With the provincial election less than two weeks way, Liberal candidate Steve Darling held a “platform announcement” at his Hastings Street campaign office on Thursday.
A small crowd gathered to hear the former Global B.C. morning show host talk about what his plans are for Burnaby-Lougheed.
“We just thought it was a good time to give people a chance, a week and a couple of days, to digest what I was about. Stuff that’s announced long ago, people will forget about,” he told the NOW after the event.
So what does Darling intend to do if he’s elected?
His first order of business would be to create an affordable housing task force within the first 60 days of taking office. The task force would “develop a localized solution” to increase the housing supply in the riding.
“I want to bring everyone into a group together. ... Those ideas could be completely off the wall and crazy, but sometimes those are the ones that work,” said Darling.
Also on affordable housing, the MLA hopeful said he’ll work with SFU to double student housing and collaborate with the City of Burnaby to rezone certain areas of the riding for new “live/work residences.”
On the Kinder Morgan pipeline, Darling toed the party line about the province’s five conditions.
“My job now as an MLA is to make sure those are followed to the letter,” he said. “It was not a decision I made, it was not a decision the provincial government made, it was a decision the federal government made. I just have to try and protect the coast as best I can.”
On education, Darling said he’ll fight for a portion of the party’s three-year, $2-billion investment for K-12 schools. His platform focuses on “steady progress” on seismic upgrades for Burnaby schools as well as creating more SFU grads in the tech, engineering and math disciplines.
Darling wants to set up a task force for that, too.
“Now that the Supreme Court ruling is over and the government has put in a tremendous amount of money in to the budget, now we have to start (asking), what are we doing next? What is education going to look like for the next 50 years? The only way is to actually hear from teachers themselves, what works in the classroom, what doesn’t,” he said.
Near the end of his speech, Darling choked up when talking about his wife and kids. He said their support has meant the world to him.
“Win or lose, whatever happens, I know we gave a really good shot at it. And with them behind me, it’s made everything worthwhile.”
