By Jennifer Whiteside, MLA New Westminster

Originally published in the Summer 2024 edition of the Local Voice

In just a few short months, British Columbians will be heading to the polls to vote for their next provincial government. While I know this will be a line that you will hear repeated over the next few months, this is one of the most important elections we will face.

We need your help to make sure we continue to work together to make life better and more affordable for people like you – working people and their families.

In 2020, I had the honour of being elected as the MLA for New Westminster and joining our BC NDP government. Before that, my background was very similar to that of MoveUP members. I was a union member, and I was the chief spokesperson and lead negotiator for the Hospital Employees’ Union.

I have had ample experience on both sides of the coin – as a labour activist dealing with government and now being part of government. But I remember 2001 and the devastating cuts the BC Liberal government imposed on people and our communities.

For people providing healthcare services, dealing with a BC Liberal government was much different than dealing with a BC NDP government. The BC Liberal government tore up our members’ contracts, contracted out their work to multinational corporations, fired 10,000 mostly women healthcare support workers, and cut funding to health care. British Columbians were deprived of access to the services they needed, and workers were under perpetual attack. It was only when our BC NDP government was elected that we brought those hard-working healthcare workers back into the public sector and gave them the respect they deserve.

The focus of our government has always been making life better and more affordable for British Columbians. Some of our achievements since forming government include drastically reducing car insurance rates to among the lowest in Canada, holding down rate increases on electricity, securing public transit funding to keep costs low for riders, creating and expanding $10-a-day childcare spaces, eliminating costly bridge tolls, and providing free contraception. We’ve also made significant investments in expanding access to health care by building new hospitals and seniors care facilities, hiring more doctors and health care workers, expanding diagnostic imaging, and making the flu shot free.

We know there is still a lot more to do to make British Columbia affordable for everybody, especially on the housing front. We introduced the speculation and vacancy tax and new rules for short-term rentals to ensure that housing supply is there for people to be able to live in. We’ve also introduced new legislation to rapidly increase the supply of available housing, adding to the 77,000 homes that have been delivered or are underway since 2017.

MoveUP members, especially those who were working between the years of 2001 to 2017, will undoubtedly remember the many ways the BC Liberal government of the day put their work in jeopardy and, in doing so, put their livelihoods and those of their family in jeopardy as well.

The BC Liberals brand may be dead, but their track record and their harmful agenda lives on in the BC United Party and is taken to an even further extreme by the BC Conservative Party.

Members who worked at ICBC will remember the BC Liberals’ attempt to run the corporation into the ground, driving up costs and prices and even siphoning funds out of ICBC — all to privatize it.

Members who worked at BC Hydro will recall how the BC Liberals locked BC Hydro into long-term contracts to buy additional power from independent power producers at higher-than-market rates again to drive their privatization agenda. Some of you may have even been affected when the BC Liberals directed BC Hydro to outsource several of your jobs to Accenture with the promise of lowering costs, when just the opposite happened. The only thing that was lowered was, unfortunately, wages for workers and job satisfaction.

There are many more examples of the negative impacts of the BC Liberals, but I want to focus on the positives of what our government has been able to do for people.

The changes we made at ICBC, for instance, have not only helped bring auto insurance rates down but have stabilized the corporation.

Our work to combat the urgent climate crisis, while still ensuring people have access to reliable and affordable energy for their homes, means we are undergoing a massive increase in electrification. This will also mean more jobs at BC Hydro, which will only continue to increase over the next 10 years.

On the overall labour front, our government has introduced important legislation that has had meaningful impacts on everyday working people. We have introduced five paid days of sick leave, anti-scab legislation, card check so that workers can join unions more easily, as well as paid leave for survivors of domestic or sexual violence.

In our most recent round of public sector bargaining, and thanks to the relentless effort of the labour movement, we negotiated wages for our diligent public sector employees – including ICBC and BC Hydro – that tied increases with the rising cost of living. That was essential because we know how much global inflation and the cost of living has affected everybody.

Our government hasn’t done this work alone. It’s because of the passionate advocacy of your leaders in the labour movement, including MoveUP, that these important advances for workers have been possible.

We can’t stop here, and we won’t stop here. But we need your help to make more advances possible. We need your help to continue to push for more $10-a-day childcare spaces, for more affordable housing spaces so young workers can live in the communities they work in, and to support families and young people who are being negatively impacted by the spread of misinformation about what SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity) education is so that our schools are safe and inclusive places for all students.

When you use your voice to help support as many progressive candidates as possible to get elected, you make it possible for us to pursue even greater achievements to help working people and their families.

This October, make your plan to vote. If you have the ability and the time, consider helping to support your riding’s BC NDP candidate as well or donating to support us.

Keep up the amazing work. We see you. We hear you. We have your back. We appreciate you, and we can’t wait to do more good things with you.

The Hon. Jennifer Whiteside is currently the MLA for New Westminster and the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions. She previously served as the Minister of Education and Child Care.

She will be running in the newly-created riding of New Westminster-Coquitlam in the Fall 2024 election.