Parliament begins its fall session this coming week and I have just returned from a week of meetings in Ottawa to discuss how that sitting will look—both in terms of how we will meet and the policies the government may bring forward in the Speech from the Throne on Wednesday. Throughout the spring and summer, the House of...

Drivers will soon have a stronger incentive to take a good look around before opening their car doors. To better protect cyclists, the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure is raising the fine for “dooring.” The new fine for anyone who opens a car door when it is not reasonably safe to do so (known as “dooring”) will...

MEC's Sale/Liquidation and Others Like It Must Be Subject to Government Review Wednesday, September 16th, 2020 – PRINCE GEORGE – "Since the announcement of the liquidation of Mountain Equipment Co-op and its purchase by a US-based group of investors, prominent British Columbians, including John Horgan, have condemned and...

Voters and potential candidates – this is for everyone. Candidates who were nominated for the by-election that was scheduled for earlier in the year, which was cancelled by the Provincial government with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, will need to be nominated again to stand for election in the upcoming by-election. ...

As a result of a BC Ombudsperson investigation, the Ministry of Education will apologize to students and compensate any students who were financially harmed by the issuance of incorrect provincial exam results in 2019. In a report released today, Course Correction: The Ministry of Education 2019 Provincial Exam Errors, the ...

Bill Morneau resigned as Minister of Finance on Monday.  I enjoyed my interactions with the former minister—he was approachable and often crossed the aisle to chat with me when I had a question or comment on financial issues affecting my constituents.  Rumour has it that he was at odds with the rest of the cabinet when it...

I recently spent a week touring through the South Okanagan-West Kootenay, meeting elected officials and constituents as well as enjoying the lakes, rivers and mountains that make this such a wonderful place to live.  Now that COVID restrictions have been lifted somewhat, I was able to chat with people over coffee at picnic ...

My role as Natural Resources critic for the NDP covers forestry, mining and energy—and the big issue these days in that trio is energy.  The pandemic has intensified calls for a national energy strategy that will direct federal investments to help us recover from the economic impacts of the crisis and put us on a good footing...

Imagine a country where the top one percent of the population owned one quarter of all the wealth and the bottom 40 per cent together owned only one per cent.  Sounds outrageous?  That country is Canada. The source of those figures is the latest report of the Parliamentary Budget Officer.  The disparity between the super-wealthy...

There has been a lot of misinformation and hyperbole lately about how the House of Commons will be conducting business over the next few weeks.   Regular sittings of Parliament were suspended in mid-March because of the COVID-19 crisis.  Since then, the House of Commons has been working, and in many ways working harder and ...