B.C. Premier David Eby fielded a variety of questions without making any explicit election promises, while the Green Party's Sonia Furstenau stuck to one issue as two provincial party leaders held events on the same day in Nelson.
At an evening gathering held inside a Nelson school gymnasium, an invite-only Q&A for Eby included the mayor and city councillors, leaders of community organizations, partisan supporters and local journalists.
Furstenau meanwhile spoke during a short event streamed to the Green Party's Facebook page, with only the Nelson Star in attendance.
It's rare for a provincial political leader to visit the city. Several NDP ministers have come to Nelson since the 2020 election, but Monday was Eby's first trip as premier after he previously stopped by during his leadership campaign in 2022.
Kootenay Central, a new riding that expands on Nelson-Creston to add Nakusp, New Denver and Silverton, is considered a B.C. NDP stronghold. But the Green Party have made inroads over the past several elections to become a consistent runner-up. NDP MLA Brittny Anderson defeated Nicole Charlwood by 1,685 votes in 2020, and the pair will face each other again on the ballot for the Oct. 19 election.
Although Anderson and Charlwood were present at both events, the spotlight was on Eby and Furstenau. Here's what they had to say:
The toxic drug crisis
The Nelson Star asked Eby why, eight years into the crisis that has killed over 14,500 residents, B.C. doesn't have safe consumption sites in every municipality.
Eby said the crisis has become complicated by a shift from injection to inhalation as users' preferred mode of drug consumption. He acknowledged the need for more facilities both for the safety of users as well as protecting the public from accidentally inhaling drugs mixed with fentanyl.
But Eby tempered his remarks by putting a responsibility on communities to support the installation of such sites. Nelson has one safe injection site, but a planned inhalation site was scrapped in 2023 following community backlash.
“When we’re doing this work in responding to the evolving nature of this crisis, and we’re able to build facilities that are safe for people and that are cost-effective and that are going to be accepted by the community … we are going to look for local communities to work with us to find sites to support this kind of work," said Eby.
"The goal is of course that people survive so that they can get into treatment.”
Eby also said the government is working to make a nasal-spray naloxone more widely available in B.C. This version is easier to reverse overdoses with than its syringe-injected version,
Old-growth logging and ecosystems
Eby said the NDP are committed to protecting ecosystems when taking a question from bestselling author and forest ecologist Dr. Suzanne Simard.
The trick, he said, is balancing environmental with economic values. Landscape planning tables that include community, First Nations and industry collaboration have found success.
“We're finding that people have far more in common than they disagree about in terms of erosion, harvesting and that can inform our decisions much better.”
Asked by another resident about old-growth logging, Eby defended his party's policies.
“I hear the critique that these deferrals are just temporary, but they are real, and they are stopping the logging of forests that would have been logged otherwise, and we're continuing to advance that. … We will and we have done various work in forestry and we have a massive responsibility to be able to ensure a sustainable forestry industry going forward.”
Housing
Eby was asked why rural B.C. doesn't have more complex-care housing, which is meant to house people with mental health and addictions issues as well as those at-risk of homelessness.
The provincial government announced in April that 240 complex-care units would be built in several Lower Mainland municipalities as well Victoria, Kelowna and Prince George. But no units were announced for the Kootenays.
Eby didn't offer a clear reason for the region being overlooked, but he did say finding trained staff is a challenge for those sites. He also conceded the government hasn't done a good enough job of early interventions that would take the strain off complex-care housing demands.
“One of the things we've seen is a small group of people with really intensive needs driving huge resource consumption for police, firefighters, ambulance, huge impacts on quality of life in the community, and often … I just know that if they had just a few extra supports, they would have taken so much pressure off of the system because they were supported more directly.”
Dialysis
Municipalities, health-care advocates and patients have argued Nelson's Kootenay Lake Hospital needs a kidney dialysis machine for hemodialysis patients.
Residents typically require treatment three times per week, but the trip to Trail can be costly and time-consuming for locals in need of the service.
Eby didn't commit the province to anything, but instead pointed to the recent announcement of a new provincially funded medical school at Simon Fraser University that he said will help train more local health-care workers. He also said the government is offering incentives to people in health care considering work in rural B.C.
“But that's the big challenge, and that is how we'll get to dialysis in Nelson, is by training more health care workers and supporting them to [re-locate].”
Furstenau on clean air legislation
The Green Party leader meanwhile focused on promoting her Clean Air Act, which was introduced to the Legislature earlier this year but not debated.
The bill proposes the monitoring and regulation of indoor air quality at schools, post-secondary institutions, child-care programs, hospitals, assisted living and community care facilities. It would also require installation of multiple carbon dioxide monitors at those sites.
Furstenau said the guarantee of clean air has been overlooked by the NDP's climate change plan CleanBC.
“We've been calling on them since 2020 to at least start with schools as places that they really invest in clean air and air filtration. CleanBC is a program that is really oriented to industry, and one thing I've said about CleanBC is that it lacks two important factors: nature and humans.”
Furstenau's bill also includes measures for exposure to poor outdoor air quality. Public buildings such as empty schools in the summer should act as emergency clean air shelters during wildfire season.
WorkSafeBC, she said, should also set air-quality standards for anyone working outside.
“What are the requirements and protections that workers would need in order to be kept safe and healthy? This is a long-standing effort on the part of unions traditionally and then governments to recognize that we have a responsibility to protect workers.”
Green Party in election danger?
The election begins Sept. 21, but so far the Green Party has just 22 candidates running in the province's 93 ridings.
More Green candidates are on the way, said Furstenau, who has one of the party's two seats but is changing ridings ahead of the next election. The Greens' other seat belongs to Saanich North and the Islands MLA Adam Olsen, who in June announced he is retiring.
Furstenau said she is confident her party isn't running out of time even as the election narrative has focused on the NDP, the surging Conservative Party of B.C., and B.C. United.
"Of course I would like everything to move as fast as possible. I do go back to 2020 when we got 77 candidates nominated and on the ballots in 11 days. So I know we have the capacity to really step that up.
"But I'm really grateful to our small but very hardworking field team right now. And what I can tell you is I know that there are a very significant number of candidates coming through the processes right now.”
