Accordingly all overseas residents would be banned by the party from buying residential housing property in the Lower Mainland of BC from the date of the BC election on May 9th 2017. In addition all current overseas owners of the estimated 50,000 empty or infrequently used homes on the Lower Mainland will be required to sell their homes within 12 months of the election. These sales must occur at public auctions, with a requirement that the properties can only be sold to individual citizens (excluding private companies and corporations) with any intermediate ‘in trust” ownership declared illegal. Unsold residential properties at the end of 12 months would be forfeited to the BC Government.

FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ARE CRITICAL RESOURCES FOR ALL: We support Maslow’s globally recognized Hierarchy of Needs framework whereby it is necessary to first provide citizens with safe and secure affordable housing and food, then to focus on personal and community safety, health and environment. FOOD RESOURCES PROTECTED FROM HEALTH CONCERNS: We are concerned about the ongoing risks to public health from bacterial and virus outbreaks at various salmon farms and oyster farms. We propose to undertake a major investigation into ongoing problems in these two industry sectors and shut down those farms which do not meet global best practice standards. NEW BC FOOD BANK FUNDING: We will provide BC Foodbanks with $10 million of capital funding to support their introduction of perishable food uptake and distribution to their needy recipients as a means to improve the health and food intake of the needy. QUALITY TESTING OF WATER RESOURCES: We are concerned about the current existence of high levels of lead being detected across BC, particularly at schools. We will immediately commission an audit of all BC schools (private and public) in order to assess the current health and developmental risks to which we are currently exposing our young children. Where worldwide safe standards of lead are being exceeded we will immediately enforce remedial actions. The second stage of this program will focus on community testing and remediation of all water in rural, suburban, metropolitan and First Nations communities. RAISING CORPORATE ACCESS COSTS FOR BC WATER RESOURCES: We propose to raise water bottler charges for access to BC’s pure and pristine water from its current giveaway $2.50 per million litres (which the bottlers retail for $2.5 million dollars) up to a more reasonable $1,000 per million litres. These additional revenues will be directed to improving BC water resources for all BC citizens including First Nations.

Our party has released a fully costed whole-of-government budget reconciliation which will deliver a balanced budget over the next 4 years.

This is a highly effective, efficient and fiscally responsible policy program which focuses on delivering affordable housing, significant reductions in drug addiction, abolition of MSP premiums and road tolls for private citizens, reduced wait times for medical patients, cheaper gas & trans Canada air fares, elimination of child care wait times and earthquake protection for all students, workers and families.

It is also a full 4 year full-term program of Government rather than the 3 year limited budget released by the BC Liberals during this election campaign.

The budget reconciliation is based on using the BC Government’s full Budget papers as released on February 21st 2017 as a baseline and is a whole-of-government cash-flow budget based on net impacted areas of government.

See our website for a copy of our balanced budget as well as a full description of all of the policy initiatives contained in the budget

Immediately inject funds into creating a massive 25,000 new daycare spaces across BC which will completely eliminate current waitlists. Also, in order to better co-ordinate daycare provision, current BC Schools with under-utilized space will be a key focus for initial daycare spaces. This will deliver greater certainty of existence for some currently under-utilized schools across BC, as well as provide a means for parents to drop off members of their family into facilities within close proximity to each other.

Please see our Child Care policy for our policy on Children in Care in BC

BAN ‘CASH FOR ACCESS’ TO MINISTERS AND MLAs: We will ensure that no political party in BC is allowed to charge for private functions at private venues attended by members of the legislature. Only events publicly advertised and open to the entire general public and the media with entrance fees less than $50 will be permitted in the future. BAN SECOND JOBS FOR MLAs: We will make it illegal for MLAs to have any taxable income beyond their salary as an MLA and their personal investments and statutory entitlements etc. We will ensure the salary of all MLAs is appropriate for their role and that they remain totally and solely focused on serving their constituents and electoral districts. NEW POLITICAL PRACTICES COMMISSION: Political candidates will be required to keep their enunciated promises to electors. Any Member of Parliament alleged to have breached a commitment to any member or group of the public will be brought before a new Political Practices Commission . If found guilty of breach of promise without reasonable grounds, the MP will in the first instance be fined $20,000 and if found guilty in any subsequent incident during their BC legislature career will become ineligible to continue in the legislature, and a vacancy will be declared in their riding and a by-election held. The MP naturally will be able to stand as a candidate at the subsequent by-election and be judged by the electors in their riding for their actions or lack thereof. BAN OVERSEAS POLITICAL DONATIONS: We will ban all overseas based political donations from individuals, corporations or organizations for all political parties operating in BC ELECTORAL DISTRICT BALLOT PAPER NAMES TO BE ROTATED for all future BC election in order to eliminate a donkey vote advantage to candidates with surnames starting with A, B or C etc. ALLOW THE TERTIARY EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS OF POLITICAL CANDIDATES TO BE INCLUDED ON ALL BC PROVINCIAL BALLOT PAPERS: This will assist citizens in making a better informed choice in their voting. BAN ALL OVERSEAS NON-CANADIAN CITIZENS FROM PARTICIPATING IN THE REGISTRATION, MEMBERSHIP OR MANAGEMENT OF ALL BC POLITICAL PARTIES. IMMEDIATELY JAIL OFFENDERS WHO HIDE THE REAL DONORS OF MONEY DONATED TO ANY BC POLITICAL PARTY.

As St Paul’s Hospital moves to its new False Creek site, our party will convert the entire old St Paul’s Hospital into a large specialist BC Centre for Addiction and Mental Health for access to free specialist health care services for those suffering from addiction and mental health issues. This downtown facility will provide 1,000 beds of support after current administrative offices are converted into accommodation beds. The centre will bring together specialist doctors, nurses, psychologists, counselors and other medical specialists with a singular focus on addiction and mental health. The Centre will takes an enormous amount of pressure off other hospital emergency departments and Intensive Care Units whose resources are currently being stretched having to cope with massive increases in drug addiction and mental health patients. These addiction and mental health services will be provided free of charge to all BC Citizens.

IMMEDIATELY RE-OPEN RIVERVIEW HOSPITAL IN COQUITLAM: Whilst awaiting the relocation of St Paul’s Hospital to False Creek we will immediately fund the re-investment and re-opening of Riverview Hospital which has 244 acres of property and 75 buildings comprising 153,640 square metres (1,653,767 square feet) of space. In its heyday, Riverview handled 4,306 mental health patients in 1956 which was reduced to only 800 beds by the BC Liberals in 2002 and was finally closed by the BC Liberals in 2012. The currently dormant East and West Lawn Buildings as well as other key buildings will be funded with $150 million of immediate renovation and renewal costs and operational costs will come from the $1,000 million CAMH budget allocation.

See our full 10 point Plan for mental health and Addiction at our website: www.bccitizensfirst.ca

BC’s new political party, the BC Citizens First Party, today announced that it will require all BC universities and post-secondary providers of undergraduate degrees to give priority enrolment to BC citizens ahead of overseas students. This will be achieved by requiring tertiary educational institutions to set an acceptable lowest acceptable standard mark for entry into each undergraduate course, and then requiring all Canadian citizens who meet that mark to be enrolled first in the course (subject to full availability).

TRANS MOUNTAIN PIPELINE NEEDS TO DELIVER FULL ENVIRONMENTAL ACCOUNTABILITY AND MORE EQUITABLE REVENUES TO BC BEFORE PROCEEDING.

SUSTAINABLE ENERGY

The BC Citizens First Party encourages sustainable energy alternatives and believes there is an important role for Government to play in encouraging such energy activities. We support renewable energy in British Columbia We support the reduction of emissions from transport We support energy efficiency and conservation

We also support the current carbon tax in British Columbia at its current rate of $30 per tonne of emissions, and believe that it should remain at $30 per tonne in BC until at least the end of 2020 at which time the rest of the country will have theoretically raised their carbon taxes to the same levels as BC.

We believe such a public policy is prudent particularly given the uncertainty around potential competitive disadvantage against the USA with the new Trump administration’s relaxation of carbon pricing.

We support the establishment of an independent national panel of experts to report in 2021 on the current status of all provincial carbon pricing programs and to provide recommendations for moving forward.

Our party will only support an ongoing national carbon pricing program in which our province is not financially disadvantaged compared to any other province in Canada.

Our Party Leader, Mr. Phillip Ryan, has a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in Physics. He is a firm believer that a sustainable energy future should be based on scientific data and proven field experience. He also fully understands from his global work experience the important role that alternative sustainable energy can play in a national and provincial electricity grid.

As a former Science teacher in Grades 11 and 12, Mr. Ryan also fully supports bringing the knowledge and research on sustainable energy which is conducted globally, to the attention and understanding of British Columbians.

BC’s new political party, the BC Citizens First Party, today announced a comprehensive program to immediately address the current opioid drug crisis, as well as a singular focus on addiction, mental health and the homeless.

We support the rights of First Nations and will continue to pressure the Federal Government to deliver services to BC First Nations at a level which is no less than that which is provided to other BC Citizens.

The BC Citizens First Party announced that it proposes to completely abolish monthly MSP Premiums from 31st December 2017 for every BC Citizen who currently has to pay the MSP premiums themselves out of their own pocket without support from their employer or union etc. It made this announcement at the release of its 23 point Public Health Plan.

Homeless accommodation will be provided at CAMH and all of its Regional Annexes, as well as at Riverview Hospital, with an initial focus on those homeless who are concurrently suffering addiction and mental health issues. These people need to be immediately taken off the streets where they cannot attack students in schools, private citizens on our streets, and other short term residents of homeless shelters, nor abuse citizen or visitor pedestrians in our cities.

The BC Citizens First Party is committed to stronger legislative action to protect the human rights of BC citizens. We are committed to human rights and oppose any form of discrimination amongst our citizens and support ongoing immigration into Canada from around the world. Our Party leader, Phillip Ryan, has already fought hard to protect the human rights of his 3 year old daughter in the BC Human Rights Tribunal against discriminatory actions taken by Earls Restaurants , and is currently taking actions against Air Canada in the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

We are committed to human rights and oppose any form of discrimination amongst our citizens and support ongoing immigration into Canada from around the world.

We support the continued development of key infrastructure across BC as our population grows.

We support the funding of innovation and BC Tech with active involvement of the BC Government.

Our focus in job creation will be in the housing and construction industry and on improving government services, child care spaces and earthquake protection for BC citizens. More than 55,000 permanent full-time jobs will be created in our first year, and this will be on top of natural job growth within the private sector across B.C. (see our specific policies on this website for a fuller explanation of each policy initiative and its job impact)

COMPULSORY POLICE BODY CAMERAS: All BC police will be required to wear body cameras whilst on duty. Funding will be directly provided by the BC Government.
NEW BC DIGITAL POLICE FORCE: A new BC Digital Police Force will be established to monitor all illegal activities on the internet and the dark web using global best practices and techniques to uncover illegal drug trade, online predators of underage children, cyber-bullying and harassment, illegal short term accommodation providers and ride-sharing providers etc SURREY NEIGHBORHOOD CCTV VIDEO SURVEILLANCE: A 24 hour monitored network of day and night Closed Circuit TV Cameras (CCTV) will be established in Surrey neighborhoods in order to identify and persecute illegal activities based upon the successful City of London operating model. INTRODUCTION OF NEW ‘SHOTSPOTTER’ TECHNOLOGY which will be integrated with the above CCTV network in order to quickly identify real-time gunshots in public venue, track and then apprehend offenders. Police will be provided with in-car video and audio access to real-time gunshot events occurring in local neighborhoods to assist with location, identification and apprehending of offenders. ELIMINATE EXCESSIVE LEGAL FEES ON CITIZENS FROM COURT INEFFICIENCY: We believe that the Court system is highly inefficient and can potentially cost members of the public a full day’s court time from their lawyers when in fact their lawyer might only spend 10 minutes in front of a judge during a Chambers Hearing. Accordingly we will require a more citizen-focused, cost effective and efficient Court system across BC particularly with respect to Chambers matters. WE WILL WORK WITH BC COURTS TO INTRODUCE 9 AM TO 5 PM COURT HEARING HOURS rather than the current highly restricted Court hours available to BC citizens. This will be achieved through appropriate funding of a more efficient and effective judicial Court system. TRIAL WAIT TIMES REDUCED: We will also require Court proceedings to be at final trial within 18 months of original lodgment (unless either party seeks an extension of time) through appropriate funding of a more efficient and effective judicial Court system. RESTORE LEGAL AID SERVICES: We will restore legal aid to its former levels with case funding increased to the latest published national average of $17.12 per capita through additional funds of $16.5 million per annum. All of these funds will be used to fund actions taken by our most vulnerable citizens to protect their rights, to increase time available for cases, and to expand the profile of accepted cases to include for example, overseas abductions by a parent. An additional $0.5 million will be available to increase call centre personnel and reduce call waiting times resulting in total additional budgeting of $17 million pa.

MAKING EASTER MONDAY A PUBLIC HOLIDAY FOR ALL BC WORKERS – NOT JUST GOVERNMENT WORKERS FOUR WEEKS LEAVE (20 WORK DAYS) FOR ALL WORKERS (PRO-RATA FOR PART-TIME EMPLOYEES) MOVING TOWARDS A $15 MINIMUM WAGE FOR ALL BC WORKERS

As St Paul’s Hospital moves to its new False Creek site, our party will convert the entire old St Paul’s Hospital into a large specialist BC Centre for Addiction and Mental Health for access to free specialist health care services for those suffering from addiction and mental health issues. This downtown facility will provide 1,000 beds of support after current administrative offices are converted into accommodation beds. The centre will bring together specialist doctors, nurses, psychologists, counselors and other medical specialists with a singular focus on addiction and mental health. The Centre will takes an enormous amount of pressure off other hospital emergency departments and Intensive Care Units whose resources are currently being stretched having to cope with massive increases in drug addiction and mental health patients. These addiction and mental health services will be provided free of charge to all BC Citizens.

MMEDIATELY RE-OPEN RIVERVIEW HOSPITAL IN COQUITLAM: Whilst awaiting the relocation of St Paul’s Hospital to False Creek we will immediately fund the re-investment and re-opening of Riverview Hospital which has 244 acres of property and 75 buildings comprising 153,640 square metres (1,653,767 square feet) of space. In its heyday, Riverview handled 4,306 mental health patients in 1956 which was reduced to only 800 beds by the BC Liberals in 2002 and was finally closed by the BC Liberals in 2012. The currently dormant East and West Lawn Buildings as well as other key buildings will be funded with $150 million of immediate renovation and renewal costs and operational costs will come from the $1,000 million CAMH budget allocation.

See our full 10 point Plan for mental health and Addiction at our website: www.bccitizensfirst.ca

It is time for the corruption of the BC electoral system to stop – immediately!

BC’s new political party, the BC Citizens First Party, today announced that it will require all BC universities and post-secondary providers of undergraduate degrees to give priority enrolment to BC citizens ahead of overseas students. This will be achieved by requiring tertiary educational institutions to set an acceptable lowest acceptable standard mark for entry into each undergraduate course, and then requiring all Canadian citizens who meet that mark to be enrolled first in the course (subject to full availability). The risks associated with any other system of entry is that all students are lined up according to their entry score and local BC students can end up being excluded even though they may have reached the acceptable minimum entry score, due to excess total demand exceeding supply. “If demand exceeds supply, then the overseas students should be excluded and not the local BC students”, said Phillip Ryan, Leader of the BC Citizens First Party. “The problem is that under any other rules, tertiary institutions will always very tempted to take the overseas students into their undergraduate degrees ahead of our local BC students because overseas students can be charged 10 times the fees of local BC students”. Such a selection framework does nothing to create job opportunities for local BC students. In addition to giving classroom priority to BC students, all undergraduate educational providers will be required to give on-campus student accommodation priority to BC students who would normally have to travel more than 1 hour to study on campus. “Our local students must be accommodated on-campus ahead of any overseas students” said Mr. Ryan. INTRODUCING NEW BC GOVERNMENT DEGREE SCHOLARSHIPS: New BC Government scholarships covering full coverage of post-Secondary undergraduate degree tuition fees will be provided to BC student citizens enrolling in government-designated high priority areas of need for the province (e.g. Doctors, Nurses, medical technicians, IT etc) where students agree to work in BC for two years full-time for every year of full funding of their tertiary studies i.e. 10 years work commitment for 5 years of scholarship funding. These scholarships will be competitive and will be subject to successful completion of every year of study. They will allow BC children to attain their educational goals whilst simultaneously giving back to BC as future workers in areas of critical need for BC. Scholarship holders will be guaranteed a job by the BC Government at the end of their studies, although they will be able to equally accept jobs in the private sector.

Homeless accommodation will be provided at CAMH and all of its Regional Annexes, as well as at Riverview Hospital, with an initial focus on those homeless who are concurrently suffering addiction and mental health issues. These people need to be immediately taken off the streets where they cannot attack students in schools, private citizens on our streets, and other short term residents of homeless shelters, nor abuse citizen or visitor pedestrians in our cities.

The BC Citizens First Party announced that it will completely phase out road tolls for those citizens using private cars or motorcycles for travel across currently tolled bridges or roads in BC, starting with a 50% cut in tolls immediately after the BC election on May 9th this year.

The first stage of phase out of road and bridge tolls will see for example, the toll for travel across the Port Mann bridge reduced from $3.15 to $1.50 per trip for BC citizens using private cars in 2017, then reduced by a further 50% the following year, until completely eliminated.

Support senior citizen accommodation by creating a Residential Care Infrastructure Fund of $100 million over three years for the immediate renewal and replacement of older residential care homes. Investing $5 million per annum in education and training to address current chronic labor shortages in seniors care. Allocating $2 million per year to launch a new Care Credits program which provides seniors [or the family members that care for them] the option to select the service provider of their choice.

PROPOSED NEW LAWS TO ELIMINATE CONCERT, SPORTS AND PARK TICKET SCALPING & PRE-SALES IN B.C.

We support international trade with the world. We believe that comprehensive trade negotiations should be taking place right now between the Trump Administration and the Province of British Columbia. The NAFTA Free Trade Agreement is critical to BC and important to for the whole of Canada and the USA. We support the inclusion of softwood lumber, dairy and energy is any expanded NAFTA Trade talks. We believe the current Liberal Premier has demonstrated a very poor past record as a negotiator. One only has to look at her disaster of a decade of negotiations as Education minister with BC teachers (which she lost), her dispute with the current Prime Minister on BC Senator nominations (which she lost) and her negotiations on Federal Health Funding Transfers (which she lost). We cannot afford to allow Christy Clark and the BC Liberals to be negotiating any future trade deals on softwood lumber or anything else with the USA.

Completely phase out road tolls for those citizens using private cars or motorcycles for travel across currently tolled bridges or roads in BC, starting with a 50% cut in tolls immediately after the BC election on May 9th this year.
The first stage of phase out of road and bridge tolls will see for example, the toll for travel across the Port Mann bridge reduced from $3.15 to $1.50 per trip for BC citizens using private cars in 2017, then reduced by a further 50% the following year, until completely eliminated. TWIN THE MASSEY TUNNEL: Build a second Massey Tunnel with no tolls , rather than building a more expensive bridge with tolls that no one wants. LEGALIZE UBER: Allow UBER, Lyft and other shared economy transport providers to operate across the Lower Mainland. This will provide more transport options, generate more market competition and reduce the costs of transport for BC Citizens. All drivers will be required to be government registered and pass police checks, and maintain records of all trips and financial transactions. These new taxi operators will be monitored by the new BC Digital Police Force already announced by the BC Citizens First Party. ELIMINATE ICBC CAR INSURANCE MONOPOLY: Allow BC Citizens to take out Basic Autoplan car insurance with other insurance providers and not be solely restricted to ICBC. This market competition will result in reduced car insurance rates for BC Citizens. It is intolerable that ICBC rates have been allowed to rise 30% under Premier Christy Clarke and even worse are now projected to rise as high as 42% over the next 3 years! SAVE GEORGIA VIADUCT: The Vancouver Georgia Viaduct will be protected and will not be allowed to be demolished, as we view the roadway as being vital in reducing traffic congestion in downtown Vancouver. NEW NORTH VANCOUVER CROSSING: We are committed to commencing investigations into building a new additional traffic crossing between Vancouver and North Vancouver in order to reduce traffic congestion. We will particularly investigate an underground traffic tunnel from North Vancouver to a point just outside downtown Vancouver to relieve pressure on both the Lions Gate and Ironworkers Second Narrows bridges during peak hours. EXPAND BC ACCESS TO CHEAPER MOTOR VEHICLE GAS: We believe that there is a significant lack of competition in oil refining and distribution of motor vehicle gas in BC which is resulting in BC Citizens usually paying the highest gas prices in North America. Accordingly we will encourage the development of a joint USA/BC Government motor vehicle gas trade deal with all major US Washington State based oil refineries including the two located just 7 miles across the border in Blaine. If necessary, our party will also establish a network of gas station outlets on government owned land across the Lower Mainland to distribute the US gas to BC citizens, particularly if current gas companies refuse to cooperate due to pressure from their own oil refinery masters. Such a government initiative would also bring back gas stations to the downtown core of Vancouver.
LOWER TRANS-CANADA AIR FARES: Due to a severe lack of competition in trans-Canada air fares, BC Citizens are being hit with expensive air fares for their trans-Canada air travel. We will accordingly strongly encourage the Government of Canada to allow international and USA airlines to carry purely domestic travelers across Canada, as currently occurs in many other countires. If this fails to materialize we will strongly consider establishing a BC Government owned airline (100% Canadian owned) to provide adequate competition for BC citizens travelling across Canada by outsourcing all major operational activities to accredited air services providers.

We will introduce a new BC Public Transport tax credit for all BC Citizens to replace the Federal Tax Credit which was recently abolished. We will abolish road tolls for private citizens using private cars and motorcycles.

HOUSING COSTS: In order to support a family’s basic needs and also housing affordability we believe the minimum wage in BC should be lifted to $15 per hour in a phased approach essentially equivalent in graduated steps similar to that currently being adopted by the Government of Alberta. That is from $10.85 per hour presently to $12.25 per hour immediately, then to $13.60 per hour in 12 months time, and $15 per hour the following year. It is an insult to BC minimum wage workers for the current BC government to offer a 40 cents per hour increase in the minimum wage to 500,000 BC citizens in September last year. At the time of this offer BC had the lowest wage in Canada for what is the most expensive province to live in Canada.

FOUR WEEKS LEAVE (20 WORK DAYS) WILL BE LEGISLATED FOR ALL BC WORKERS: We will be introducing a guaranteed minimum of 4 weeks annual holiday leave (20 work days) for all employees irrespective of their age or tenure. Pro-rate annual leave will be required for permanent part-time employees i.e. 2 weeks minimum annual leave for employees working 50% of a full week over a year.