With a lack of public addiction treatment beds – only six in Campbell River to serve the north Island north of Nanaimo – what will your party do to address the lack of capacity?

Obviously this is a really heartbreaking issue. We’re seeing a lot of people suffering because of the lack of treatment beds. Sadly, it’s not something that should have been politicized. We need the full spectrum of care and treatment, and not just what we’re seeing right now: knee-jerk, ideological responses. The BC NDP had four years as a majority government, and in that time, Comox Valley did not get any new publicly-funded treatment beds.
We're seeing the BC Conservatives now call supervised consumption sites drug dens.
And they’re promising to close everyone of them down. It just means we're going to see more open drug use on our streets and in our neighbourhoods. So, we obviously need a huge overhaul of the system. I think it's one of the biggest failures of the BC NDP government for our valley.
We need to reorient the resources to support prevention, especially in schools with young people. We need better access to drug and mental health treatment in B.C. because if we're not doing that it's costing us as taxpayers way more.
Right now you're seeing the average weight time to see a mental health practitioner in B.C. in months, not hours or days as it should be.
If we really want to address the physical and mental health challenges of Comox Valley residents, we just need to do better.
In summary, we need to invest more in addiction treatment beds here in the valley. Just that's what it boils down to.

Every year, temperature records are broken throughout the province and the forest fire season appears to be getting worse and longer. What does your party see as the best way for carbon reduction, and what goals will you aim to strive in helping the province and Island hit those goals?

This is an issue that I think the Green Party is extremely well-grounded in. As a farmer myself I live and breathe this day to day. We've all seen with the glacier has looked like in these last couple of days. It's almost gone. That is drinking water. That is also water for farming and irrigation, its water for salmon.
Last year, we spent a billion dollars trying to fight wildfires in B.C. We have over 300 million hectares that were burned, and yet with all of this, what is the NDP doing?
They are subsidizing Big Oil and Gas to the tune of 1.3 billion dollars every year.
And then we have the Conservative Party with John Rustad saying that climate change isn't even a real crisis.
So as an MLA, it would be my role to balance the power in a minority government and fight to ensure that B.C. actually literally survived this climate crisis.
We know that young people are so wanting to see action happening and they want to be part of that. I'm looking at green jobs for future for our youth here in the Comox Valley. Things like the installation of solar panels, retrofits, installing heat pumps, firefighting, providing fire breaks, installing community gardens, all of the things that we could be doing to really support the resiliency of our own community.
I believe that any government that doesn't address the climate crisis is dooming all of British Columbians, all of us, in the future. We know that all economists agree that the carbon tax is the most effective tool at reducing pollution and CO2 levels.
So the B.C. greens are focused on reforming, and we're not eliminating the carbon pricing. What we are wanting to see is that polluters pay a higher price, and the funds that we collect from the carbon tax are brought back into people's pocketbooks to support the affordability crisis that we currently see. So the Greens are noticing or all loopholes that the B.C. NDP have provided to the oil and gas sector so that they're not paying their fair share. We're going to close those loopholes and bring a large chunk of that money back into people's pocketbooks, And to municipalities that are also feeling the brunt of climate change.

While there has been an increase in rental housing construction in the Comox Valley, there continues to be a lack of affordable housing. What detailed actions will your party take to increase affordable housing stock here?

It’s really unfortunate to see that we have such an educated workforce here in the valley who are struggling to find affordable housing.
Housing and Healthcare are two of the biggest challenges in our economy. So, in short the solution is non-market housing. So BC NDP has spent billions on housing in the last couple of years, but most of it has gone into market housing that makes a few developers wealthy, but doesn’t actually provide affordable housing here for for locals. The only thing that will significantly move the needle on housing affordability is massive investment in non-market housing, including nonprofit housing and co-op housing.
So we are the only party that are talking about this type of level of investment. Our leader announced a bold plan, 1.5 billion dollar investment into creating 26,000 non-market House housing units.
On the other hand, we've had the Conservatives who just announced that Rustad rebate to put 3.5 billion dollars of our finances in the hole and not do anything to substantially increase the amount of housing that we have that is affordable here in the valley. So I just want to make sure your readers understand that 3,000 a month in tax breaks. It's a tax credit, so at best, way into 2029, about five years from now, people will possibly save $100 a month so I don't see that as action.
We have our own BC Conservative candidate. Who is continually going on about non-market housing and yet if you look at the actual Conservative platform, it says no such thing. So I'm wondering where he's getting his talking points from.
I'm thinking maybe he should be joining the BC Greens if he's like thinking that that's actually a thing

The area around the Connect Centre in Courtenay continues to face issues and there have been reported increases of crime in the surrounding neighbourhood. The proposed Braidwood Complex aims to address these issues, but has faced pushback from some neighbours. Do you agree with the Braidwood Complex and its location, and how will you aim to make it work effectively? If not, how will you address these issues in its absence?

I think we all agree that the last four years of warehousing people at the Connect Centre on Cliffe avenue is just not a dignified way of housing anyone. It’s not working for our community, it’s not working for the businesses in downtown, and it’s certainly not working for those who are unhoused. Who, honestly, wants to live in a warehouse with 100 other people? I’ve spoken to the unhoused community themselves, I’ve spoken to the coalition to end homelessness, not once did anyone advocate for a giant shelter.
A more appropriate lower cost model is the tiny home village model that Duncan has successfully piloted that has helped to move hundreds of people off of the streets in that community.
Crime has increased in the Comox Valley in recent years, especially according to RCMP statistics. We have a problem. It's clear.
The most effective way of dealing with and combating crime is prevention. So we need to move people off the streets. We need to put get them access to drug treatment, mental health treatment, and education.
I do want to point out to readers, however, the cost of hiring more police is extremely high. It's about 300,000 dollars per officer per year, plus the support and infrastructure and equipment. So,   in recent years we have not been able to recruit enough officers in Canada. So I don't even know if that is an option that we should be looking at, more realistically we need to enact what the Greens saw and the special committee on reform of the police act. There are 11 recommendations from that report that was released in 2022. It included a continuum of response for mental health, substance use and other complex social issues and a focus on prevention and community-led response integrating mental health with 911 calls. And that's something that the BC greens have just recently, released in their full costed of platform: adding mental health onto a 911 call.
I think it’s a really easy solution to what we're seeing here in the community, but to sum it up.
We're looking at tiny home Village model instead of the current shelter model that B.C. housing is putting forward.
I door knocked in the Braidwood community and I put this idea forward to the people that I've spoken to and not one of them said ‘no, that's not a good idea.’ They were absolutely supportive of a model like this at the property that BC housing purchased as a more appropriate way of providing shelter to the unhoused in their community.
We don't have a community of NIMBYs who say no, we don't need to shelter the unhoused. We need to do it appropriately for our community.

School District 71 has policies and resources that create a supportive and inclusive environment for students. Will your government do anything to change or limit SD71’s ability to use these policies and resources?

In short, not at all. We have to be clear SOGI specific curriculum is anti-bullying policy and anti-bullying education. It improves the school climate for both LGBTQ and heterosexual students. So it's all about reducing discrimination preventing suicidal ideation and really lowering suicide attempts in the student body. It's something that the BC Greens absolutely support. We need to defend our kids from explicit bigotry of the BC  Conservatives who want to ban SOGI policies and who is whose leader has compared SOGI to residential schools. It's just the most ridiculous thing. I've heard John Rustad say that being gay is a lifestyle choice. Unequivocally, we do not support what the BC  Conservatives have said. I stand with our kids. The BC Greens stand with our kids.