Sunday September 29, 2024 | LANGFORD, BC [Updated September 30, 2024]
BC ELECTION CAMPAIGN DAY 9 of 28
Political feature interview by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
Your 28-day voter’s guide for BC Election 2024
On this eighth day of the 28-day BC provincial election campaign, Langford-Highlands candidate Ravi Parmar says he is campaigning non-stop to win in the fast-growing west shore riding.
Parmar was the youngest MLA in the BC Legislature when this election was called. At age 29 he’s likely aiming to celebrate his 30th birthday in November as a re-elected MLA.
When he was first elected as MLA that was in a by-election in Langford-Juan de Fuca. This time around he’s the governing-party’s candidate in newly boundaried Langford-Highlands. Behind him is the legacy of former Premier John Horgan who was MLA in this area for 18 years (2005-2023.
And ahead of Parmar is the goal of serving in a re-elected BC NDP government that Premier David Eby has still tracked hard on the keystone issue of the BC NDP, i.e. affordability issues.
In fact, today Premier David Eby announced yet another BC NDP affordability measure, to provide a “household relief” payment of starting next year ($1,000 for households and $500 for individuals, i.e. no income tax paid on the first $22,580 earned). It would be a direct rebate in 2025 “so people don’t have to wait for the help they need now”.
Broad strokes of BC NDP impact:
So the electoral area name is new, but not the goal. Parmar fluently articulates the challenges of people in BC and the position of the BC NDP o a wide range of issues. “Life is really expensive right now, I hear that out on the doorstep,” says Parmar who has been campaigning for months.
“I’ll be fighting for them each and every day,” says Parmar, with his sights set on another four years as MLA.
High interest rates and global inflation are impacting everyone, Parmar points out, not just in BC but across Canada. “But in BC we have been doing things differently,” says Parmar. “We’re cutting down on things that people typically paid for in the past but don’t have to anymore,” says Parmar.
People may forget over time, but it’s the BC NDP that eliminated Medical Service Plan (MSP) premiums for British Columbians, which Parmar correctly calls the largest middle-income tax cut in a generation. People who have their MSP paid by their employer may not have realized the challenge and burden to pay that fee on a low or middle-class family income — the same fee that was charged to anyone of any income in the province.
Parmar and his family lived through the health-care cuts of the early 2000’s under the Gordon Campbell BC Liberal government or the education cutbacks (impacting the overall education system experience of teachers, schools and students) of the BC Liberal Christy Clark government up to early 2017.
Since mid-2017 — when the BC NDP became the new government for this province — many things have changed.
Picking up and moving forward from a lag-behind or even shortfall in hospitals and schools, the BC NDP focused on changing the course of the socioeoncomic experience in BC on several fronts. The list is long and the landscape of life in BC has changed as a result:
- BC Ferry fare rates under government purview
- More schools, and expanding schools in new ways (e.g. pre-fab classrooms) to keep up with demand
- Improvements in relations with First Nations and working on Indigenous rates in a myriad of ways
- Dropping ICBC auto insurance rates and then holding the increases steady, after cleaning up the ‘dumpster fire’ that was ICBC after the BC Liberals used the crown corporation as a cash-cow for other areas of the provincial budget.
- Making grad-completion education free so people can catch up with workplace opportunities.
- Dropping the cost of child care toward the 10-year-goal of $10-a-day child care across the province.
- Boosting health-care seats (new medical school coming to SFU in 2028, more training and retention of nurses, etc)
- Taking wildfire fighting from a budget-contingency status to a full-on year-round preventive and seasonally-adaptive emergency response.
- Bringing in a suite of housing legislation that has had short-term supply success (by banning investment-level short term rentals), some mid-term success (more affordable housing projects, build-ready designs for small home builders, allowing for triplex and fourplex construction on existing single family lots), and some expected long-term success (BC Builds projects, pledging to build out the pre-fab construction sector, and more).
- Some attempts to mitigate the impact of BC Hydro costs on the average consumer.
Head to head with BC Conservatives:
Yes, now the BC Liberals are off the political map, thanks oddly enough to one of their own former cabinet ministers Kevin Falcon who drove the party into a ditch after party-renaming (to BC United) and then ultimately pulling the plug on his candidates for Election 2024.
Just one month ago (on August 28) Falcon took down several long-standing former BC Liberal MLAs with him, throwing his endorsement behind BC Conservative Leader John Rustad. That may have done the province a favour in the BC NDP view.
Out of the woodwork has risen the Conservative Party of BC. From just two candidates less than a year ago, there is now a full slate of 93 candidates running head to head with the BC NDP in every riding in the province for the October 19 election.
In Langford-Highlands, Parmar is up against the Conservative of BC Party candidate Mike Harris (who came in a strong second in the 2023 by-election against Parmar in Langford-Juan de Fuca), and Erin Cassels (brand new to politics) for the BC Greens. Harris will appeal to a large sector of the business community while Cassels might carry the women’s vote.
A gift to have served Sooke:
But Parmar has deep roots in the BC NDP with a strong campaign and party team behind him.
He told Island Social Trends today that he is proud of the achievements he made in the Sooke, Otter Point and East Sooke areas of his previous riding of Langford-Juan de Fuca.
“It truly was a gift” to serve in the Sooke, East Sooke, Otter Point and west to Port Renfrew areas. He highlights the Highway 14 improvements that were made (2018-2023) to help support that region and he is most proud of getting a new elementary school for the Pacheedhat community in Port Renfrew.
Langford focus:
But now Parmar says he is pleased that he gets to focus on Langford and Highlands as a fast-growing area. Elections BC states the population of the Langford-Highlands electoral area as 49,110 within 86 sq km.
What would be the benefits for Langford residents with Parmar as their MLA for the next four years? “I will be focused on them,” said Parmar today in an interview with Island Social Trends.
He notes the “velocity of growth in Langford and how people “want a continued re-investment in infrastructure and services and a stronger more robust health-care system”. He notes the need for a stronger transit system and the demands of an aging population. He highlights schools and post-secondary as part of a government response to community growth. “To keep this community thriving for many decades to come.”
He has lived the last 20 years in Langford so this community is home. But in more ways than one. He gained his political experience from the ground up with Horgan as the MLA in Langford, and with the Sooke School District (SD62) board of education where for most of his nine years there (2014-2023) was board chair.
Door knocking:
Parmar has been out around Langford neighbourhoods on his campaign door-knocking mission. He and his team chat with residents or leaves campaign flyers at their door if they’re not home.
People have seen the the NDP’s accomplishments over the past seven years “and they want to see more”, says Parmar.
Parmar’s commitment as an MLA is ” to “report back that things are better”, said Parmar today
As Parliamentary Secretary for International Credentials in 2024 he understand the challenges of skilled people moving to BC. He has traveled across BC talking to people. He discusses these province-wide views at the doorstep.
Child care improvements:
Back in August he was part of a provincial announcement (along with SD62 and the City of Langford) to announce 100 new child care spots in the west shore. He itemizes the continuing work to create more spaces, and to train more early childhood educators.
Child care spaces are increasingly within BC schools as space allows, since the Ministry of Education took child care under its wing in 2022, becoming the Ministry of Education and Child Care.
“The $10-a-day child care plan was always meant to be a 10-year plan,” says Parmar. So far, families in Langford have saved $30 million in the cost of child care, says Parmar. “This is something that wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for the incredible leadership of David Eby, John Horgan and Carole James” who launched the program in 2018, he says.
“The $10-a-day child care commitment still stands for us,” says Parmar about the BC NDP, including in the west shore where 49 spaces will be opened in a few years in Langford (announced August 8, 2024 alongside the Mayor of Langford and the SD62 board chair).
Vancouver Island stronghold:
For decades the BC NDP have had a stronghold in several ridings on Vancouver Island. That very significant accomplishment was noted by former MLA Moe Sihota at the King Charles III Coronation Medal ceremony that was hosted by Parmar a few weeks ago in Langford.
Premier Eby has spent some campaign time so far in the mid-central areas of Vancouver Island (e.g. Nanaimo, Courtenay-Comox) and made a very brief pit-stop in Oak Bay on day seven of the campaign to support seven south Vancouver Island candidates. Parmar played a bit of cricket with the Premier on the grassy field at Windsor Park as part of that 15-minute campaign whistle-stop.
===== RELATED:
- Food, people and fun at the 2024 Luxton Fall Fair (September 29, 2024)
- Luxton Fall Fair draws out political candidates (September 28, 2024)
- Eby’s sunny Friday pit-stop in Oak Bay (September 27, 2024)
- Election 2024: Langford-Highlands three-way race (September 1, 2024)
- BC Conservatives claim center-right lane in fall election race (August 28, 2024)
- Three west shore ridings heating up toward BC Election 2024 (February 12, 2024)
- New elementary and middle schools announced for west Langford, plus land for a new high school (June 17, 2019)
- NEWS SECTIONS: POLITICS | VANCOUVER ISLAND | BC ELECTION 2024
===== ABOUT ISLAND SOCIAL TRENDS:
Island Social Trends posts local, regional and provincial news analysis daily at IslandSocialTrends.ca as well as biweekly in print (Premium subscribers receive a PDF of the print edition by email).
Island Social Trends began mid-2020 during the pandemic, in the footsteps of its predecessor West Shore Voice News (weekly in print/PDF 2014-2020) which was previously Sooke Voice News (weekly print 2011-2013).
Founder and editor for this entire series of news publications is Mary P Brooke. Ms Brooke now reports with the BC Legislative Press Gallery as well as covering west shore news highlights. For the readers, she is covering the BC provincial election campaigns in six south Vancouver-Island ridings.
The mother of now four-grown children who experienced the BC education system during the BC Liberal years, Mary was a school trustee candidate in 2022.
Ms Brooke was nominated in 2023 for a Jack Webster Foundation journalism award for serving her community through journalism. In 2024 Mary Brooke has launched the Urban Food Resilience Initiatives Society.