The federal election is Monday, but there's a good chance some of you still aren’t 100% sure of your decision.
With that in mind, PentictonNow chatted with all five South Okanagan--West Kootenay candidates over the past 48 hours for this, our last-minute candidate wrap-up.
We asked the same five questions of each candidate and they offered their replies. Note that we approached them with little advanced warning and conducted our Q&As verbally, giving them little chance to prepare scripted responses.
Here in Part I, it's NDP incumbent Richard Cannings. Over the course of the morning, we'll feature the remaining four candidates in order of party finish in the riding's most recent (2019) election: Conservative candidate Helena Konanz, the Green Party's Tara Howse, Liberal Ken Robertson and People's Party of Canada's Sean Taylor.
And off we go.
Tell us about yourself, your accomplishments, why you're the best candidate, and why you feel the need to run again?
I'm a biologist. I taught at UBC for 25 years, and I had my own consulting company for 20 years after that. I came into politics late in life because I felt there was a real need to have a voice of science and reason, especially on the environment and climate change. So I guess I'm not the typical politician that way.
I'm running again because I just think there's unfinished business. The pandemic has taught us a lot of important lessons. I think Canadians have woken up to various issues, and I like what we can accomplish as a country when we all work together and tackle a big problem.
Despite all the bickering we might see on the news, there was a huge amount of cooperation. I think that made me want to run again and hopefully there will be that different climate in Ottawa.
Between soaring temperatures, wildfires, and choking, lingering wildfire smoke, summers are becoming increasingly difficult in the region. How will a vote for you and your party help change this?
In two ways. Long term, we have to fight climate change like we mean it, and that means doing far more than what we've been doing. The Liberals have been saying nice things and not doing much, the Conservatives have been actually blocking any climate action in Ottawa. The NDP has a bold long-term plan to do this.
The other thing people may not realize is that carbon dioxide doesn’t leave the atmosphere quickly. It stays there for centuries. So the temperature rise we've seen over the past 100 years and especially in the last 50 years is here to stay. These fires, these floods were seeing, these heat waves, they'll be there for centuries to come and we have to start programs to adapt to them.
The NDP has a plan to put up $3 billion annually to help communities adapt to these catastrophes. To help communities Firesmart their boundaries with forests, by thinning their forests. That would put people to work and make our communities safer -- communities like Grand Forks that's going through a real transformation to make it safe from floods.
Home prices and rents in the region were already onerous, then along came the pandemic to drive them into the stratosphere. How will the situation improve for folks who currently can barely afford rent, never mind a downpayment, with you as the MP?
The NDP plan is the one plan of all the parties that listens to the experts. How to create affordable housing? The answer is to build affordable housing.
You can tinker around the edges. But a lot of the initiatives the Conservatives and the Liberals are putting forward will actually just push the market to drive prices up in response.
The government used to build affordable housing. Much of Penticton is post-World War II federally-funded veterans housing. I live on the West Bench. It's a veteran-planned project.
The NDP calculate we're a half million affordable housing units behind because we stopped doing that. So we have to build the half million units over the next decade to catch up. And that will provide affordable homes in every community across Canada.
The other parties are pouring money to developers to build rental housing, and what we found is that the housing that we paid our tax money into is producing rentals that are now marketed at 50% above market levels. So it's not affordable.
And, immediate rent relief. We're the only party putting out a plan for immediate rent relief for people who simply can’t afford the cost.
How would you and your government deal with the pandemic going forward? Where are your priorities? (Mask mandates, vaccination passports, economic recovery, etc?)
One of the biggest tragedies of the pandemic has been the completely unnecessary loss of life at long-term care homes. A disproportionate number of those deaths happened in care homes that are privately owned and run for profit. We believe we should take the profit out of long-term care. Eighty percent of long-term care is medical care, so that belongs with our universal health care program in Canada.
We also learned that it would be good to have the ability to produce vaccines and other essential drugs in Canada. The federal government used to have a crown corporation that did this. That was sold off by Liberals and Conservatives back in the 80s.
On the jobs side, we have to retrofit all the older houses and buildings in Canada. That will create jobs for Canadians in every community in Canada. If we retrofit houses, we pledge to create a million jobs just in that program.
Is there anything we skipped (Indigenous issues, crime, opioid crisis, homelessness, etc) that you feel is critically important and would like to discuss?
Something I haven't mentioned is fixing our universal health care system so it covers all our health issues. We have a system where you can go to the doctor for free, but then you can't afford the drugs they prescribe. Ten percent of Canadians can't afford prescriptions, so they go without. And it puts more costs on to our emergency health care system. It would save us $4 billion.
Dental care is the other things Canadians desperately need. There are 7 million Canadians who don't go to a dentist every year because they can't afford to. They end up with serious dental issues that cost our medical system when they present to Emergency with serious oral health problems. So we have to make sure those people who are making less than $70,000 a year as a family and don’t have dental coverage can have that coverage.
