Richard Harlow

“City land used for homes people can afford, and for growing food.”

“A nurse on mental health calls. Crossings fixed where people have actually been hit, and a fifth fire hall, because you cannot hire your way out of distance.”

“When somebody is having the worst mental health day of their life, we send police and firefighters, because there is nobody else to send. BC pays for crisis teams of mental health workers instead. Those teams have taken about 20,000 calls since 2023, and 99 out of 100 needed no police at all. Nanaimo does not have one. I would apply for one. Every call handled by the right team is an hour handed back to the officer investigating your break-in.”

“Family doctors the city recruits itself. Rec centres and parks with no flight of stairs between a person and the pool.”

“A city cannot run a health system. It can stop pretending the file belongs to somebody else. Colwood hires its own family doctors, bills the province for their work, and it costs that city nothing year after year.”

“A wetland holds storm water out of basements. Tree canopy cools a street in August. The cheapest flood control and air conditioning this city owns is already growing. A funded plan for the wildland at our edges, and shade planted first where the streets get hottest.”

“There are hundreds of hectares of dry wildland in and around this city, with no real plan to reduce the fuel. Our wildfire plan dates from 2016, written before Lytton burned. The province has replaced that whole generation of plans. I would bring ours up to today's standard and fund the work with the provincial money that exists for exactly this.”

“A bus route to Snuneymuxw reserve lands, where none runs today.”

“A written answer, with reasons, to every advisory committee recommendation. I have watched good ones vanish without one.”

“Let the public vote on part of the building budget. Then publish what got built and what it cost.”

“Engagement that goes out to community centres and food banks, instead of waiting for people to show up downtown at 7 p.m.”

“Council cannot fix inflation. It does decide what city land is for, what gets built on it, and who our buildings serve first. A boarded-up building downtown drags its whole block down, and it sits there as a fire waiting for a reason. Bringing those buildings back into use is housing policy, business policy and firefighter safety at the same time.”

“Accessibility is not a fifth priority. It is the lens over the other four.”

“About 580 Snuneymuxw members living on reserve vote in a Nanaimo election this October for the first time in 152 years, and not one bus route reaches them. handyDART does not go there either.”