VICTORIA – Today was scheduled to be the last day of the fall legislative session. When the B.C. Liberals locked the doors of the legislature again this fall, it was more than legislators who were left out in the cold.

Premier Clark’s decision to cancel the fall session of the legislature hurt millions of British Columbians who depend on effective, accessible public services – from the most vulnerable waiting for a real poverty reduction plan, to families being crushed by rising costs for things like ferries and hydro, to communities needing better medical care and people concerned about access to safe, locally grown food.

Here are just some of the many issues that the B.C. Liberals have ducked by failing to follow the fixed legislative calendar:

B.C.’s vital services are being badly mismanaged by the B.C. Liberals

• B.C. Ferries, a vital part of coastal transportation infrastructure, is being buffeted by skyrocketing fares, leading to plummeting ridership. The government’s response is to cut services even further. Meanwhile, executives at the quasi-privatized corporation are receiving huge salary packages, even as coastal communities lose the vital links they’ve depended on for more than a generation.
• B.C. Hydro’s rates are about to rocket upward, even after the premier told voters before the election that rates would be kept low. In fact, the rate increases are a result of Liberal mismanagement; their foolhardy decision to make billions of dollars in commitments to private companies is forcing the Crown corporation into debt, leaving it no choice but to transfer the costs onto residential, commercial and industrial ratepayers.
• Compounding the problems at B.C. Hydro, instead of allowing the independent B.C. Utilities Commission do its job of looking out for the interests of ratepayers and review rate increases, the government is reviewing the commission as part of its core review. There’s every reason to worry the Liberals could further reduce the impact of the BCUC under their core review.

B.C.’s economy is under-performing and not meeting the needs of all British Columbians

• Despite the lip service paid by the B.C. Liberals, British Columbia’s job growth is the worst in Canada. In the months that have passed since the last time the legislature convened, 18,000 full-time jobs have vanished from British Columbia. The Liberal jobs plan has been a failure, and even the finance minister has admitted job creation numbers are falling short.
• While workers go without jobs, economic opportunities are lost because we don’t have the skilled workers to meet present and future needs – and companies are setting up job fairs in Europe just to find suitable workers.
• Life is increasingly unaffordable for families and B.C. once again has the highest level of child poverty in all of Canada. One in four kids experiencing poverty lives in a family with at least one working parent. Reducing child and family poverty requires action and leadership like a real poverty reduction plan – something the B.C. Liberals have refused to provide.

Our long-term environmental and social vibrancy are in danger

• The B.C. Liberals’ plan to scrap the Agricultural Land Reserve and dismantle the body that oversees it, turning important decisions about agricultural land over to the Oil and Gas Commission, was revealed this fall. The threat remains, and unanswered questions about this scheme abound. Chief among those questions is why Pat Pimm – who attempted to meddle in the independent work done by the commission while undermining agriculture in B.C. – is still the agriculture minister.
• The Liberal government has failed to stand up for B.C. against the Enbridge pipeline, and has made it clear this province’s environment is up for sale for the right price. Instead of listening to British Columbians who say bringing increased tanker traffic along our North Coast is too risky for our environment and our economy, they handed over approval of the pipeline to the federal government. New Democrats continue to press for B.C. to withdraw from the Equivalency Agreement and let British Columbia have the final say. But the deadline for doing so is Dec. 1.

Health care problems are getting worse due to Liberals’ bogus budget

• Chaos continues to grow at Fraser Health, with more examples of hallway medicine and inadequate staffing levels. In one particularly egregious example, an elderly blind woman was discharged from Delta Hospital at 2 a.m. The Liberals have yet to show a real commitment to quality health care in B.C.’s fastest growing region.
• Doctor shortages are still acute in some rural areas. In Kaslo, for example, the emergency room will be reduced to part time permanently beginning in January because of lack of doctors.
• The outrageous and uncaring wheelchair tax remains in place, meaning some seniors are left with the choice of mobility or other necessities of life.

Important social services have been ignored by the Liberals, and the concept of fairness has been abandoned

• With no legislature sitting, Premier Clark has failed to live up to her promise to the Chinese community to issue an apology for historic wrongs like the Chinese head tax.
• B.C.’s Child and Youth Advocate, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, reported that the Liberals wasted $66 million on high level organizational change rather than using that money to support front-line services for aboriginal children and youth in care.
• The report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry has sat on a shelf for a full year. Not a single one of the 63 recommendations from Commissioner Oppal’s report has been fully implemented.

Timely legislation could have been brought forward, debated and passed.

• The legislature could have introduced and passed a motion supporting the overdue abolition of the scandal-plagued senate.
• Local government election reforms, promised since 2010, are still outstanding. Potential municipal leaders are preparing to run for office in less than a year, yet the rules for the election are not clear because the Liberals have dragged their feet on implementing changes.
• The Liberals have been promising modernization of the Water Act and could have been debating it this fall if there had been a session. Instead, we still haven’t seen the long-overdue draft legislation.
• Despite the B.C. Liberals’ only answer to economic growth lying with the possibility of an LNG industry in the future, they failed to even bring forward the proposed tax regime that potential investors are looking for.