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2016 was a hard year for British Columbians
1-10-2017
For many of us 2016 was a difficult year, a year made more difficult by the Christy Clark government. More than half of B.C. workers are living paycheck to paycheck. One in five children are living in poverty. Over the last five years, since Christy Clark became premier, the average British Columbian is paying up to $1000 more in hidden taxes like higher hydro rates, increased medical service premiums and more expensive ICBC car insurance. The cost of rent has skyrocketed and the price of homes are out of reach for young buyers.
So it’s no wonder that over the last five years the percentage of British Columbians giving to charity has declined from 74 per cent to 59 per cent. People simply have less in their pockets to give. British Columbia under Christy Clark has become a hard place for families to survive, let alone thrive.
Families aren’t just suffering economically. The services they need and depend on have been gutted by the Christy Clark government.
Just months ago the Supreme Court of Canada, the highest court in the land, revealed that Christy Clark had illegally ripped up contracts with B.C. teachers that protected children from overcrowded classrooms without the supports they need to learn. An entire generation of B.C. children has suffered because of Christy Clark’s attacks on public education.
The result is that children are going to school in overcrowded classrooms, learning in portables, or even going to school in shifts. And despite promising to fix the schools most in danger of collapsing in a major earthquake before the last election, Christy Clark hasn’t delivered. Next election she’ll be promising the same thing again. Meanwhile, our children are spending their days in unsafe buildings.
Christy Clark simply has the wrong priorities. She is doubling spending on self-promoting and partisan advertisements – paid for by you and by me, at a time when youth in mental health crisis are waiting up to two years to access mental health services.
Christy Clark promised every British Columbian would have a family doctor by 2015, but hundreds of thousands of B.C. families are still forced to rely on walk-in clinics to access basic and family medicine. Emergency rooms are often full. Ambulances are often slow to arrive. Too many people are waiting for months and months for hip surgeries and knee surgeries that are key to their mobility and quality of life.
Our seniors’ care has been cut to the bone. Many families are struggling to keep their elders at home because they don’t know how they will be treated in the government funded homes that are all most families can afford.
The fact is, Christy Clark simply isn’t working for British Columbians. She’s working for big party donors who pay her second, $50,000 salary, on top of the $192,000 salary she takes from taxpayers.
No wonder she doesn’t want to ban big money from politics. Because, it’s big money for Christy Clark and her friends.
I believe politics is about making our province better. I want to solve the problems we face, together. I hope you will join me in 2017 in the fight to make B.C. better.
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