Highlights of the Green Party Platform
Source: http://www.vangreens.ca
Arts and Culture
Work collaboratively with arts groups, neighbourhoods and citizens to create a Culture 2050 Plan — a long-term vision of where Vancouver will be by 2050 as a city of culture. Protect and enhance the arts and creative culture; ensure accessible affordable studio and gallery space; prioritize local procurement for public art.
Community
Continue building relations and reconciliation with First Nations including ways to acknowledge Vancouver’s location on the traditional unceeded territories of the Coast Salish First Nations, such as re-naming of places and streets
Support initiatives that make Vancouver a more welcoming city for new immigrants.
Nurture place-based strategies to build healthy communities especially in inner-city neighbourhoods and to design our city with children in mind, like the Harlem Children’s Zone.
Advocate for a $10/day childcare plan as recommended by the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC.
Support initiatives that celebrate our city’s diversity and encourage compassion and non-violence.
Initiate actions to build volunteerism and community spirit, such as Calgary’s program, “Do Three Things for Calgary”.
Neighbourhood and planning
More open data files on land use planning, including how much growth is possible under current zoning.
Provide support to neighbourhood representatives to genuinely involve the public in city decisions, like the Community Vision Implementation Committees that were funded in Vancouver until 2010, and Portland’s Office of Neighbourhood Involvement where neighbourhood associations are supported with staff, resources and recognition in order to collaboratively work on land use and planning issues.
Assess cumulative impacts of development on infrastructure and city services and ensure there are adequate funds to upgrade and expand public amenities to meet growth, including community centres, childcare facilities, firehalls, parks, pools and libraries.
Produce a new Official Community Plan, with a “livable city” instead of a “growth strategy” as its goal.
Revamp our planning process to genuinely engage citizens. Establish and fund representative Neighbourhood Councils, like Portland, Oregon that engage in planning and land use decisions from the start, and co-create community development and transportation projects in a collaborative, bottom-up not top-down process.
Establish new urban design guidelines for livability in terms of people’s mental and physical health, for placemaking and to combat social isolation.
Housing
Our priority is on policies that deliver and protect affordable homes for the people who live and work in Vancouver rather than policies that deliver commodity products for investors or part-time residents.
Adopt the standard definition of affordability used by our provincial and federal governments: a household spending no more that 30 percent of gross income on housing.
Develop a specific plan to protect existing affordable housing.
Labour and Living Wage
Adopt a Living Wage policy, like New Westminster did in 2011, to make Vancouver a Living Wage Employer requiring all companies contracted or subcontracted to provide services on city property pay their employees a living wage as calculated by the Living Wage for Families Campaign.
Advocate for increases to welfare rates