NDP aims to keep youth out of gangs

VANCOUVER • A New Democrat government would create a $100-million fund to help keep young people out of gangs, part of an NDP strategy to slow the march of organized crime in British Columbia, leader Jagmeet Singh said Sunday.

“All the experts that I’ve met with have said we need to invest directly in youth,” Singh said during a news conference in Burnaby, B.C.

“So we’re making a commitment to help out those families that have lost loved ones, those families that are worried about the future, they want to see some change, they want to see young people have a brighter future.”

He said the $100 million would go to after-school programs and youth drop-in centres.

It was Singh’s sixth straight day in the province, where he has made a series of regionally focused announcements. He has also promised to create a dedicated RCMP anti-money laundering unit, with half of its $20-million funding for B.C.; a $30-million increase in federal funding for BC Ferries; and measures to help protect the province’s coastline and to discourage speculation in the housing market.

Singh is running for re-election in the Vancouver-area riding of Burnaby South, and the party is also trying to fend off the Greens in the province.

Meanwhile, the Green party, also campaigning in B.C., is proposing a “robot tax.”

Green Leader Elizabeth May said that every time a company replaces a worker with a machine, a Green government would make that company pay a tax equivalent to the income tax paid by that laid-off employee.