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B.C. Liberals leadership candidate profile: Mike de Jong

Funding for public transportation comes with need for higher density
According to Mike de Jong, providing provincial funding to extend public transportation throughout t
According to Mike de Jong, providing provincial funding to extend public transportation throughout the Lower Mainland is one way to ease Vancouver’s housing crisis.

The Courier reached out to the six B.C. Liberal politicians vying to become leader of the party this week. Each candidate was asked the same questions for a short profile of their views on issues facing Vancouverites.

Providing provincial funding to extend public transportation throughout the Lower Mainland is one way to ease Vancouver’s housing crisis, says Mike de Jong.

But, he says, that pledge comes with a caveat: local governments along the routes have to agree to higher density.

“The biggest contributor to the rapid escalation in [housing] prices is the imbalance between demand and the delays in addressing supply,” he says. “In order for a home to be affordable, it must be available.”

He says there are 120,000 units stuck in the municipal approval process, which can sometimes take six years.

One of the things the province can do is enhance funding to train and employ more planning personnel.

As well, “my view is developments of 50 units or less should receive a decision within 10 months. I’d make that a legal requirement.”

It also makes “eminent sense” to support and expand the public transit system to make it easier for people to live in areas where land and real estate is less expensive.

“Transit systems are built to move people and when you build them, people can live farther away,” he says. “What we’re seeing is a reluctance of the part of local governments, and sometimes local neighbourhoods, to see their neighbourhoods grow.”

The Abbotsford MLA envisions expanding public transit as far as Chilliwack. “We won’t get there overnight,” he says. As the system grows, development along the corridor needs to grow as well “so people can walk out of their home and onto a SkyTrain and be at work in Vancouver or Burnaby inside of an hour.”

In the last provincial election, which cost the Liberals the government after losing their stronghold in the Lower Mainland, many parents responded to the NDP’s promise of less expensive daycare.

De Jong said, as leader, he would help parents by expanding all-day kindergarten to children who are four years old. Offering kindergarten to children who are a year younger would better prepare them for elementary school and also provide financial relief to parents.

As leader, “I’d stop short of additional pledges until we see the fiscal situation we inherit,” he says.

When it comes to the opioid crisis, de Jong supports enhancing counselling, services and early intervention but he also draws on his experience as a drug prosecutor.

“While we wrestle with the question of how to assist those with addictions and who are risking their lives taking street-level drugs that they know might kill them, the province will need to send a strong signal that those who traffic, these merchants of death, that they will be dealt with more harshly. Prosecutors can be instructed to request harsher sentences. This epidemic is costing thousands of lives and those who perpetuate it need to know they are killing people and should be judged accordingly.”

Asked about his campaign, de Jong says he’s “extremely positive” about his own chances of winning the leadership vote. He says the “great line-up” of leadership candidates speaks well of the Liberals’ talent pool.