the foundation of mental health and addictions care, but a small number of presentations fall outside what voluntary services can safely manage. These include repeat overdose with refused engagement, treatment-resistant psychosis paired with violence risk, and acquired brain injury with severe behavioural disinhibition. A defined, oversight-bound role for involuntary admission, exercised under the Mental Health Act and emerging secure care frameworks, is necessary to keep these patients alive long enough to recover and to protect the staff and public who interact with them.

Family and Early Childhood

Family growth oriented benefits and legislation. Affordable family-sized housing, accessible early learning and childcare, paid parental leave, and tax treatment that recognizes family costs determine whether young people can form households in their community.

Federal and provincial childcare expansion. Support sustained senior-government funding for $10-a-day childcare, early childhood educator wages, and childcare spaces tied to schools and public facilities.

Paid parental leave reform. Advocate federally for parental leave rules that better support young families, adoptive parents, and lower-income workers who currently fall through the cracks of the existing system.

Family-sized housing finance incentives. Push senior governments to fund and incentivize non-market two and three-bedroom homes designed for families, not only studio and one-bedroom units optimized for investor returns.

Economy, Industry, and Workforce

Pension backed high wage jobs. Stable, full-time, pension-backed employment supports household formation, tax base stability, and the conditions for community investment. Procurement, land-use, and economic development decisions should be evaluated on the type of employment they generate, not only the headline number of positions created.

Small and medium-sized businesses. SMEs account for the majority of private sector employment and provide the diversified commercial ecosystem that defines a city. Permitting reform, predictable property tax treatment, and attention to small business cost pressures keep this sector viable.

Government ownership over leasing. Public land, facilities, and infrastructure under direct ownership produce long-term value for taxpayers. Long-term leases, public-private partnerships, and asset sales transfer that value to private parties at a discount that is not always reflected in headline contract numbers.

Restricting raw log exports from British Columbia. Raw log exports send the underlying timber resource overseas while removing value-added manufacturing jobs from the province. Restrictions on the export of logs harvested from public land would route more fibre to provincial sawmills, value-added wood manufacturing, and engineered wood products.

Value-added forestry strategy. Support provincial industrial policy for mass timber, engineered wood, furniture, millwork, and secondary manufacturing that retains forestry value on Vancouver Island rather than exporting it as raw fibre.

Softwood lumber and trade defence. Advocate federally for stronger trade action, industry support, and market diversification in response to United States softwood duties that target Canadian producers.

Sustainable lumber trade standards. Advocate for Canada to negotiate import standards with allied countries that favour lumber and wood products from North America, Europe, and independently certified sustainable forests, while restricting products linked to illegal logging, violence, deforestation, or failure to replant.

Industrial electricity rates for value-added jobs. Push BC Hydro and the province to support industrial electrification where it generates durable, high-wage employment, treating power supply as economic development infrastructure.

Strategic industrial land protection. Advocate through the Regional District of Nanaimo, the province, the Port Authority, and senior governments to preserve scarce industrial land for working uses rather than allowing conversion to residential or commercial.

Port and marine trades expansion. Support federal, provincial, port, and private investment in ship repair, marine trades, short-sea shipping, and logistics jobs anchored at the Port of Nanaimo.

Apprenticeship and trades seat expansion. Advocate for additional VIU trades capacity and provincial training funding aligned with Vancouver Island industry workforce needs.

Local procurement rules. Advocate for senior-government procurement policy that supports Canadian, BC, Island, union, and small to medium-sized suppliers wherever trade law allows.

Energy

CleanBC. CleanBC is the provincial framework for emissions reduction across electricity, transportation, buildings, and industry. Continued implementation supports renewable generation, electric vehicle infrastructure, building retrofits, and the heat pump rebate programs that lower household energy costs.

Decentralized generation of electricity. Distributed generation across rooftop solar, community-scale renewables, small hydro, and district energy increases grid resilience, reduces transmission losses, and gives municipalities, First Nations, and other public entities a direct stake in energy infrastructure.

Local renewable power generation. Advocate for BC Hydro and the province to move beyond centralized grid control by enabling local, public, co-operative, and independent renewable energy producers.

Public solar, wind, and tidal facilities. Support provincial incentives and procurement rules that encourage municipalities, regional districts, Crown agencies, and public institutions to build renewable generation as publicly owned infrastructure.

Industrial on-site power generation. Advocate for streamlined approval, tax incentives, and grid-connection support for commercial and industrial solar, wind, storage, and other renewable infrastructure.

BC Hydro grid reinforcement for Vancouver Island. Push for transmission upgrades, redundancy, storage, and Island-based generation that reduce Vancouver Island's dependence on submarine cables that represent a single point of failure for the regional economy.

Rooftop solar and net-metering reform. Push BC Hydro and the province to make small-scale solar, storage, and community energy easier to connect, finance, and operate.

District energy support. Advocate for provincial and federal funding for district energy, waste heat recovery, sewer heat recovery, and neighbourhood-scale heating systems.

Heat pump and retrofit funding. Push for stronger provincial and federal grants for insulation, electrical upgrades, heat pumps, and deep building retrofits that lower household energy costs and emissions.

Right-to-charge for apartments and condos. Advocate for provincial right-to-charge rules and funding that enable EV charging in multi-unit residential buildings without requiring strata super-majorities to approve every installation.

Climate and Disaster Resilience

Wildfire and smoke resilience funding. Push senior governments for FireSmart programs, evacuation planning, clean-air shelters, and public building upgrades that protect residents from increasingly severe fire seasons.

Drought and watershed protection funding. Advocate for provincial investment in watershed restoration, water storage, monitoring, and drinking water security for Vancouver Island communities.

Coastal and flood adaptation funding. Support senior-government funding for sea level rise planning, culverts, stormwater upgrades, floodplain adaptation, and emergency works.

Earthquake preparedness funding. Push senior governments for seismic upgrades to public buildings, emergency communications, backup power, and community resilience hubs throughout Vancouver Island.

Transportation, Infrastructure, and Nation Building

Restoring the Island Rail Corridor. The corridor between Victoria and Courtenay is a fixed transportation asset already owned, surveyed, and partially graded. Restoration provides a redundant route to Highway 19 for north-south Island travel and supports freight diversification away from full reliance on trucking. Corridor decommissioning carries significant unrecognized costs that no level of government has budgeted to absorb.

Duke Point rail connection. Support senior-government study and funding for a rail link between Wellcox Yard and Duke Point Industrial Park to shift freight volume away from trucking on the Trans-Canada Highway and the Nanaimo Parkway.

Federal trade corridor funding for Nanaimo. Push for Nanaimo projects to qualify under the Trade Diversification Corridors Fund, the National Trade Corridors Fund, port and rail infrastructure programs, and supply-chain resilience programs.

Nation building and long term economic stability. Major federal infrastructure programs provide capital for projects that connect regional economies to national and international markets. Municipalities that arrive with shovel-ready projects, secured land, and aligned partners capture that capital. Those that arrive late, or without consensus, do not.

Island freight strategy. Advocate for an Island-wide freight plan connecting ports, highways, rail, ferries, and industrial lands as a single coordinated system rather than siloed assets.

BC Ferries reliability and affordability. Advocate to the province and BC Ferries for fleet renewal, staffing levels, fare stability, and dependable service for the routes that connect Vancouver Island to the mainland.

Intercity bus restoration on Vancouver Island. Push the province to restore reliable intercity bus links between Vancouver Island communities, lost when private operators withdrew without public alternatives.

Regional transit operating funding. Advocate to BC Transit and the province for the operating funding needed to deliver more frequent service, longer hours, and better regional connections in the Nanaimo region.

Highway 19 and emergency route resilience. Push the province for safety, redundancy, and disaster-resilience upgrades to Highway 19 while continuing to prioritize rail and transit as long-term alternatives.