ASK Salt Spring: Answered - Ep. 61 Rob Botterell, Green MLA

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

Ask Salt Spring Answered's Damian Inwood speaks to Rob Botterell, Green Party MLA for Saanich North and the Islands about the federal election, proportional representation and more.

You're listening to episode 61 of Ask Salt Spring Answered in which we talk to Green Party MLA Rob Botterell. Okay, I'm here with Rob Botterell, Green Party MLA. Hi Rob, nice to see you. Hey, how are you today? We've been in Ask Salt Spring and this is Ask Salt Spring answered on Cheer FM. Yeah, so interesting week in politics, obviously with the federal election. And I see we talked about one of the initial things was about the all-party special committee on election reform that you will be part of for the province of BC not for the federal election

system but you made some interesting comments about how the federal election broke down in relation to seat allocation and perhaps just talk a little bit about that. Sure, absolutely happy to. So both federally and provincially we have a first past the post system and it generates results that don't always reflect the voters choices in proportion to the vote and so I think the example I used was that federally the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois both got around 6% 6.3% of the vote and yet the Bloc Quebecois had 22 seats and I think the NDP are at six seats federally and that is not unusual and then there's other effects of the first pass the post system which is that very often voters are voting against or voting to avoid a particular outcome rather than voting for what

they would what they believe in. And so as part of the Democratic and Electoral Reform review provincially that's just getting underway will be looking at proportional representation and other ways to ensure the system is fair. I think everybody agrees that the last time this was tried it was a bit of a disaster because the question was so difficult to understand. Hopefully you guys have pledged, I think, to try and simplify that somewhat with your recommendations. I don't know exactly how that's going to work, but what do you think? Yeah, so I don't think there's anybody that would disagree with you or disagree with the view that the referendum question, the

last referendum in BC was indecipherable. Even Premier Eby, who is responsible for the drafting of the question, agrees in retrospect. The special committee will is comprised of NDP members, conservatives, and one Green myself, and will certainly be making sure that whatever our recommendations are on electoral reform, that they don't involve indecipherable referendum questions. And, you know, in fact, in some other jurisdictions, such as New Zealand, they actually passed legislation and tried out proportional representation for a couple of elections and then had a referendum afterwards to see if they wanted to continue and sort of got away

from a highly complex question. Yeah and I think you know when you mentioned that in the meeting there seemed to be pretty widespread support for that that idea from the people at Ask Salt Spring. I noticed lots of people nodding and and saying they thought that was good. So the process here is that in May, there's going to be an opportunity to sign up and make submissions. And I guess there's going to be some public hearings of some kind, right?

Yeah, so the final work plan is not, we hope to have that settled next week. But what it's looking like is there will be a sign-up period in May to make submissions to the committee and some of those will be through public hearings, some will be through Zoom, others folks may just want to send in written submissions and in June there will likely be some internal work of the committee and then in July we'll go on the road and seek more submissions and August we'll do some analysis and September we'll start our deliberations and then by November we'll have a report publicly released with recommendations for everybody to consider. Okay well we look forward to that. Now I think you also

talked about the the Bill 7, the NDP's legislation with regards to their response to the US tariffs, right? And that I think you said you've been working this week actually on making sure it's not an overreaching bill that gives them more power than you think is appropriate. And I think they have scaled it back a bit, haven't they, because I think they've admitted that in fact they went too far initially and that there weren't enough I guess guardrails or whatever on the legislation. Where is it at right now? So where it's at right now is you're right the most objectionable part of the legislation has been taken out and then the balance the legislation which deals with

reducing inter-provincial trade barriers, directing procurement away from the US government procurement and then looking if needed at tolls and other fees that relate to American goods, that that's what we're working through clause by clause. And the key is that we need to make sure there's lots of transparency around the decisions that governments makes and that there's legislative oversight. So as we work through the legislation we're making sure that's the case and where it isn't we're going to be continuing to recommend amendments. Okay what's the time frame on this bill that should go through fairly quickly shouldn't it?

Hard to say. The conservative colleagues of mine are, I mean I'm green, but the conservatives in the committee are spending a lot of time on each clause. So it could be another, you know, a few weeks before we actually complete the deliberations on Bill 7. Okay now we talked about health care and housing couple of developments there one was about community health care and I guess there's a review that's being done by Penny Ballum can you talk about that a bit? Sure yeah part of our agreement with the NDP our accord with the Green NDP Accord,

is that we would look to expand community health centers across the province and to prepare for that and to determine how community health centers will fit within the overall health care system. Penny Ballem is doing a review and and you know later this probably by the end of the summer we'll have recommendations on how and where to consider community health centers. So that so we're making some progress on that and that certainly will be something I'm sure that's of interest to Salt Spring Islanders in trying to make sure that everybody has access to a doctor or a nurse practitioner and has the breadth of health care they need. Now on the housing question, I think you said that the minister will be coming

to Saltspring Island this summer. Yeah, I asked Minister Ravi Kalan if he would be prepared to spend a day with us on Saltspring. That'll be later this year, and he said yes, which is great news because I really think it's important for the minister responsible for housing and for BC housing and affordable housing to see firsthand the challenges that Salt Spring Island has and to both get an appreciation of what tools are going to

be needed provincially. I mean there's tools at other levels of government but provincial tools that need to be available to tackle the housing crisis particularly for workers on Salt Spring and and and if some of those tools need modifications to understand what, what those modifications would be. So I'm, um, I'm working with the minister's office to set up that date and hoping we'll have a really productive day with the minister. Right.

Um, I think there was a, a representative from the North Salt Spring Water District at the meeting and they talked about the fact that they don't have the legislative power to decide where the water goes in terms of directing it all to affordable housing as opposed to just general, you know, housing, I guess, water units or whatever. I'm not quite sure what the terminology is there. But you said you want to totally focus on affordable housing.

Is there a way that we can actually get extra water that's going to be coming on stream from the water district to actually go to affordable housing? Well, I think it's something we need to explore. You know it would be kind of ironic if because of the regulatory framework the additional water that's available was utilized by residential development that isn't affordable and what I mean by that is you know the the the higher-end housing and so what I said in the meeting is I definitely want to explore that there may not be anything we can do but boy we should at least try

and look at it because from certainly my experience and what I've heard is that the major major issue on Salt Spring is affordable housing for workers that are living here right now. Right okay. Now you were asked an interesting question about, excuse me, about whether you're satisfied with the government's meeting its climate emissions targets and you answered very vehemently that you were not, 250 percent you said. What's actually happening with that? Well the government is missing its legislative targets for 2030 for climate action and reduction in CO2 emissions by a pretty big margin and where we have focused our efforts is on establishing

the review of CleanBC and we've worked with the NDP to establish the terms of reference for that work and we're really looking to see a reset so that we can put in place the measures to get back on track to tackle climate change and we'll see where we go with that but for us the status quo is really unacceptable so we have to find new and better ways to actually achieve these targets because climate change is accelerating.

Well I think you said it was a line in the sand for you and their response would, or you would depend on their response to decide whether or not you would renew your agreement with them? Yeah, I mean from from my perspective the you know the agreement we have with the NDP is an annual agreement and there's a lot riding on the CleanBC review and whether there is a reset to actually get us back on track. So you know you never want to be definitive but for us it's a real line in the sand to see major progress and to get back on track. Well is this climate action review gonna happen in time for you to make that decision or is it gonna be one

of these government things that drags on and on? Well it's a pretty tight timeline so you know the terms of reference for the work will be released publicly in the next couple of weeks and then everybody's going to be rolling up their sleeves so we're certainly doing everything we can to get the information and find out the results of that by this fall. Now one other thing that came up was a very sad Lapu Lapu festival tragedy that we've all read about and seen on television and I think you said that you were quite concerned that there shouldn't be a knee-jerk reaction to

that in terms of I guess dealing with mental health issues. Yeah I mean the position of the Green Caucus and and our position is that, you know, there's, we need an update of the Mental Health Act, we need an approach to mental health challenges that's compassionate and that actually focuses on addressing issues and you know the Lapu Lapu Festival tragedy is just horrific and I can't express enough of my condolences for everybody impacted but we also need to impacted, but we also need to recognize that that was one individual and we need to see where the investigation takes us in terms of the contribution of mental health issues to that. But our overall approach for all British Columbians needs to be guided by you know careful consideration

of issues and and and not not move to a sort of a reactive approach where we make a whole bunch of changes based on this one horrific incident, and be careful to continue to follow the science as we set public policy? Yeah, this is a very difficult issue. And I mean, the question of mandatory care for people who are suffering from severe mental problems is one I think is tied up in the courts right right now isn't it that there's been I think the civil liberties people have have challenged the validity of that and so

it's it's gonna take a while isn't it before we we get to any kind of legislation in any event I imagine well I think think that the path forward is that we need a continuum of care. We need to invest the resources to involuntary treatment and wraparound support and that involuntary treatment needs to be a very last resort and so you know that's that's certainly our position that's what we've been pressing for and and so getting that right means investing the resources early. I, you know, expansion of involuntary care there's already I believe 20,000 British Columbians that are in some form of involuntary care so it's not as if we don't have involuntary care now but we need the update of the Mental Health Act and we need to be really careful

about how we move in that direction and make sure that it is indeed a very, very last resort. Yeah. Now, one other issue that did come up and it was one I wasn't familiar with was the shiny geranium problem. I gather you weren't familiar with that one either, but these are the kind of things that come up at these meetings. Yeah, I mean I love these meetings because there's so many people on Salt Spring, Salt Spring Islanders with a lot of wisdom and experience and issues that I haven't heard about before.

And so, you know, I've always been out broom bashing, which I was last week in terms of Spanish broom, which is another invasive species. So here is another invasive species that we need to address. And I said in the meeting, I definitely put it on the radar of the Minister of Transportation and Highways to you know sort of look at that and and see what we can do but You know you've got to tackle invasive species early or you'll never

Catch up to them which which I think was why the constituent brought it to this meeting which is great. Yeah okay good well thanks very much for coming in Rob, always good to see you and we'll see you in another month and you've been listening to Ask Salt Spring Answered on Shear FM. Great thanks a lot see you next month. Okay thanks bye bye. Great yeah.