Vernon-Lumby NDP cnadidate Harwinder Sandhu with leader David Eby at a healthcare campaign promise announcement in Vernon ( Liam Verster / Vernon Matters Staff)

By Liam Verster

Candidate Profile

Vernon-Lumby’s NDP candidate seeks re-election to continue work for constituents

Oct 9, 2024 | 1:48 PM

The incumbent MLA for the Vernon-Lumby riding hopes to serve a second term.

Harwinder Sandhu is running in the 2024 Provincial General Election with the B.C. NDP.

Sandhu was born and raised in a farming community in India. She trained as a nurse in her home country before moving to the northern B.C. community of Mackenzie in 2001, where, after completing her credential transfer requirements, she worked for northern health in rural communities and settings.

In 2012, Sandhu moved to Vernon, where she spent eight years in the health care system as a nurse on the surgical floor, as a bedside nurse, as a direct patient care provider, a patient care coordinator, and as an at-home end-of-life and acute care provider. She said the latter role was the most impactful for her.

“It really broadened my understanding further to the needs of people and how the gaps in services can impact not only their healthcare, but also the socio-economic dynamics,” Sandhu told Vernon Matters.

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Candidate Profile

Vernon-Lumby's NDP candidate seeks re-election to continue work for constituents

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In 2017 Sandhu made her first foray into politics, running with the B.C. NDP in the Kelowna-Mission riding, where she lost to the B.C. Liberal candidate. She then ran with the federal NDP in the North Okanagan-Shuswap riding in the 2019 election, but lost to the Conservative party member.

In 2020, Sandhu won her first election and took on the role as the NDP MLA for the Vernon-Monashee provincial riding. During her term, Sandhu was also named the Parliamentary Secretary for Seniors’ Services and Long-Term Care.

“[This past term] has been a great journey,” Sandhu told Vernon Matters.

“We’ve been able to deliver lots, do lots of work in nearly four years, but there’s still so much that needs to be done so I put my name on the ballot again hoping to continue to advocate for people, to strengthen the services that they need.”

Sandhu is seeking a second term to continue her work serving the constituents, noting there seemed a number of issues people face locally.

“The overall common themes, common concerns, are affordability, housing, and health care,” Sandhu explained.

“Also, among young people and even, I see more middle aged and older population demographics, I am hearing [concerns] about climate change as we’ve seen the fires increase. Fires, floods and the drought. Those are the top concerns here at the doorsteps.”

During the discussion with Vernon Matters, Sandhu was asked to explain her and her party’s stances and thoughts on how to address a series of issues people in the riding and British Columbia face.

Affordability

“Affordability is linked to many things, whether it’s housing, jobs and the economy.

“The immediate thing we are doing is delivering a middle class income tax, which is immediately we are putting $1,000 back in people’s pockets. In [almost] every household, over 90 per cent of B.C. families and individuals, will benefit from this, which [NDP Leader] David Ebyy announced. It’s $1,000, or $500 for individuals and $1,000 for families, and it’s immediate relief.

“When it comes to housing, David Eby plans to do a 40-60 [split]. The dream of becoming a homeowner seems to be getting farther and farther away for many individuals and families, so the province will pay 40 per cent of the mortgage, interest free, for 25 years or until you sell your home, which will help people get ahead and become a homeowner. That’s on top of our commitment to building 300,000 homes, which we’re already built, or are underway, 80,000 homes.

“For students there’s Future Ready Skills grants to empower youth and students to get more training.

“For medical and health care professionals, David Eby was [in Vernon] Saturday to announce $75-million loan forgiveness. So if students or any medical healthcare professionals will stay in communities like ours or other rural communities for five years, their loan will be forgiven.

“The other program that is welcomed by parents for saving families money of food and groceries is the expanding of the School Meals Program, which we brought in a couple years ago, the Breakfast Program.

Healthcare

“Healthcare, we have short-term and long-term goals. It’s not that this is an election promise, this is something we’ve been doing since forming the government. [Goals] to undo the damage caused by a decades-and-a-half of underfunding and massive layoffs of more than 10,000 health care workers, and later privatization.

“We repealed that bill and we hired back those support service workers, those hospital employees, by bringing them back to the public sector then fixing the fee for service model for doctors, which brought in already more than 800 doctors to do family practice.

“We launched Health Connect B.C. registry [to connect citizens with doctors].

“There’s [plans] to train more doctors, long-term, as we’re opening a second medical school at SFU (Simon Fraser University) in the Lower Mainland, which is the first second-medical school to be opened in 55 years in entire Western Canada.

“Besides that, we tripled the residency seats; we added 600 nursing seats and other allied health professional seats at TRU (Thompson River University) and other universities, UBCO and college; we’re also making it easier for internationally educated nurses and doctors [to work in B.C.] by creating easier pathways to help them in the transition; and also quadrupling the nurse practitioner numbers.

“Most importantly, we’re not cutting funding, but finding efficiencies in the system. David Eby announced we are going to do a review of health authorities to make sure the maximum amount that’s being invested in healthcare goes to frontline workers so they can provide quality [patient care.

“One thing I’m very proud of, as well, is we are the only province to accept the Nurse to Patient ratio mandates, because that is what’s causing lots of burn-out, unsafe workloads, and that can cause declined patient care quality. This is something I fought really hard on when I worked to represent nurses with the B.C. Nurses Union, and government of the day told us it’;s not realistic, but we are taking action. We have set aside a significant amount of money, $750-million, and an additional $100-million for nurses to do career laddering (career progression). That will ensure that, once it’s implemented, we’ll retain more staff to improve the quality of care.”

Housing

“Our plan is to build 300,000 homes, so people can have housing.

“Supply and demand is also one of the biggest issues, and getting rid of speculation. So whether it’s some legislation change and bringing back the speculation and vacancy tax to help and make sure the housing is for people, it’s not for speculators.

“In our region, in the previous 16 years when we had a B.C. Liberal government, which [Conservative Party of B.C. Leader] John Rustad was part of, they built here barely 120 homes in the entire riding. In our four years, we have been able to bring close to more than 1,000 homes online, under various categories.

“Under the Rental Protection Fund, where we’re buying units that are at the risk of being sold and people can be evicted, we bought units here (Vernon-Lumby), more than 30. Under that [program] we have secured 53 per cent of buildings where people can now still pay a reasonable market rent and have a roof over their head.

“There’s so much that needs to be done. There’s so much that has been done. For example, we promised to build 8,000 student housing [units] in our ten year plan, but we’ve already built 8,800, exceeding the goal within six years, so what we’re doing now is we expanded our goal and we are going to build 12,000 student housing [units].”

Mental Health and Addiction

“[Addiction care] is not one-size-fits-all, there’s so many things we need to do and we need to meet the people where they are – You have to provide all sorts of services for where they are.

“The first goal is to save their lives then, when they’re ready, help them connect to treatment.

“We have the Mental Health and Substance Use Clinic, which has saved many many lives right here in Vernon by guiding people and connecting them with services. Then we have the B.C. NDP government funded Red Road to Recovery treatment centre in Lumby, close to 30 beds there, then we’ve also funded beds at Bill’s Place for Turning Points [Collaborative Society].

“This is an issue that I believe needs to be addressed in a non-partisan way, and this is an issue when people should refrain from pushing their own agenda. It’s a very serious issue and we need to do everything possible we can to save lives because people are losing their loved ones every single day.”

Crime and Public Safety

“Lots of crime legislation, for example repeat violent offenders and bail reform, that comes from the federal jurisdiction. B.C. was the champion when we lead all the other provinces and went to Ottawa to ask for some changes to bail reform, and we made some gains and that happened.

“We also reinstated and funded the Repeat Violent Offenders program, which was cut by John Rustad and the B.C. Liberal government at the time.

“That repeat violent offender program right now, because we reinstated and brought it back, there are more than 400 people in that system being supported and monitored, whereas they would be roaming around without any help or perhaps committing crimes again.

“Actually, the crime rate has gone down if we look at the overall stats in the province.

“But I acknowledge that more needs to be done and it’s not only the [criminal justice system], it’s building the systems where people can get help, and where people who are struggling they need proper channels; and for repeat violent offenders need to be monitored.”

Climate Change and the Environment

“Climate change is real and it’s there and I’m proud that we acknowledging and have been taking action since 2017.

“B.C. has the most ambition CleanBC Action Plan, which was developed with the B.C. Green Party at the time, and under that roadmap we are reducing carbon pollution by taxing the biggest polluters. As well, B.C. is on track to exceed it’s 2030 methane reduction target, we are well on our way to achieving a 75 per cent reduction by 2030. Also, we’re moving closer to our goal of protecting 30 per cent of provincial lands by 2030.

“We’re working with First Nations, Ottawa and communities on a shared and ambitious commitment to defend and protect critical, at-risk areas of biodiversity.

“If we fail to take climate action it’s going to cause devastating impacts for the economy, for food security, water, for everything. It’s all directly linked to our wellbeing and jobs.

“Locally, I know protecting the watersheds [is important]. The Watershed Security Fund was $25-million when [the NDP] first got elected, and I remember being on the Finance Committee, advocating for more support. So subsequently we went up from $25- to $50-million to $75 and $100-, to now we have set aside $157-million to protect our watersheds because it’s a source of water, and not only that but we’re supporting our farmers.”

Public Education

“The approach we’re taking is we’re rebuilding hundreds and thousands of seats [in schools locally and throughout B.C.]

“But we can”t forget that the teachers and the early childhood educators and the support staff are the key and backbone of the education system, so we’re definitely supporting them and we’re going to continue work to make sure they have enough support staff so kids with special needs can have the care and education that they need in order to thrive and have equal opportunities and abilities to explore their full potential.

“It’s focusing not only on building schools and creating more spaces, but supporting the staff in the education system, and [addressing][ class sizes as well.”

Economy and Jobs

“All the things we’ve discussed, in order to do that we need to have a thriving economy.

“We can’t have a thriving economy without a healthier society, and in order to have a healthy society we need to invest in people and society, because it is people and society who builds our economy.

“Despite the challenges we face, from fires, floods and the pandemic, because of the way we were investing in people, building hospitals, schools, other infrastructure, childcare spaces, B.C. had, since 2017, we had one of the highest GDP growths at 16.9 per cent, which is leading all the large province. We are ahead of Alberta, Ontario and Quebec.

“We have added 270,000 net new jobs, including some of the strongest private sector jobs.

“Yes, times are tough around the world and around the country, but, by investing in people and services and businesses and communities, we have seen some significant changes and a positive trend.

“We have the fastest growing life science sector in Canada, and we have the fastest growing tech sector in North America which is tied only with Austin, Texas. We’re attracting major private sector investments like Boeing’s $61-million investment in August alone.

“We do have, in fact, the lowest unemployment rate in the history of this province. Last I looked it was 5.8 per cent which is below the national average of 6.6 per cent.

“Yes, we have the fastest growing economy’s and one of the lowest unemployment rates among the provinces, but we can’t stop here. We need to keep building a strong, sustainable economy that works for everyone.”

Advance voting for the 2024 Provincial General Election will begin on October 10, with general voting day going on Oct. 19.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Vernon Matters has contacted all local candidates for the Vernon-Lumby and Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream ridings, and will publish profiles as they respond. All candidates interviewed were asked the same questions.