Thursday August 31, 2023 | SOOKE, BC [Updated Sept 1, 2023]
by Mary P Brooke, Editor | Island Social Trends – local, regional, BC and national news insights
It was a lovely day for a drive out to Sooke today. Sun has broken through the clouds, after a bit of welcome rain yesterday. Sooke is accessed along BC Highway 14 (one way in, one way out).
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh took the drive out to the rural edge of Greater Victoria to meet with folks there and discuss the continuing rise in the cost of living.
During a round table discussion at a local coffee shop, there was a bit of a focus on back to school, including the cost of school supplies and child care — together with other things which impact family budgets such as the cost of groceries and rent or mortgage. He repeated his messaging about how housing supply is inadequate across Canada and how the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) deals with funding and policy but doesn’t really get into the nitty gritty of producing supply.
Bank of Canada challenge:
Singh said that the Bank of Canada mechanism of increasing interest rates is having negative impacts on people and small businesses living with the consequences of higher interest rates. He delicately suggested that just doing something that sounds good in theory — without taking into account real impacts — was an error in judgement on the Bank’s part.
Singh’s comment on that topic was in alignment with BC Premier David Eby’s announcement earlier in the day about having sent a letter to the Bank of Canada to state his opposition to a further rate hike that could come next week.
Eby said on Twitter today: “The Bank’s role is to guide monetary policy, my role is to ensure BC voices are heard on decisions that impact them.”
Maja Tait goes national:
But locally the big announcement was that Sooke Mayor Maja Tait will be running as the NDP candidate for Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke in the next federal election.
Both Singh and outgoing MP Randall Garrison (who has held the seat since 2011) gave her a cheerful ‘welcome to the team’ as part of Singh’s national press conference carried live in full on national TV this afternoon.
Tait said she was nervous doing her first national presser, but she pulled it off. She even had already picked up the national lingo as in “coast to coast to coast” to be including the territories as well as the provinces.
Tait will be officially acclaimed this evening August 31 at an NDP meeting in Esquimalt.
Back to school costs:
Island Social Trends asked whether the federal NDP might take leadership on back-to-school costs by coming up with a national policy requiring provinces to carry that cost (through school districts) instead of levying that burden upon parents.
Some provinces in Canada do cover that cost but BC parents often have to raise funds through parent advisory committees and some school districts back up struggling families in other ways.
Singh said that was an interesting idea and might look into it, realizing it would open up a whole new stream of dialogue at the national level and involving premiers.
Parental rights within sex-ed in schools:
Garrison took a question from a national CBC reporter (via Zoom) about the parental consent issue in sex education that is currently causing debate in New Brunswick and Saskatchewan.
As the NDP’s spokesperson on LGBT and gender issues, Garrison said the safety of children comes first.
He avoided answering the part about parent’s rights — which is more about family cohesion which often gets interrupted or damaged when the school comes in between parent and child.
[See transcript of June 18, 2023 CBC interview with NB Premier Blaine Higgs]. This is one example of how political ideology sometimes flies in the face of lived reality (in this case for families with children).
===== ABOUT THE WRITER:
Mary P Brooke, B.Sc., Cert PR is the founder, editor and publisher of Island Social Trends. She has provided news insights about the west shore and Sooke region since 2008, expanding into provincial news in 2018 and national news along the way.
A parent of four (now grown) children, Ms Brooke has experienced the K-12 public school system as a parent and has now seen the long-term impacts of a challenged educational system on her family as the years have gone by. She ran for school trustee in SD62 (west shore of Greater Victoria) in 2022. | SD62 news archive
Ms Brooke attended a Bank of Canada press conference in Victoria on June 8, 2023, asking why the Bank of Canada uses a blunt tool to try and manage inflation, which clearly the consequences for many Canadians are dire. | Economic news archive
Island Social Trends has been online at IslandSocialTrends.ca since mid-2020. Before that, the publication was called West Shore Voice News (printed weekly, 2014-2020), and before that Sooke Voice News (printed weekly, 2011-2013) which had emerged from MapleLine Magazine (printed quarterly 2008-2010). | About Island Social Trends