Four candidates vying to represent the North Island-Powell River riding as MP were introduced by Powell River Chamber of Commerce president Dave Formosa at an all candidates meeting in Evergreen Theatre on Thursday, April 18.
Questions on a number of topics presented to candidates by the chamber as well as from audience members were answered by (Green Party of Canada), (Independent), (Liberal Party of Canada) and , (NDP). This article covers two of the Q&As.
(Conservative Party of Canada) and Paul Macknight (People’s Party of Canada) did not attend the evening event.
An audience member brought up that Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre said he wants to axe the tax, remove GST on new housing and increase military spending. “They're all admirable things to do,” said the questioner, “but when we have a national debt of billions, where is the money coming from? If I ran my household like that, I'd be in jail.”
Here are the responses from the four candidates in attendance:
Jessica Wegg, Green Party
“I don't know where Mr. Poilievre plans to get the money to do those programs. I do know that we spend billions on fossil fuel subsidies that are only destroying our environment and our climate, and they're costing us more and more money as insurance becomes more expensive, and as we have to continue to change the way we heat and cool our homes, because the weather keeps changing and the climate is changing.
"So there are places where we spend an awful lot of money. By the way, most of the oil industry is owned by American companies, so we're subsidizing American companies when we could be investing that money in Canada. We do have a large national debt and the Green Party is the only party that has had its platform fully costed by the PBO [Parliamentary Budget Officer]. So you can go online and see where the money is coming from for our plan.”
Tanille Johnston, NDP
“I have no idea how Pierre Poilievre is going to fund his campaign, including, if he's going to increase his incarceration rates as he has said, that's going to be a whole ton of money as well to fund more prisons.
“The NDP has been super clear where we want to get our money from. It's from a similar location that the Green Party does, and that's equitable taxation. We want to stop subsidies that are going to large industries that are reporting billions of dollars over and over again every year in profits.
“There's no reason that Loblaws needs $13 million worth of a grant to support their $2.2 million of net worth that was reported the year after. So that's where we plan to get our money from, the big fossil fuel industries and the ultra rich who need to pay their fair share.”
Glen Staples, Independent
That's an issue that's not talked about very much, and it's really important. Following politics as I have, it's become like a marketing game, and what it is, you get a lot of candidates, a lot of parties that will promise to reduce taxes. A lot of parties will promise to increase spending for different programs, but nobody does the opposite, because it doesn't get you votes.
“I'm glad there are voters out there who are concerned about that, because you just build debt. It is not a good situation. You're better off, and we haven’t had any for a long time, when governments run surpluses. To overcome debt, you have to run surpluses, not deficits. And I think the last one was a liberal, John Chretien did that.”
Jennifer Lash, Liberal
“This is one of the reasons why I'm so happy to have an economist leading the Liberal Party of Canada, because he understands this issue and how to navigate it, and he breaks it down into an approach that he calls spending less and investing more. What this means is that you spend less, you cut back on the cost of the spending that is not necessary, so in your personal life, equate that to things you buy on your credit card that you don't really need to have. We've all been there. We've all done it.
“We want to save money, we have less of those expenses, but sometimes you also have to do things like buy a house or buy a car, and those are like secured debt. And what he says is he's going to spend less but invest more, and the investments are in the businesses that will generate jobs and employment, and those people pay taxes, which goes back into the revenue, which is then used to pay off the investments.
“So he will spend less, but invest more in order to build a healthier economy that's generating revenue in perpetuity.”
Resources and manufacturing
Formosa presented a question from the chamber, which hosted the forum.
“For a while now, Canada has harvested resources and sold them primarily to the United States,” said Formosa. “What will your party do to invest in using these resources and manufacturing in Canada instead of simply selling off these resources to other countries?”
Glen Staples
“Can you remember when they started exporting raw logs? I couldn't believe that was happening. It seemed like such a stupid idea, but then the mills started closing down. They just started cutting down the trees and exporting them. I'm not an expert on this issue, I'll tell you that, but I think I would ban raw log exports.
“You can't insist that all the minerals get used in Canada, but I would have to submit to people that have greater wisdom other than that.”
Jennifer Lash
“I just want to note that it's not always tariffs from the United States. There's also things like our commercial fishing industry that's dealing with tariffs from China as well, so it's more just a tariff issue, but there's a couple things we need to do.
“First of all, we need to break down the interprovincial trade barriers so we can access the entire economy across the country. If you put a product in a truck right now in Vancouver, you cannot drive that truck to Nova Scotia because of the provincial rules; that really affects our ability to sell our own products here in Canada. The other thing is, we need to diversify our markets, so instead of selling to the United States, can we sell to Asia? Can we sell to Europe? How do we get free trade agreements with some of those countries?
“How can we help business owners navigate those free trade agreements so they can get access to other markets, so we're not at the whim of the United States anymore? Another thing is promoting the made in Canada brand. Really, the one thing that's been weirdly good about this whole trade war has been we are so proud of our brand, and other people around the world are looking at it as well.
“Finally, we need to connect the dots so that when we're building new homes, we're using Canadian wood. When we're building new military facilities, we're using Canadian steel and aluminum.”
Jessica Wegg
“Yes, we need to ban the raw log export, but not only logs. We need to make sure all of the resources we are extracting from Canada have value added to them before they're exported. That would also include oil, minerals and seafood. We want to make sure they're all refined and we're not shipping anything off to get value added by another country.
“The Green Party also has this plan to establish national strategic reserves of Canadian resources to protect against US trade disruptions, stabilize domestic markets and strengthen our sovereignty. So not just maple syrup anymore, but we can have a stockpile of timber, and we can make sure we have enough for us always, and can use it, and it's managed on a cost recovery basis. We've got some exciting plans.
Tanille Johnston
“I think [Powell River] has a prime example locally of selling south. Maybe some of you don't know this, but the Powell and Lois lake dams are actually owned by Evolugen, which is actually owned by Brookfield, which sells your local energy to California. Starting locally right there, let's fix that. Maybe, maybe keep that energy in Powell River.
“We absolutely need to manufacture in Canada. We've been shipping all of our stuff out of Canada. We need to make great products here instead of shipping them out. And like Jessica offered, having value added. We're perfectly poised to take advantage of this in the green energy space: wind farms, solar farms, taking advantage of our tidal energy, we have so much great opportunity right here in North Island-Powell River for investing in these systems. We just have to have the political will in place to put that investment there.”
The candidates also answered questions on . More Peak coverage from the all-candidates meeting is to come. General election day is April 28.
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