Positions On

E&N rail restoration

Support restoration of the E&N rail corridor for both passenger and freight service, in cooperation with the Island Corridor Foundation and the Reconciliation Corridor Initiative signed in December 2025. Vancouver Island has one rail-freight gateway, and roughly eighty percent of the Island's population lives within a few kilometres of the corridor. Restoration reduces transportation emissions, reduces highway congestion, addresses the accident record on the Malahat, and carries measurable economic and tourism benefits.

The Wellcox Yard to Duke Point freight spur is in scope. Five to eight kilometres of track connecting the Island's only rail-barge gateway to the deep-water container terminal at Duke Point that DP World is currently doubling in size. Federal funding through the Trade Diversification Corridors Fund is the vehicle that makes the project financeable now.

Freight-first versus passenger-first is open, and both cases need to be clearly made. The essential first step is cooperation across every stakeholder along the length of the corridor, including the fourteen First Nations, the five regional districts, and the municipalities south of Nanaimo already coordinating through the Reconciliation Corridor Initiative.

Removing pay parking from city streets

Support the removal of pay parking from city streets in the downtown core and around Nanaimo Regional General Hospital. Much of the meter revenue is consumed by the contract that enforces the bylaw and by the cost of maintaining the meters and signs themselves. What remains discourages downtown patronage and adds an ongoing cost to patients arriving for appointments and to the healthcare professionals arriving for shifts at the regional hospital.

The city should not be profiting from patients or from the workforce delivering their care. The preferred mechanism is four-hour time-limited free parking, which preserves turnover for downtown businesses while removing the financial deterrent and the stress of a ticket when a hospital appointment runs long.

Fiscally responsible city policy

Support a fiscally responsible approach to city policy, understood concretely rather than as a slogan. Every spending decision should be tested against two questions: what need is being addressed, and how is success measured? The benefit to the broader community has to warrant the figure spent.

Council should take an active approach to the budget process, working toward a general property tax levy that increases at the level of Statistics Canada national CPI rather than above it. Council should also hold the distinction between critical infrastructure and beautification firmly. Repairing a water main is an obligation. A decorative streetscape is an aspiration that can wait when the fiscal position tightens. Buses over bike lanes.

Data centre construction

Oppose the construction of data centres that draw heavily on the region's water and electricity supply. This is a targeted position rather than a general one. Modest municipal or educational data infrastructure is not the concern. The concern is large-scale facilities whose water consumption is unlimited under current regulations and whose penalties for overuse are set low enough that they can be treated as a cost of doing business.

Water is a resource every resident of the region depends on to live. Electricity load is the second grounds for opposition. The tax revenue such facilities generate is not sufficient to warrant the resource cost, and the current regulatory framework does not protect the resource base.

Rock City wetland development

Oppose the development currently proposed on the Rock City wetland. The environmental case leads. The wetland is a critically imperiled peatland ecosystem, potentially unique in British Columbia, with a breeding pond for the northern red-legged frog (a species protected under the federal Species at Risk Act) and hydrological connection to the Cottle Creek watershed, which supports coastal cutthroat trout habitat downstream.

The development permit was issued under delegated authority in January 2026. The city subsequently increased the setback protection for future projects and grandfathered this one at 7.5 metres. The actionable mechanisms open to council are: support for the independent hydrological review currently being funded through community organizing; scrutiny of provincial Riparian Areas Protection Regulation compliance; retroactive setback protection where legally possible; and halting further permit-stage approvals on this file pending the outcome of the review.

On planning grounds, the site sits outside the Official Community Plan's growth areas, lacks close transit access, and is not proximate to the amenities such a development is meant to enable. These are secondary considerations to the environmental case, and they reinforce it.

Tax increases above annual inflation

Oppose general property tax levy increases above the level of Statistics Canada national CPI. Most workers and seniors in Nanaimo do not receive annual raises in the range of three percent, and increases of eight percent are unsustainable for young families and for people on fixed-income pensions. Council's obligation is to work within its means and to find innovative ways to close budget gaps, rather than to push the shortfall onto the residential tax base.

Scope of the cap: the general property tax levy only. Utilities, parcel taxes, and special levies are governed separately and are not covered by this position.

Exceptions are limited to court-ordered obligations, provincial or federal mandate downloads, declared emergencies, and catastrophic infrastructure failures. Outside those categories, the cap holds.