Stephanie Smith

My personal climate work has been at the intersection of housing and climate justice - building climate-friendly affordable housing as a director of the Cooperative Housing Federation of BC and Community Land Trust, and fighting to preserve and retrofit affordable housing for tenants, and for right to cool. In my role with the Vancouver Greens, I advocate for all the climate action priorities mentioned here. The DTES community where I live experiences the worst inequities of climate-resilient infrastructure - from safe buildings to tree canopies - and addressing these issues not just as a city-wide matter but as specific inequities is a focus of my work and would be a focus of my term on council. If elected, I would also like to immediately reintroduce the Sue Big Oil motion.

The Vancouver Greens oppose gas in new buildings and have fought against gas lobbyists trying to write city council policy.

Yes. One death from climate catastrophe is one too many. We must to lead on climate action, clean energy, climate resilience, and environmental stewardship. The Sustainability Office should create and administer projects and coordinate across city departments so that environmental stewardship is at the heart of everything the city does. It supports the creation of a sustainable and climate-resilient city - from resources that support individual residents to the development of climate-mitigating buildings and green city infrastructure. It also supports our green jobs sector, a key constituent of a sustainable economic development plan.

I agree with a moratorium. There are serious unresolved questions about destructive land use, resource allocation, and energy use causing negative impacts on our community. The Mount Pleasant industrial land where one centre is proposed exists to protect local economic development and jobs, which data centres do not support after the construction phase. I am also deeply concerned about the destructive and ethical impacts of models built on wide-scale theft and deployed for surveillance.

I think that it's unfortunate that ABC sabotaged the Villages Plan by rushing it through council, presenting council with a poorly-considered plan, and then killing it as a political stunt instead of accepting amendments that would have improved it. Cllrs Fry, Maloney, and Orr had good proposals to improve the Villages Plan, and I expect council to move forward with an improved plan in the next term. The issue isn't whether we grow with denser housing - we already are and we will continue to do so. It's about ensuring that our plans for growth actually create the livable city we need - with tenant protections, genuine affordability, amenities, green infrastructure, and support for culture and small business.

All of the policy commitments here would advance this work. More specifically: first of all, get people inside and housed. Whether it's "places to be" for folks to come inside (because shelters often put people out into the street in the morning), tiny homes as an interim measure, ensuring leases for modular homes, or cancelling the supportive housing ban - people need to be able to access safe indoor spaces. We need to push the province to move forward with the replacement of the SRO stock, which is mainly unlivable in any conditions and especially dangerous in heat. We will work with community organizations that support people, housed and unhoused, who are at risk - from the SRO Collaborative to community centres - and support the community organizing and planning that has arisen in response to the Heat Dome catastrophe. Mapping at-risk residential locations is key work, and supporting retrofit infrastructure so that costs aren't passed on to tenants via additional rent increases is an important city role. We must also rectify Vancouver's inequities in climate-resilient/protective infrastructure, e.g., tree canopy.

I will also say that while creating safe public spaces is necessary work, I am concerned that senior levels of government sometimes push for cooling rooms or centres as an adequate and complete response to the heat dome. People should have a right to safety in their own homes. Community spaces are necessary, but don't go far enough.