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BC NDP's North Island Candidate speaks to the Campbell River Mirror

Michele Babchuk is the second candidate for the North Island riding to sit down with the Campbell River Mirror
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Michele Babchuk is the NDP candidate for the North Island. Photo contributed

Michele Babchuk sat down with the Campbell River Mirror for an on-camera interview. Unfortunately, the camera footage was corrupted. 

With a lack of public addiction treatment beds – only six in Campbell River to serve the North Island north of Nanaimo – what will your party do to address the lack of capacity?

So this a priority for us.

You just have to look at our downtown core, and you can see that we have people that are really in need of some help. We did get the six medical detox. We are still working with the City of Campbell River to take a look at another facility up closer to Peterson that will be social detox and second-stage housing, but we are very happy to work with the Wei Wai Kai First Nation on the Tsakwa'lutan Lodge project that is going to be looking at a full culturally safe treatment centre over there as there. 

I'm really excited to start heading engagements with the community about what our involuntary care looks like because we do know that we have people who have multiple challenges, whether it be synthetic opioid addictions, brain injuries, or mental health issues that are really struggling to take care of themselves and are not safe out in our community either. It's being preyed on by some pretty relentless criminals, so I'm looking forward to that. I think we have made really great progress in Campbell River over the last four years, and I'm looking forward to continuing to do that. 

Every year, temperature records are broken throughout the province, and the forest fire season appears to be getting worse and longer. What does your party see as the best way for carbon reduction, and what goals will you aim to strive for in helping the province and Island hit those goals?

That's exactly right. 

We're not only seeing forest fires but heat domes and other emergency weather events like floods coming at a rapid pace—a lot faster than we thought they were going to. So we have taken a really good stand with our Clean BC, and we're actually watching carbon emissions go down five percent in the last little while. We have a way to go, but we are certainly on the right path.

I talk to people on Cortes about this all the time, and they are trying very hard to decrease their carbon footprint, but it's not something we can individually do. It's something we have to do as a society as a whole. 

We are working with industry. We are looking at sustainable industry to be able to move our North Island forward in an economically way, so looking at all of those alternative energy projects, I think we are very well positioned for on the north end of Vancouver Island.

While areas of the North Island are growing in rental housing, there continues to be a lack of affordable housing. What detailed actions will your party take to increase affordable housing stock in the riding?

We have heard John Rustad say he doesn't believe that the government should be involved in affordable housing, and we've had some really good examples in Campbell River of making that happen. But we still struggle in our rural and remote communities just because it's so expensive to do that. I believe the government needs to be at the table to help move forward with affordable housing, and we also need to make sure that we've got our developers feeling that they are supported enough that they can do that. So he (Eby) is committed to 300,000 homes over the next 10 years, and that's not just in the bigger centres, that's all over British Columbia and our rural and remote communities need it just as much as our urban and metropolitan areas as well.

School divisions in the North Island have policies and resources that create a supportive and inclusive environment for students. Will your government do anything to change or limit the school division’s abilities to use these policies and resources?

Absolutely not. I believe that inclusion and diversity in our school systems is absolutely one of the most important. 

Right now, we just watched Mr. Eby talk about enhancing our school systems by hiring 5700 new teachers into the province, making sure every school has a mental health officer, and making sure every K (kindergarten) to Grade 3 classroom has a dedicated EA (education assistant) inside of it. We have also committed to 10,000 new before and aftercare child care spaces, which is fantastic.

You know, these are our kids and these are kids who are going to be our future, so we need to make sure we set them up on their learning path in a successful way, and we are doing that by investing in infrastructure. We have 125 new builds or builds that are almost completed in this province. When Mr. Rustad was there, he cut all those budgets and currently just said he is going to increase class sizes by 20 per cent. We're going to see that in Surrey first but teachers, EAs, and administrators in our public school systems have been bargaining and fighting for classroom and composition size for years. I think it goes back to the 1970s, and they are finally in a position where that can happen, and we are finally in a position where we are going to see the lowest class sizes in a very long time, and he's going to reverse that and he's going to gut that system. I am very concerned about it.

The resource industry is very important in Campbell River and the North Island. What will the BC NDP do to help ensure job security in this sector?

It's no surprise to anybody that we are going through a transition in forestry, and we are doing that in collaboration with our rural, remote and Indigenous communities to make sure that everybody is on board.

We watched Mr. Rustad tank 30,000 forestry jobs under his leadership, and 20 mills in B.C. went down with absolutely no support for those communities, no support for those workers, no support for the Made in BC brand, and no support for communities and they lost millions of dollars in their tax base.

We have the job manufacturing plan that we have been putting money back in to make sure those forestry workers have good, meaningful jobs while we're going through this transition. But at the end of the day, we want to grow a forestry industry that our kids and grandkids can actually work in. If we don't do it correctly in a sustainable way, then we are going to end up losing it. I am very happy that we are doing this, yes, I know that it's hard on people, and I know that we are having trouble getting fibre out of the bush, but we just saw the BC NDP platform committing to take a look at stumpage because I know that has been an issue, taking a look at getting the permits out faster, which I know has been an issue and also to take a look at BC TS which is the BC timber sales that help get those going. I've heard that, we've listened to anywhere from the Truck Loggers Association to Western Forest Products, to communities in between, and we are starting to come out the other side, and I was really happy to see that reflected in the platform.



About the Author: Brendan Jure

I am an Irish-Canadian journalist who joined the Campbell River Mirror in December, 2023. Before joining the Campbell River Mirror
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