FOR A PEOPLE’S ALTERNATIVE!
British Columbians have been thrown against our wishes into a snap election, called for by a government that has lost the confidence of working people. Premier David Eby saw an opportunity to strengthen his party’s majority in what appeared to be the complete implosion of the BC Conservatives. This plan may backfire, however, opening the door for the bigoted and anti-social program of BC’s right to gain a foothold in the legislature. Meanwhile, a new leader has breathed life into the Green Party, challenging the New Democrats for the progressive vote. 

Only the Communist Party of BC offers a truly anti-monopoly, working-class platform to strengthen the rights of working people, Indigenous peoples and the environment. Only the Communists have a vision for BC that puts our future in the hands of the people. 

We need to move beyond choosing managers of capitalism every few years. Before and after the election, we must fight for a People’s Alternative. Here’s what we are fighting for in this election.

TAX THE WEALTHY
Shift the tax burden off working people and make corporations pay their fair share. Abolish income tax on earnings under $50,000. Roll back the tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations given in 2001 by the Campbell Liberals and fund education, housing, transit, and social services through progressive provincial taxation and guaranteed transfers. 

CLIMATE JUSTICE, NOT CARBON BOMBS
Make BC a leader for climate justice. Cut hydrocarbon emissions now. Prioritize renewable energy and conservation. Cancel taxpayer subsidies to the LNG industry, make them pay higher levies to profit from the people’s resources. Implement just a transition – retrain fossil fuel sector workers for other jobs at union wages. Cancel the 100% US-owned taxpayer-funded Ksi Lisims and end the fire sale of the province’s resources to private interests. Make polluting corporations pay for reversing the environmental damage they’ve caused.

FUND PUBLIC TRANSIT
Free public transit for all. Create an accessible province-wide bus transit system. Immediately create and enforce transit-only lanes in major cities to speed up transit and encourage more bus ridership. Place transit under public ownership and democratic control.

RIGHTS AND JOBS FOR WORKERS
Guarantee security for workers affected by layoffs, including 100% recall rights and wage protection. Protect and expand union rights to picket during labour disputes. Offer full labour standards protection for domestic, agricultural and migrant workers. Raise BC minimum wage to $30, fully adjusted to annual inflation rates. Make BC a liveable income employer. Expand sectoral bargaining to all industries. Allow the right to strike around political demands and allow sympathy strikes. Expand union jobs through public investment in social services and infrastructure. Reduce work week to 32 hours with no reduction in pay. Amend the BC Coastal Ferries Act to promote the construction of ferries in the province. Strengthen card-check certification and anti-scab legislation, and impose serious penalties for union-busting.

PUBLIC OWNERSHIP, NOT P3S
End P3 public infrastructure projects. Private-public partnerships, or P3s, are privatization. End provincial contracting out and privatization of public services, bring contracted work back in-house, and guarantee fair wages, pensions, and collective bargaining rights in public work. Expand public ownership over natural resources and begin a serious transition to renewable energy. Key sectors such as housing, healthcare, education and infrastructure are social services that serve all British Columbians equally and should be kept free from the influence of the private market and the profit motive.

JUSTICE FOR INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
Support the “Land Back” demand; ensure Indigenous inherent title to all traditional, stolen and unceded territories. Ban resource extraction and infrastructure projects on indigenous lands without full consultation and approval. Stop the attacks on Bill 41, the “Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.” Indigenize the BC education curriculum to foster solidarity and collaboration with Indigenous resistance struggles and to promote inclusivity, cooperation, and justice. Support calls for classifying Residential School denialism as hate speech.

FORESTRY, INDUSTRY, AND GOOD UNION JOBS
Keep BC resources and jobs in BC. End raw-log exports and expand public, value-added forestry and manufacturing. Protect mills and resource communities from corporate closures. Use public investment and ownership to create good union jobs while protecting old-growth forests and respecting Indigenous title and consent. 

Expand BC shipbuilding and  manufacturing to build our ferries, public transit equipment, and renewable-energy infrastructure here in the province, while expanding the production of value-added wood products and other building materials for public housing construction. Use public procurement to support domestic production. Introduce strong plant-closure legislation to protect workers and communities when corporations threaten closures or layoffs.

Bring natural resources and strategic industries under democratic public control. No resource extraction without fair and equal negotiations between workers and Indigenous peoples whose lands have been stolen.

RAISE THE RATES!
Raise social assistance and disability rates by 100%. Implement a Guaranteed Annual Livable Income.

DEFUND THE POLICE  & MILITARY
Each year, an average of one quarter of city budgets are allocated to the police. We need a preventative not punitive approach to crime. Reduce police spending, and remove the provincial authority to order municipalities to increase policing budgets. Place the police under public oversight and democratic control. Remove police from schools. Disband the BC government’s RCMP “Critical Response Unit” (“Community-Industry Response Group” C-IRG), which monitors environmental groups, and Indigenous land defenders and water protectors. End injunctions and charges against environmentalists. Demand major cuts in federal military spending and an end to Canada’s NATO membership. Shift naval procurement to construction of made-in-BC ferries and other civilian needs. Transfer military funds to renewable energy, housing, health care, and schools. The military should be used for basic defence of sovereignty and disaster relief not for foreign occupation and imperialist war.

BETTER PUBLIC EDUCATION
Increase public education spending by $1000 per student to reach the Canadian average. End funding and provincial tax breaks for private and religious schools. Provide the funding and equipment to help protect the health and safety of all students, staff and teachers during infectious disease outbreaks. Protect and fully implement SOGI-123 (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) policies in all school districts, and private and religious schools. End censorship in school libraries. Equalize funding for education both on and off reserve. Protect elected school boards from provincial interference. Reduce class sizes, hire more teachers, education assistants and support staff, and properly fund special education, school maintenance, renovations, and public post-secondary education.

PROTECT AND EXPAND PUBLIC HEALTHCARE
Demand action by federal and provincial governments to fully provide pharmacare, optical and dental care, and mental health and addiction rehabilitation. Stop the erosion of public healthcare through P3 private contracting. Prioritize the expansion of hospital beds, reduction of surgery wait times, training of family physicians and nursing staff, and improve conditions in long-term care homes. Give paramedics regular pay, not “standby pay”. End the NDP government’s moves to expand for-profit virtual care and long-term care and to subcontract healthcare services. Properly fund hospitals to end emergency room closures. Ensure every family has access to a family physician. Provide incentives for healthcare students from northern and isolated areas to practice their profession in their home communities. Provide a streamlined avenue for low-income healthcare students to study medicine in Canada, or abroad such as at the world renown ELAM school in Cuba. Protect and expand access to gender-affirming healthcare for trans people.

HOUSING IS A HUMAN RIGHT, NOT A PROFIT OPPORTUNITY
End housing speculation. Immediately establish vacancy controls which tie rents to the unit. Legislate to limit rents to 20% of household income. Build 100,000 units of new renovated social and low-income public housing. Support expansion of modular housing. Prohibit renovictions, demovictions, and economic/no-fault evictions; prevent eviction or foreclosure because of unemployment, strikes, or lockouts; and stop encampment clearing until permanent housing is available. Expropriate units that sit empty for more than two years for use as social housing.

ELECTORAL REFORM
Replace “first past the post” with mixed member proportional representation, and set MLA salaries at the average wage of a BC worker. Implement a ward system to elect city councils in major cities.

GENDER EQUALITY AND JUSTICE
Restore funding to women’s centres and programs, provide safe spaces and housing to people escaping misogyny and domestic violence. Trans rights are human rights – take swift legal and political action against those who threaten the 2S/LGBTQ+ community. Protect trans youth from discrimination and abuse. End the criminalization of sex workers, support repeal of the “Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act” passed by the Harper Tories in 2014. 

PUBLIC UNIVERSAL, AFFORDABLE, HIGH QUALITY CHILD CARE
Make a genuine long-term commitment to a public universal, affordable, high quality child care system desperately needed by working class families. Implement an Early Childhood Educator (ECE) Wage Grid paying at least $35 – $45/hr. Expand school-age spaces and facilities in elementary schools in partnership with public, non-profit and Indigenous groups. Stabilize and expand existing $10-a-Day programs with long-term budgets based on an equitable funding formula. Ensure childcare is accessible to shiftworkers.

FOOD SECURITY
End removals from the Agricultural Land Reserve, encourage food production in urban areas. Increase provincial funding to ensure that all school districts can offer hot breakfast and lunch programs for all K-12 students.

SAVE LIVES – END THE OPIOID CRISIS
End the “war on drugs”. Act on recommendations by the Provincial Health Officer and the BC Coroners Service to decriminalize illicit drugs and expand the provincial Safer Supply program. Repeal the NDP’s fear-mongering legislation criminalizing drug use in public spaces. Use evidence-based harm reduction approaches to save lives, and to reduce the social and health costs of the opioid crisis. Create a permanent, safe, legal and regulated supply of drugs, provide safe and secure housing for all, and expand timely access to mental health services and long term recovery support programs. End involuntary care and provide treatment immediately upon request.

SOLIDARITY WITH PALESTINE AND CUBA
Stop the criminalization of solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle and reject the conflation of Judaism with Zionism. Support the international Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israeli apartheid and genocide. Support cultural, economic and healthcare exchanges with Cuba; don’t let Trump dictate our international relations. 

SOCIALISM IS THE FUTURE!
The profit-driven capitalist system is killing the planet. We call for socialism – a world without poverty and war, where working people democratically own and control the economy.

Voting Communist sends a clear message that British Columbians demand transformative change. But the fight doesn’t end at the ballot box. To overcome the crises we face, we must challenge capitalism itself. Only socialism can create a society where people and the planet are prioritized over profit – a world without poverty and war, where working people democratically own and control the economy. Socialism is urgently necessary and voting Communist helps build the movement for socialism.