Bowinn Ma Quotes

We need to talk about car infrastructure, like roads and bridges. Electric vehicles take up the same amount of space on the road as a gas vehicle. Congestion issues aside, expanding and maintaining car infrastructure is expensive, both in dollars and GHGs. For instance, the cement industry is one of the largest producers of man-made carbon dioxide in the world, producing, by some estimates, 8 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions. That means that if the cement industry were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of CO2 in the world, after China and the U.S. While it is critically important that we electrify our transportation system as soon as possible, there are problems with focusing only on electric vehicles to achieve reductions in the transport sector. That’s exactly why our CleanBC plan doesn’t do that and why it includes so much more than that. Critically important, CleanBC includes a strong emphasis on more environmentally and socially responsible modes of transportation, like public transport and active transportation, along with the recognition that we need to reduce travel distances for people, by building complete communities where people live, work, play, study and shop without going very far. CleanBC demands that we build safe cycling, walking and rolling infrastructure whenever we upgrade bridges or interchanges, and makes an expansion of our public transportation network a top priority.

I get that the job of an opposition is to oppose. I get that. But they’re supposed to at least oppose on behalf of the people, not themselves. Let me read a quote from the leader of the B.C. Liberals from last year: “We currently have a government where we’re in opposition, and our job is to convince the public that we should form government once again.” I find this quote completely demonstrative of the power motive that drives that party. The role of an opposition party is to challenge government to implement the best possible policies and legislation for the public by ensuring that differing views are expressed and defended, not to plot their way back into power. This motion and the fractured narrative that they’re trying to build is just another pitiful example of how they’re more concerned about playing politics than they are of actually helping people, more concerned about confusing the public than they are in supporting them. I don’t know, and I don’t think they know anymore, who they represent. They are flailing, because without big money in politics, without their big corporate donors telling them what to do, they’re learning the ugly truth of it all. They don’t know how to work for people.

The revitalization of Indigenous languages is not simply an exercise in translating words. It’s the beginning of the healing of cultures, through which an expression of world view emanates. It speaks to a person’s core identity. Ideas, values, feelings, aspirations, hopes and dreams are communicated in ways that sometimes cannot be done in any other way. It’s about grounding a person; tearing down the walls of isolation; reconnecting them to their ancestors, their community, their family, their environment, their Creator and, indeed, even themselves.

Housing affordability — I think it would be fair to say — is the number one issue across the province. There are, of course, many other extremely important issues, but housing affordability seems to be at the crux of it all. In my community, over and over, I hear from renters who tell me that if they lose their home in their current rent-controlled apartment, they will end up on the street. In my community, there are 750 members of the population who are homeless.

We must support this budget because climate change and poverty, opioid overdoses, homelessness and hopelessness are real issues. It should not be a question of whether or not we can afford to resolve them but a question of whether we, as a society, can afford not to. From regulations that manage climate change and the environment to the distribution of social funding and poverty reduction, governments provide the fundamental framework within which companies operate and within which people live, work, succeed, suffer or die. It is a heavy burden, and there are never easy answers. But I am optimistic because I know that the decisions and choices this government has made are informed by learning from the mistakes of the previous government. These are priorities that put people first, not profits. And these are choices that help the many, not the very few at the top.

I know that housing is top of mind for so many people in North Vancouver. Sixteen years of neglect have allowed our real estate market to get out of control, our rental rates to skyrocket. Waiting lists on our subsidized housing stock run miles long. This issue has generally left hard-working individuals and families behind. It is a huge mess. And now that we have a government made up of people who are ready to work for people, it also means that we now have a government that is actually interested in cleaning up that mess.

A government serves people, and when a government delivers services, they deliver them to real people — people who live, who laugh, who cry, who suffer, who yell out in pain, who love and are loved.