What skills, professional experience, and personal attributes make you an effective representative for your riding in the Legislature?
I became MLA for Nanaimo in 2019 and re-elected in 2020. I have served as Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, and was most recently appointed by David Eby as Minister Social Development and Poverty Reduction.

Previously, I was elected four times to the Islands Trust Council, serving six years as Chair, championing fair ferry service, marine safety, oil spill prevention, and signing a government-to-government protocol between the Snuneymuxw First Nation and the Islands Trust. This established a relationship of respect and cooperation in planning, land use management, and heritage conservation.

In 2015, I was elected as federal MP for Nanaimo-Ladysmith where I advocated for solutions to vessel abandonment, oil spill prevention, and women’s equality.

Having served as a representative for the people of Nanaimo in different capacities, not just learning about concerns, but taking action for the needs of our community, I would be honoured to continue as representative for the people of Nanaimo – Gabriola Island and ensuring our community gets the progress it needs.

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Cost of living challenges continue to mount, with everyday items and activities becoming increasingly unaffordable. What specific examples of this have you seen in the riding, and what areas would you advocate for to bring relief to residents?
British Columbia and Nanaimo-Gabriola specifically, is a great place to live but it is expensive. I hear from people that they cannot keep up with global inflation, housing costs, and putting good food on the table.

We want people to be able to get ahead and feel secure. We have worked to make life more affordable by cutting average child care costs in half, eliminating MSP premiums, reducing car insurance rates (and then freezing them), stabilizing hydro rates, more than doubling the BC Family Benefit, and building affordable housing for people while taking on housing speculators that drive up housing costs. We have also made transit free for kids 12 and under, and announced free transit for seniors in off-peak hours.

At the same time, we are building an economy with higher paying jobs and training people for those jobs, including a skills grant for short-term training for in demand jobs. BC has some of the lowest unemployment and the strongest wage growth of any province.

We have to keep taking action to help people build a good life for themselves and their families.

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The need for additional housing stock in the region is widely recognized, with various approaches proposed or underway to build more homes, faster, which in turn should reduce costs for renters and home buyers. What specific housing needs have you identified in the riding, and how would you address those needs as the riding’s MLA?
You would never know it, but we have already built over 1200+ affordable housing units, have five active BC Housing projects underway in Nanaimo, and recently announced the first ever affordable housing project on Gabriola Island.

A huge thanks to Gabriola Housing Society for your tenacity and patience; it took this grassroots group forming to get to where we are today. Our region is one of the fastest growing populations in all of Canada so there is always more work to be done to keep up.

We are standing up to real estate speculators, cutting red tape, breaking down barriers to construction, and have an action plan that experts say will create 300,000 additional middle-class homes.

We have worked to eliminate local government regulations that cause housing shortage by blocking small unit developments like townhouses, duplexes, and triplexes. Experts say this is kickstarting construction of thousands of homes.

We are also making it easier to build and rent out secondary suites, and using public land to build more middle class housing.

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Local advocacy groups are calling for immediate investment in primary healthcare services across the central and northern Island regions, including additional capital investments for Nanaimo Regional General Hospital. What steps will you take to improve access to healthcare in the riding, particularly with regard to primary care physicians and access to specialists?
We’re seeing signs of progress—like connecting 400K more British Columbians with a family doctor or nurse practitioner. We announced 3 new ambulances to serve Nanaimo and surrounding areas, and median surgical times are down 15.7% on the island vs wait times under the Rustad’s government.

After years of work meeting with physicians at NRGH, Island Health, and pushing hard within Government, we have invested over $700 million in expanded health care at NRGH; including a new cancer centre, a newly announced patient tower at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, and my advocacy will continue until everyone in Nanaimo Gabriola gets the quality care they deserve.

To meet the demand, we’ve added 128 spaces to the UBC medical school and are building a new medical school in Surrey to train the next generation of doctors. More than 6,300 new nurses have been hired just in the last year, and B.C.’s nursing workforce is growing faster than any other province.

We are breaking down barriers to bring internationally trained healthcare workers off the sidelines and into our hospitals and clinics with over 2,000 nurses and over 900 doctors with credentials now recognized in BC.

Editor’s note: Candidate responses were limited to 200 words. Any responses exceeding this limit are trimmed as noted. Answers are published otherwise unedited by NanaimoNewsNOW, with the exception of paragraph spacing to aid readability.