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Sasha A Izard

My policies put the environment first and foremost, where it should be. Our survival depends on its survival.

For more info on my policies, see my complete platform at: https://sashaizard.com/platform-2022/

Biography

submitted by the candidate or their team
Sasha has spent much of his life working with ecological landscape preservation, regeneration and agriculture. The removal of introduced plant species, a major problem for local eco-systems, has always been a key focus of his work.

As the sole proprietor of a small eco-landscaping business, Sasha decided four years ago to invest in high grade lithium-ion battery equipment for all power tools and in the process was one of the first landscaping businesses in greater Victoria to go all battery electric.

Seeing that this would be the way of the future for landscaping and seeing its effectiveness, Sasha quickly promoted the equipment as the much-needed alternative to highly polluting gas landscaping technology.

The greatest breakthrough in this regard for the Greater Victoria region happened this year when Oak Bay Council, after 10 years of discussing potential bans on gas equipment, finally unanimously approved to ban and phase out all gas landscaping equipment over several years. Sasha was the only person with a landscaping business that showed up to the event. His powerful testimony there, was cited in the decision that made history in the CRD, as the first municipality to not only put in a plan to ban all gas landscaping equipment, or any gas landscaping equipment for that matter, but to do so unanimously.

Reason for running

submitted by the candidate or their team
In my opinion, the direction Saanich is currently heading in is not a good one. A growth-based construction agenda seems to have become the main focus of activity. The growth model solves nothing and creates far more problems in the process, especially ecological destruction as a result. Greener than the Greens, I am offering a Degrowth alternative at the council table. As David Suzuki has pointed out. We are not going to build our way out of the current situation we are in.

I also want to call out the Federal and Provincial Governments to drop the doublespeak when it comes to housing policy. I call on them to Stop Housing speculation in its tracks by banning it outright, instead of merely taxing it, which solves nothing.

Housing should not be an investment, it should be an affordable right. If speculators, often backed by multiple investors can buy up 20 homes at a time, that leaves 20 people or families without homes, and thus leaves them competing over the remaining housing stock, which in turns drives up the housing prices dramatically and creates a situation of unaffordability.

Merely pumping the supply of housing has not solved the housing crisis and arguably it is not meant to at all. Victoria has recently seen the most massive housing boom perhaps in its history and has seen prices there skyrocket to amongst the highest in the country at the same time.

As someone who understands the underlying dynamics that drive the prices, I feel that by running I can provide level-headed sense when it comes to housing policy. As these issues are provincial and federal issues, I understand that they cannot be solved at the municipal level, but from the municipal level I will point out and challenge the inherent contradictions coming from the federal and provincial governments when it comes to housing and I will stand up against them, when their failed housing agenda puts municipalities in a situation that is ultimately unsustainable to them and the environment present in them.

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