Women Politicians In Canada

"Let me be clear as well that improvements of public transit and rapid transit do help drivers as well, because if we can provide people with options for moving around, then even though not everybody can leave their car at home every single day and take the bus, if we can give people the options to take the bus, then that actually leaves more room on the roads for drivers."

"We, as a society, have grown so car-centric that we somehow have allowed ourselves to fall into the trap of believing that personal vehicles are the only way to get around in an urban setting and that failing to invest every transportation dollar into roadways is somehow a disservice to society. I absolutely insist it is not. We must recognize that when it comes to transportation planning, the goal is to move as many people and as much goods around as possible, as time-efficiently as possible, for as little money per trip as possible, expending as few GHGs as possible, while ensuring safety is a core consideration. Doing that means being more of what I might refer to as being mode-agnostic and mode-diverse. Cars, bikes, buses, trucks, trains, gondolas, ferries, SeaBuses and shoes — they are all valid ways to get around. It is not about cars; it is about people. And people can move around in a whole lot of different ways. For the North Shore, our commitment to public transportation as a way forward is absolutely critical. You know what? Whether it’s more SeaBuses, more buses, new routes or aspirational concepts like underwater tunnels for transit, SkyTrain to the North Shore, or more, it’s time for us to shift the conversation from the question of how we move cars around to how we move more people around. That’s why we must also commit to encouraging active transportation options as a way to allow people the choice of leaving their cars at home so that existing roadway capacity can be better utilized for goods movement and used by people who depend on their cars to get around. If done properly, biking infrastructure is an effective way of keeping cars off of our roads. Let’s be absolutely clear, however. Being pro–public transit and pro–active transportation doesn’t mean that the family of six that depends on their car to shuttle their children to school and soccer games should be forced to leave their car at home. It means that the options to allow other people, like myself, to get off of the roadways and onto my bicycle or onto a bus is available so that that family of six can get around in their vehicle more quickly. It also means that the ability for their children to travel by bus on their own when they’re old enough and responsible enough exists so that their parents are not transporting them around until they have their own driver’s licence or their own vehicle. It is about choice. It is about health. It is about freedom. It’s about people."

"I’d like to talk very specifically today about the issue of urban congestion, as I recognize that rural and remote communities face and experience transportation challenges very differently."

"My English name is Bowinn Ma, but in Chinese, it’s Ma Bo Wen. Ma literally translates as “horse,” which is the family name, and Bo Wen literally translates to “plentiful script.” But what it means can be roughly translated as “ocean of knowledge” or “broad scholar.” It means someone who has a broad understanding of many things and someone who has the wisdom to use this knowledge in a good way. It represents what my parents and grandparents had hoped I would become as an adult. In English, my name is just a name, a series of sounds used to identify me. But in my traditional language, those two simple syllables are a culmination of all of the hopes and dreams that my family have had of me since my birth — aspirations that could never truly be translated properly across cultures in as succinct a way."

"I will be supporting this throne speech because climate change, poverty, opioid overdoses, homelessness and hopelessness — these are all real issues. I do believe that this should not be a question of whether or not we can afford to resolve them, but rather a question of whether we, as a society, can afford not to."

"Although my parents did the best that they could, like most families, they were not perfect. There were many years when life at home was not good. So I stayed away from that home for as much as possible. I hung out, out of the house, after dark, maybe far longer than I should have. I snuck out at night. I skipped classes. I was aggressive. I was argumentative. I was combative. My grades dropped significantly. It was a public school teacher that turned it all around for me — a public school teacher that noticed that something wasn’t quite right and that I was squandering my potential. I remember her coming up to me in the halls of my high school one afternoon after school. She grabbed me by the shoulders, turned me around and said: “Bowinn” — pardon me — “what are you doing? You’re ruining your life. You need to snap out of this. You need to do this better.” I turned my life around. Instead of hanging out after dark, I spent a lot of time at my school, in after-school programs. I put a lot more effort into my classes. I eventually graduated and went to UBC. I became an engineer, and now I’m an MLA. But what would have happened to me if my teachers had been too stressed out, too overworked, too under-resourced to be able to notice that I was struggling? What would have happened? What happens to the people who attend schools when schools are no longer able to function as the critical component of the social safety net that they are? What happens when children are not caught before they fall? I wonder, often, what would have happened to me if I had grown up not in the ’90s but under back-to-back B.C. Liberal governments."

"British Columbians can see through rhetoric that contradicts their own lived experiences. Under the previous government, while the province enjoyed a surplus, it was the people of British Columbia, the people of North Vancouver, my parents, my family members, my community, my friends, my colleagues who paid and paid dearly for it."

"I became an MLA because I could no longer stand idly by while I learned more and more about how the previous government was hurting the people I loved. They were hurting members of my family, my community, my neighbours, my colleagues, my friends — and hurt they have been."

"The reality is that the climate crisis has arrived and it is here in British Columbia. Those are not one-off events. They will continue to take place. They will continue to hit British Columbia even as we do work to take on climate change and make progress on climate action. We’ve got to be ready.”"

"I want to sincerely thank everyone who has reached out to encourage me to enter the leadership race. I've been humbled and overwhelmed by the number of people who wanted to pledge their support; your faith in me means more than I have the words to describe. Politics is a weird and often frustrating arena to work in. What keeps me centred, grounded, and *going* is being able to spend time face-to-face with the people of our North Vancouver community. With everything that keeps me busy as an MLA and Minister of State, I really cherish the limited time I have to connect with and directly serve local community members. I know that being Premier isn't for me. I've been speaking with David Eby. He's a person of great integrity and someone that I've respected and admired since before I was elected. I've made my priorities around action on climate very clear to Dave. I believe that he can lead our province into a thriving future and will support him if he runs."

"Here's the thing: I'm not in politics to play games. I try to be thoughtful about when, where, how I express myself, but I'm obstinate on some issues; even recalcitrant at times. So I want to be up front to whoever becomes our new leader about what they can expect from me. When I envision a hopeful future, I see a sunset to the fossil fuel industry; complete, walkable & bikable communities connected by mass transit throughout the province; universal housing for everyone who needs it; families who don’t have to worry about their kids’ futures. For a future everyone can thrive in, we need to act on #ClimateChange as a Grand Challenge of our time. As important as it is to cool people down, put out fires, rebuild infrastructure, it's also not enough. We have to prevent these catastrophes from occurring to begin with. I want a leader who believes that addressing the #ClimateEmergency is a moral imperative; who will take an unambiguous stance against the expansion of fossil fuel extraction, including LNG, and end measures designed to incentivize the industry. I'm really worried about the serious environmental, social, and economic impacts of car dependency and believe that we can't afford to further entrench it. I’ll be pushing you for legislative reform and increased investments to make 🚍🚶🚴🧑‍🦽 truly viable choices for people. Expect me to be outspoken at the tables you appoint me to. Know that I hate bullshit and being pushed around. We need to be unafraid of facing down established power, especially when the stakes are high. Let's challenge the failures of capitalism with public solutions."

"British Columbia has experienced an extreme weather event and we are seeing the impacts of the climate emergency in real-time. Although the atmospheric river has now passed, floods and mudslides continue to impact safe travel throughout the province."

"Climate change is real. Climate change is deadly. Climate change is here. The changes we must make to address this crisis will at times be as difficult and uncomfortable as they are necessary. It won't be easy, but I've found reasons to be hopeful. People are demanding more to be done and pushing govts (incl ours) to deliver that change..."

"Right now, the region is more interested in looking at options for rapid transit than they are for more lanes on those bridges, especially given that our local road networks can't quite handle more volume of traffic. People on the North Shore want choice."

"Sad and disappointed to see campaigns underway to cancel supportive housing for vulnerable women and their children. I know that #NorthVan is more compassionate than this. Join me building support for this project: https://letstalkhousingbc.ca/north-vancouver-west-16"

"Do not despair, my dear friends; instead, let us redouble our commitment to life beyond the pandemic in the actions we must take today."

"Votes are not owned, they're earned. And I will continue to work hard every single day for as long as I have the honour of serving North Vancouver-Lonsdale to deserve their support."

"Campaigns are normally very, very social. Politics is absolutely a team sport. And doing all of these campaign activities from separate homes and not being able to gather … it’s far more challenging to feed off each other's energy, even on the Zoom call."

"Young women deserve a province that encourages them to take on leadership roles without fear of sexism. If we want more young women, and more people of colour to enter politics, we must commit to creating environments that respect that."

"As a woman who has worked in male-dominated industries my entire life so far, I am sadly no stranger to casual sexism. Like many women in these situations, I found myself making choices about the way that I act, dress, or carry myself to avoid having sexist interpretations read into my interactions – interactions such as, for instance, deliberately speaking closely with an elder who is very hard of hearing. It is a burden that women should not have to bear while they are simply trying to live their lives and do their jobs. The video of BC Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson watching on as a multi-term BC Liberal North Shore MLA sexualized my interactions with another multi-term BC Liberal North Shore MLA is a deeply uncomfortable characterization of my efforts to extend kindness across partisan lines. However, this is not about me. Young women deserve a province that encourages them to take on leadership roles without fear of sexism. If we want more young women and people of colour to enter politics, we must commit to creating environments that respect them. The comments and reactions in that video do the exact opposite."

"The choice we made to support TransLink in ensuring that public transit service is available to people as we restart will play a critical role in supporting the workforce as they return to work. Our government’s steadfast commitment as a funding partner in the Mayors’ Council’s 10-Year Vision, the largest transit investment in history, will result in continued transit improvements throughout the region, making life better for everyone."

"As the Parliamentary Secretary for TransLink, I have the privilege of supporting a government and an organization committed to public transit. As a public transit and SeaBus user myself, I love encouraging people to take and support environmentally and socially responsible modes of transportation. Public transit is good for urban mobility and good for people—health-wise, mobility-wise, and to enable strong economic and social justice through the reduction of inequality by providing mobility to all."

"I come from a generation…. I’m a millennial, an elder millennial, probably on the earlier end, in terms of the years that millennials are considered to be millennials. I remember when we, as a generation, sounded the alarm on intergenerational inequality — not just financial inequality, not just on wealth and income, but also on climate and the environment. As a generation, we were told to shut up. We were called “lazy, entitled, naive.” We were told to stop whining, to go get a job. “Come back to the table when you have more experience. Then talk to us about what’s going on. Go out and work really hard, and stop being lazy. Give up your avocado toast and your lattes, and then everything will be fine.” You know what? That’s what we did. We went out, we got jobs, and we put our concerns aside for a while. We lived in smaller homes, rode our bikes, took public transit, composted and recycled, and it didn’t fix the problem. It did not fix the problem, and now we are back. But this time, we won’t stay silent, and you can’t get rid of us. We are in your workforce. We are in your streets. We are supporting people who are even younger than us and encouraging them to speak up, not sit down. We are also in your city councils, and yes, we are in your legislatures. Not that many of us, mind you. Out of 87 MLAs in the B.C. Legislature, only three of us are millennials, despite making up the largest voting bloc today. We make up only less than 3.5 percent of the people who sit in this House and make laws for future generations."

"Our economic and financial system is captured by the fossil fuel industry, and I say this extremely seriously. It’s not just B.C. We see it across Canada. Canada was economically built on resource extraction. I think that it’s important to acknowledge that, and it’s important to respect and be grateful for what resource extraction has done for our country and be grateful for what petroleum products have brought to civilization. But just because we have come from a place where fossil fuels have been embedded into our economic and financial system doesn’t mean that we need to continue forward in that way. We have to transition. We have seen…. I have seen in my time as an MLA here how captured our entire system is by this industry, how it influences the way that individuals see their options for prosperity in certain parts of the country. We have seen the way that it limits the kinds of choices that governments feel like they can make. I have learned about how many wars, how many regime changes, how many sanctions have been placed on countries around the world, based on whether or not they will or won’t play ball in terms of fossil fuel and gas and petroleum exports — in particular, with the United States. This is something that we all need to grapple with as we go forward into actually meeting our climate targets, because it’s not just about emissions. Emissions on their own won’t release us from the grasp of the fossil fuel industry."

"We need to talk about car infrastructure, like roads and bridges. Electric vehicles take up the same amount of space on the road as a gas vehicle. Congestion issues aside, expanding and maintaining car infrastructure is expensive, both in dollars and GHGs. For instance, the cement industry is one of the largest producers of man-made carbon dioxide in the world, producing, by some estimates, 8 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions. That means that if the cement industry were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of CO2 in the world, after China and the U.S. While it is critically important that we electrify our transportation system as soon as possible, there are problems with focusing only on electric vehicles to achieve reductions in the transport sector. That’s exactly why our CleanBC plan doesn’t do that and why it includes so much more than that. Critically important, CleanBC includes a strong emphasis on more environmentally and socially responsible modes of transportation, like public transport and active transportation, along with the recognition that we need to reduce travel distances for people, by building complete communities where people live, work, play, study and shop without going very far. CleanBC demands that we build safe cycling, walking and rolling infrastructure whenever we upgrade bridges or interchanges, and makes an expansion of our public transportation network a top priority."

"I get that the job of an opposition is to oppose. I get that. But they’re supposed to at least oppose on behalf of the people, not themselves. Let me read a quote from the leader of the B.C. Liberals from last year: “We currently have a government where we’re in opposition, and our job is to convince the public that we should form government once again.” I find this quote completely demonstrative of the power motive that drives that party. The role of an opposition party is to challenge government to implement the best possible policies and legislation for the public by ensuring that differing views are expressed and defended, not to plot their way back into power. This motion and the fractured narrative that they’re trying to build is just another pitiful example of how they’re more concerned about playing politics than they are of actually helping people, more concerned about confusing the public than they are in supporting them. I don’t know, and I don’t think they know anymore, who they represent. They are flailing, because without big money in politics, without their big corporate donors telling them what to do, they’re learning the ugly truth of it all. They don’t know how to work for people."

"The revitalization of Indigenous languages is not simply an exercise in translating words. It’s the beginning of the healing of cultures, through which an expression of world view emanates. It speaks to a person’s core identity. Ideas, values, feelings, aspirations, hopes and dreams are communicated in ways that sometimes cannot be done in any other way. It’s about grounding a person; tearing down the walls of isolation; reconnecting them to their ancestors, their community, their family, their environment, their Creator and, indeed, even themselves."

"Housing affordability — I think it would be fair to say — is the number one issue across the province. There are, of course, many other extremely important issues, but housing affordability seems to be at the crux of it all. In my community, over and over, I hear from renters who tell me that if they lose their home in their current rent-controlled apartment, they will end up on the street. In my community, there are 750 members of the population who are homeless."

"We must support this budget because climate change and poverty, opioid overdoses, homelessness and hopelessness are real issues. It should not be a question of whether or not we can afford to resolve them but a question of whether we, as a society, can afford not to. From regulations that manage climate change and the environment to the distribution of social funding and poverty reduction, governments provide the fundamental framework within which companies operate and within which people live, work, succeed, suffer or die. It is a heavy burden, and there are never easy answers. But I am optimistic because I know that the decisions and choices this government has made are informed by learning from the mistakes of the previous government. These are priorities that put people first, not profits. And these are choices that help the many, not the very few at the top."

"I know that housing is top of mind for so many people in North Vancouver. Sixteen years of neglect have allowed our real estate market to get out of control, our rental rates to skyrocket. Waiting lists on our subsidized housing stock run miles long. This issue has generally left hard-working individuals and families behind. It is a huge mess. And now that we have a government made up of people who are ready to work for people, it also means that we now have a government that is actually interested in cleaning up that mess."

"A government serves people, and when a government delivers services, they deliver them to real people — people who live, who laugh, who cry, who suffer, who yell out in pain, who love and are loved."

"We just got blocked because we replied to @MichelleRempel's slanderous posting that Jordan Kent @votejkent was rejected because he was gay. This was proven false but clearly, Michelle Rempel did not appreciate us replying to her post with @LauraLynnTT reasonable & factual video."

"The only reason the Liberals allow the program to continue is a lack of political will and a desire to kowtow to lobby groups advocating for cheap indentured labour."

"All your DMs with DO IT aren't helping. I'm a 35 year old chick. We're not supposed to do these sorts of things, you know."

"I've had people very close to me have their lives completely upended and upset by a lack of action on, and tools for preventing, online harassment."

"You have to have a real love of your sport to carry you through all the bad times."

"My parents taught me that an NDPer in Alberta has to work three times harder than any other politician to earn votes. It's a lesson I won't forget."

"Tonight, I also want to say that I'm also thinking about my mother and father. I know my mother would be completely over the moon about this. I think my dad would too. I'm sorry he couldn't see this. This really was his life’s work but I can say this: I know how proud he'd be of the province we all love."

"We are not considering at all a prolongation or adding months or time to the mission in Libya."

"We must remain focused on the job of building our party. Jack showed us how we can do politics differently, how we can listen and respect other opinions and at the end of the day, remain united. And that's what we need to do today. We'll take difficult decisions but at the end of the day, we need to walk out of here and be united."

"New Democrats will continue to propose ideas that put Canadians families first, and push for real action to ensure families aren't being left behind in this economy. The question we have for Stephen Harper and his Conservative caucus is: will they keep sitting back waiting around for the U.S. economy to rebound?"

"It is not on the table for the simple reason that the constitution is clear: it's one member, one vote."

"Mr. Harper always has an approach that is divisive and we don't agree with that.Create an environment where people are talking to each other, where they are helping each other, instead of an environment where you create things that will go against the security of the people."

"Aujourd'hui, nous pleurons un grand Canadien, un grand leader. Il était pour plusieurs d'entre nous, sinon pour tous et toutes, un ami, un collègue avec qui nous partagions quotidiennement. Au nom de tous les néo-démocrates, je veux remercier tous les Canadiens pour leurs messages d'amour, leur message de sympathie pour Jack. Ceci, je dois vous le dire, nous aide à traverser ces moments difficiles et à continuer le combat pour créer un endroit meilleur où vivre"

"We have to do it and we will do it. We represent Canadians but Canadians will be there for us too"

"We promise we'll carry on."

"I have to say, on behalf of the NDP, from coast to coast, I want to thank all Canadians for their wishes and really, their love for Jack."

"We remember the Tommy Douglas quote Jack included in every email he sent: 'Courage my friends, 'tis never too late to build a better world'."

"We are mourning today a great Canadian and a great leader. He was a friend, he was a colleague for many of us, if not all of us."

"I'm honoured by the confidence the council has shown in me as well as my team and Jack Layton. I clearly have big shoes to fill, but I'm also fortunate to be standing on such a solid foundation. Jack Layton has spent eight years building this New Democrat movement for a better Canada, eight years building a team that is ready to tackle any circumstance with hope and optimism. That's exactly what you can expect from us in the coming weeks"