Doubled tax, more child care, new tech jobs: B.C. election campaign wraps second week

As the provincial election campaign reaches the halfway mark, the party leaders made pitches to voters on bread-and-butter issues: housing, child care and jobs.

The BC NDP announced that if they win another mandate to govern, they will double the speculation and vacancy tax so that Canadians with empty homes would pay 1 per cent and non-Canadians would pay 3 per cent of the home’s assessed value.

• Full coverage: B.C. election 2024

“We're taking the side of the average British Columbian who works hard, plays by the rules, deserves a decent home,” David Eby told reporters in Vancouver’s Yaletown neighbourhood. “It's very easy to avoid this tax. We have a very giant loophole that you can walk through – there’s an arrow pointing to it – rent out your vacant home, don't pay the tax, make extra money from rent.”

He added that he’d be fine without making any extra tax revenue, as long as more homes are available to live in. An analysis of the empty homes tax estimated 20,000 homes in Metro Vancouver opened up since it was implemented in 2018.

Reality check on Rustad’s child care announcement

The BC Conservative leader was in Kelowna to talk about changes he’d make to childcare in the province, but his message was muddled with confusing and inaccurate information.

John Rustad said he would prioritize “single moms and families on low income” and that “our approach will be to maintain $10 a day daycare, but we're going to make sure that it is designed to actually meet the needs across this province.”

He went on to suggest 24-hour child care for shift-worker parents, and complained about government-run child care and that “independent” operators should be in the system and that “David Eby has actively working against having the private sector involved in daycare.”

Sharon Gregson, who spearheaded the campaign to implement $10 a day with the Coalition of Child Care Advocates, said that aside from a handful of school district and municipal programs, British Columbia’s daycares are operated by private non-profit or for-profit companies.

She said about 10 per cent of the licensed daycares are $10 per day, while the rest are subsidized, calling Rustad’s announcement “a very worrying, disappointing proposal showing a lack of understanding of the system that's been built."

When CTV News asked Rustad if his discussion of “independent” operators meant that he intended to subsidize unlicensed operators, he said that “anybody that would like to deliver child-care spaces is going to need to make sure they meet the standards we have in British Columbia.”

A Greener vision for jobs

The BC Green Party members and supporters welcomed leader Sonia Furstenau back to Cowichan Bay, the riding she currently holds but has been re-drawn under new electoral boundaries; she’s now running in Victoria-Beacon Hill.

Furstenau proposed a three-point plan around restorative logging, protected community forests, compensation to First Nations for lost revenue and moving away from a resource economy to a “production economy,” leaning into jobs created in B.C.’s green energy companies and the tech sector, for example.

“Over and over and over again it is this boom-and-bust story in British Columbia,” she said. “At some point we have to say no more, no more boom and bust.”