I want to sincerely thank everyone who has reached out to encourage me to enter the leadership race. I've been humbled and overwhelmed by the number … - Bowinn Ma

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.

Our economic and financial system is captured by the fossil fuel industry, and I say this extremely seriously. It’s not just B.C. We see it across Canada. Canada was economically built on resource extraction. I think that it’s important to acknowledge that, and it’s important to respect and be grateful for what resource extraction has done for our country and be grateful for what petroleum products have brought to civilization. But just because we have come from a place where fossil fuels have been embedded into our economic and financial system doesn’t mean that we need to continue forward in that way. We have to transition. We have seen…. I have seen in my time as an MLA here how captured our entire system is by this industry, how it influences the way that individuals see their options for prosperity in certain parts of the country. We have seen the way that it limits the kinds of choices that governments feel like they can make. I have learned about how many wars, how many regime changes, how many sanctions have been placed on countries around the world, based on whether or not they will or won’t play ball in terms of fossil fuel and gas and petroleum exports — in particular, with the United States. This is something that we all need to grapple with as we go forward into actually meeting our climate targets, because it’s not just about emissions. Emissions on their own won’t release us from the grasp of the fossil fuel industry.

As the Parliamentary Secretary for TransLink, I have the privilege of supporting a government and an organization committed to public transit. As a public transit and SeaBus user myself, I love encouraging people to take and support environmentally and socially responsible modes of transportation. Public transit is good for urban mobility and good for people—health-wise, mobility-wise, and to enable strong economic and social justice through the reduction of inequality by providing mobility to all.