Vaughn Palmer: Greens promise $8 billion a year in new spending while hoping to hold balance of power in a minority government

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VICTORIA — B.C. Green Leader Sonia Furstenau released her party election platform on Tuesday, a 72-page document that came with a whiff of familiarity.

The Greens would increase social assistance rates to combat poverty. Expand social housing to end homelessness. Protect old growth, species at risk and biodiversity. End log exports.

Those promises and many others echoed the platforms the New Democrats used to produce before they got into power and ran smack dab into the realities, limitations and compromises of governing.

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Then there were planks that sounded like recent NDP policies.

The Greens would continue increasing the carbon tax every year, which is what David Eby was going to do before he flip flopped last month.

The Greens would expand safer supply and decriminalization of drugs, a stance that would not have been a departure for the NDP before this year’s backtracking.

Here and there the Greens did go beyond anything mainstream New Democrats have seriously contemplated in or out of government.

The party would end the production, distribution and export of natural gas in B.C. “When elected, the B.C. Greens will commit to a fossil-free........

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