Vancouver City Councillor
— NDP’s Mark dreams of minister role, while Greens’ Fry keen to surprise in long-orange riding.
Active in civic politics, Fry won 47,000 votes when he ran for city council in 2014. Not quite enough to win a seat, but he noted he was the top vote-getter in the Strathcona, Mount Pleasant and Britannia neighbourhoods, all of which are within Vancouver-Mount Pleasant. “I know I have solid support in this riding,” he said.
Currently, MSP premiums are charged to anyone who lives in B.C. for six months or longer and requires them to pay monthly premiums for health care coverage. If you earn $30,000 a year in British Columbia, you are paying the same rate for MSP Premiums as someone who is earning $3,000,000 a year, making MSP premiums a regressive tax on British Columbians.
John Colebourn, The Province:
Longtime social activist and Strathcona resident Pete Fry is officially running for the Green Party in the upcoming provincial byelection in Vancouver-Mount Pleasant.
Premier Christy Clark has until early January to call the byelection, necessitated by the resignation of longtime NDP MLA Jenny Kwan.
Kwan ran successfully for the NDP in the recent federal election in Vancouver East, a riding held by the NDP’s Libby Davies since 1997.
“We haven’t had an MLA since July, and that’s certainly one of the things that’s resonating with people on the doorstep,” Fry told the Straight in a recent phone interview. Last August, Gail Yvonne Sparrow ruminated about taking another stab at Vancouver-Mount Pleasant. In 2001, the former Musqueam Nation chief ran for the B.C. Liberals …
Continue reading “With Jenny Kwan off to Ottawa, Vancouver-Mount Pleasant waits for new MLA”
Rent control is another obvious solution, but in a free enterprise housing market—where renovictions are a thing, and the provincial Residential Tenancy Act is in desperate need of overhaul—there is potential for pushback from industry. Arguably rent control could be seen as a disincentive for new rental builds, although cities like New York have managed to make renter protection a condition of rezonings.
But there is a tool that hasn’t been subject to much discussion in our province, one that might bring some relief to beleaguered British Columbians: a renter’s tax credit.