Where they Stand, What they Say | Watershed Sentinel

This 3-part comparison of the party positions and promises for the May 2017 BC election is based on the official party platforms – in rare instances we have used other sources to flesh out a position, but those are noted in the text. It may seem a bit detailed for casual reading, but such detail was necessary in order to show the full scope of each platform and avoid cherry-picking, which most comparisons do. And… we made linked PDF’s, so you can jump straight to the section you want from the cover page.

View and download the entire three-part document:

BC Election 2017 Platform Comparison – Environment

BC Election 2017 Platform Comparison: Social Justice

BC Election 2017 Platform Comparison: Green Jobs-Just Transition

All of the parties spent a good deal of time discussing the current state of affairs, the Liberals with pride and the other parties with criticism. We have omitted all this material and concentrated on the actual mention of specific items “To Do.”

Many of the platform promises cross over categories, for example, relations with First Nations permeate the NDP platform, while climate change dominates the Green platform, and jobs the Liberal. We have had to edit out some of these cross-references for the sake of (relative) brevity.

Also, each party organized their platforms differently, so that it was occasionally difficult to sort the items, for example the Green Party discussed “Natural Resources” whereas the Liberals and NDP talked about “Mining.”

The Conservative Party had only a few planks in their platform as of press time: repeal the carbon tax; a feasibility study for a Fourth Ferry Crossing between Richmond and Nanaimo; allow charter schools; refund up to $54 on $500 of charitable donations; and remove parking lot management from Health Authorities – “a pilot project for Free Parking at City Hospitals.”

As we prepared for this project, our readers offered a multitude of specific questions, and we realise that the broad stroke categorization we developed from them will not answer all those specifics but we felt it was the only practical way to approach this project. Thank you for all your suggestions.

As a reward for slogging through all those platform words, we have allowed ourselves to pick three favourite promises.

Liberal: Ban the use of neonicotinoid pesticides in British Columbia to protect honeybee populations

NDP: $10 a day childcare

Green: Initiate comprehensive, province-wide water and watershed planning

Here are the topic links:

Agriculture and Food Security