With the Federal Election around the corner, I’ve decided to ask each of the parties questions pertaining to their platform in the upcoming election. These questions have been routinely heard in the public and seem to be a few of the hot topics in the area. These questions have been sent to all political parties in our area.
Valerie Brooks (she/her) Green Party of Canada Candidate had the following responses to these burning questions the public seems to be chatting about on coffee row and in casual conversations.
Our area is mostly influenced by agriculture with a few other industries as well. What does your party have to offer these industries, whether a big corporation or a small family farm and their future growth?
Our primary producers are the backbone of our economy here in this riding and should not be the lowest paid in the food production and distribution chain. Farmers should not have to make difficult decisions year after year, without a strong support system behind them. I am concerned that there will be more and more primary producers quit or suffer in silence in the upcoming years due to climate change and lack of good government policies concerning agriculture. Losing small local farmers will open the door for large corporations to be in control. I believe the small local family farms are environmental stewards and efficient producers of nutritious food, which is important for food security, and the health and well-being of people in this country. I will always support large or small operations to be sustainable and help them work towards equitable funding and subsidies.
We also have a large number of small businesses that were struggling to begin with and then COVID-19 hit. What does your party feel would best help them through these hard times?
Continuing the benefits for those hardest hit by the pandemic, individuals and small businesses, is the right thing to do. Without these supports, many people would not be able to pay rent, buy groceries to feed their kids and continue to live with dignity. Small businesses are needed to kick-start the economy once this pandemic is behind us, if we don’t support them now they will not be around later to hire workers, pay taxes, and make our lives better by supplying locally desired products and services.
What is your party’s view on asking for proof of a COVID-19 vaccination?
Do I feel that a highly transmissible virus that is mutating quickly and hospitalizing people at an alarming rate should be stalled or slowed down by whatever means we have available to us? Then yes, I can get behind asking for proof of vaccination to enter certain highly populated areas to protect the greater population and limit the spread of the virus. Lawyers are even starting to talk about the possibility of being “liable” or having a certain “duty of care” to others if not vaccinated. If people are not wanting to be vaccinated then I believe that is their right, but like drunk driving, knowingly putting others at risk is irresponsible in my mind and if that is happening then a limit on freedoms is the next step.
There seems to be a lot of disconnection from urban and rural populations in Canada. What does your party feel will make the rural parts of Canada in the west feel as though they have a say in Ottawa for their future?
This is my main election platform, as I am told over and over by voters that “we need a change”. I challenge them to think about what that statement means to them. Do they think that continuing with our current electoral system and just changing which party holds the balance of power (even though that party didn’t get the majority of votes) is the change they want? Or do we need REAL change that will make a difference in how MP’s are elected, how they represent their constituents, and how the system is set up to make every Canadian feel like their vote truly matters and is represented in Parliament? We need a government that works effectively and collaboratively for all voters in order for trust to be restored and division to be put to rest. Working together is the only way for both rural and urban citizens to get their needs met and problems solved.
Does your party agree with the new gun laws enacted during the last four years, or do you recommend a change to these gun laws?
Please see our official stance on this taken from “Vision Green” document
4.11.7 Gun control and ownership rights
Police associations across Canada have asserted that the gun registry helped save lives and maintain law and order. Many rural Canadians and Indigenous people found the gun registry restrictions onerous and discriminatory. Greens believe a compromise is possible: We can accommodate the concerns of legal gun users while ensuring that law enforcement agencies have the tools they need.
It is time to crack down on gun smuggling across the U.S. border. Thousands of handguns are coming across the border and into our urban centres. We need to work with each of the U.S. border states to press for action against gun smugglers and invest in tougher border measures to halt the movement of illegal firearms.
The risks created by having dangerous weapons in our urban centres are significant. We will introduce balanced and fair measures to ban handguns, automatic, and semi-automatic firearms. Only police and registered sport shooters will be permitted to use handguns.
Green Party MPs will:
● Provide increased support for Integrated Border Enforcement Teams made up of officers from the RCMP, Canada Border Services, U.S. Customs, and the U.S. Coast Guard in their gathering of intelligence and arresting of gun smugglers;
● Put strict measures in place for those who attempt to cross the Canada/U.S. border with illegal firearms. Ensure that gun smuggling is prosecuted as a gun crime of the highest order rather than as a customs violation;
● Fulfill Canada’s obligation under international agreements (United Nations Firearms Protocol and the Organization of American States Firearms Convention) to mark all imported firearms, as recommended by the Canadian Association of Police Boards and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police;
● Ensure that gun crime charges are not dropped to facilitate convictions on lesser charges;
● Work hard to create a registration system that is fair, free, and easy to use. Streamline the gun registry in consultation with Indigenous communities, and with gun sports and hunter organizations. We support the elimination of registration fees for hunting rifles and will ensure law-abiding citizens do not have their firearms confiscated;
● Ban handguns and combat weapons, including semi-automatic rifles and assault rifles. Eliminate their use through consultation and a full buy-back program. Consult with gun collectors to render their pieces non-functional and ineffective for thieves. Consult also with target shooters to establish safe and protected locations where target shooting using handguns can be practiced.
Equalization payments are a heated topic in this area. Does your party feel the provinces with more should support the less fortunate provinces and be cut back on federal funding?
Again this is clearly articulated in the “Vision Green” policy document (excerpt below) that Green MPs would uphold.
6.13 Rebuilding federal/provincial/territorial relations
After the 1982 patriation of the Constitution and the refusal of Quebec to sign the Constitution, after two failed federal accords, two referendums, asymmetrical federalism, a sponsorship scandal, and ‘nation within a nation’ legislation, many Quebecers and Canadians ask the obvious question: “Where do we go from here?”
The Green Party proposes to make Canada a true functioning Confederation in which the provinces and territories are more empowered and financed to meet the needs of their communities.
Green Party MPs will:
● Rebalance the funding formula to ensure fairness across regions and provinces;
● Remove the false choice for those provinces eligible for equalization to allow access to funds for health, education, and other services provided through equalization, and remove any requirement to abandon rights under the Atlantic Accord.
What are your party’s thoughts on Canada’s immigration policy and the allocation of its funding?
Again this is what my Party’s thoughts are on your question above, found in the Vision Green document.
4.10.3 Immigration and new Canadians
We have fostered a multicultural democracy that welcomes diversity as an asset, not a threat. Newcomers are a source of incredible skills and potential for our country. We have been enriched as people and cultures from all around the world have come to Canada to build their lives here. Other than Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, we are all immigrants or descendants of immigrants. Immigrants come in search of greater freedoms and opportunities to build fulfilling lives for themselves and their families. Refugees and asylum seekers arrive here having fled unimaginable situations in their home countries, and they seek the exact same things we all aspire to safety, dignity, and community. We must make sure all migrants are supported in achieving their hopes and ambitions as new Canadians.
A Green Government would:
● Ensure professionals being considered for immigration will have the licensing requirements for their professions clearly explained before entry.
● Lead a national discussion to define ‘environmental refugee’ and advocate for its inclusion as a refugee category in Canada, and accept an appropriate share of the world’s environmental refugees into Canada;
● Allocate much greater funding for training in official languages (ESL and FSL) for new immigrants, knowing that many new immigrants are not fluent in either official language, through earmarked transfers to the provinces for primary and secondary public school and free night school programs;
● Support multicultural communities by assisting cultural organizations to obtain charitable status;
● Eliminate the Temporary Foreign Workers Program and increase immigration where there are labour shortages, working with employers to establish paths to permanent residency;
● Terminate Canada’s Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States;
● Increase penalties in the Criminal Code for immigration consultants convicted of human smuggling, and devote more resources to investigations and enforcement;
DENISE LOUCKS, MAVERICK PARTY CANDIDATE
Our area is mostly influenced by agriculture with a few other industries as well. What does your party have to offer these industries, whether a big corporation or a small family farm, and their future growth?
Agriculture is our biggest industry in the riding and always has been. With countless farms, several grain elevators, the canola crushing facilities by Yorkton, the offices for Saskatchewan Crop Insurance and AgriStability, as well as several food processing facilities, it’s obvious how important agriculture is for the region. Adding to that are the numerous businesses in the sales and services, manufacturing and transportation sectors which have much of their business pertaining to agriculture. We also have a forestry sector in the northern part of our riding and of course, we cannot forget to mention our potash mining industry in the south of the riding which has employed so many people in the region and has long been a source of economic wealth for the province of Saskatchewan. A major priority for the Maverick Party is agriculture and pushing for policies that benefit those who work in the industry. Much of our party’s leadership, including our leader, Jay Hill, and our deputy leader, Allan Kerpan, are farmers themselves. The Maverick Party is against any sort of a carbon tax, which negatively affects our region’s industries. We support the removal of interprovincial barriers to trade through agreements, including trade dispute mechanisms amongst the provinces, and we support the twinning of railway lines from Manitoba to British Columbia to tidewater to improve the transportation of agricultural, oil, gas, minerals and forest products for export.
We also have a large number of small businesses that were struggling to begin with and then COVID-19 hit. What does your party feel would best help them through these hard times?
COVID-19 has hit many of our small businesses hard and we encourage people to support their local businesses in these trying times. While purchasing products from global companies far away may seem like a cheaper option, in reality, spending money locally improves our economy as a whole and keeps money in our communities. Many of our small businesses have supported organizations in our communities for years and we need to recognize their contributions to the well-being many of our organizations currently have.
There seems to be a lot of disconnection from urban and rural populations in Canada. What does your party feel will make the rural parts of Canada in the west feel as though they have a say in Ottawa for their future?
Obviously, the system needs to be changed and this has been something we have been battling since the beginning of Canada’s history. We all know that the heavily urbanized areas of Toronto and Montreal rule this country just by the sheer number of seats in parliament they have. The Greater Toronto area, for example, has more seats than the 3 prairies provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan combined. One of the ways the Maverick Party wants to improve this inherent unfairness is by pushing for a Triple E Senate which is a senate that is elected, rather than appointed by the prime minister of the day, with each province having equal seats which would therefore become more effective because they would be accountable to voters and not just be a mirror image of parliament. A Triple E Senate is needed to counterbalance the urban power which exists in parliament by giving less populated provinces more power. We have different needs and wants out here in Saskatchewan than they do in the likes of Toronto and we should have a way to counterbalance those.
Does your party feel the response to COVID-19 was adequate to completely inform the public? How will you allow those with concerns regarding public health measures to raise their concerns?
One of our party’s most important guiding principles is to support the jurisdiction of provinces to make their own decisions and that includes health policies. As a federal party, with an emphasis on the Western region, we want to work with the various Western provincial governments and support them and we respect their right to do that. Can you imagine what things would be like now if Justin Trudeau had been allowed to implement the same restrictions across the board in this country if the federal government could override provincial public health authorities? And, honestly, there have been several instances this past year where the federal government has overstepped. There is a reason that we have separate governments federally, provincially and municipally because it allows local areas to decide things for themselves. Our party supports less centralization in Ottawa. If you are dissatisfied with the decisions of the provincial government and provincial health authorities in how they handled the Covid-19 pandemic in the last year, we recommend you contact them and let them know of your dissatisfaction. In a democracy, it is great that we have that right to do so.
What is your party’s view on asking for proof of a COVID-19 vaccination?
First of all, our party respects the freedom to choose whether to vaccinate or not for Covid19. We do not believe in forcing people to put something into their bodies which they are against but we support people who have made the choice to vaccinate. Private businesses do have the right to ask for proof of vaccination, just as customers have the right to choose which businesses to frequent. It is the right of each individual and business to decide what is best for them. Essential services should never be denied to people based on their vaccine status.
Being from a more rural area, we don’t see as much gun violence but we do have a higher number of gun owners. Does your party agree with the new gun laws enacted during the last four years, or do you recommend a change to these gun laws?
The Maverick Party is strongly opposed to the latest Liberal firearms confiscation program. We advocate for a long-overdue independent process to examine current and future firearms legislation to ensure regulations are correctly targeted at the reduction of gun crimes and not unnecessary, ineffective and overly bureaucratic restrictions on law-abiding firearm owners. Let’s face it though: the majority of people in the urban areas of Southern Ontario and Quebec see this topic much differently than the majority of Western Canadians. Therefore, we might need to find a way to create separate federal legislation for East and West. The Maverick Party supports the appointment of a Chief Firearms Officer headquartered in Western Canada to oversee firearms legislation in the West that is separate from that of the East.
Equalization payments are a heated topic in this area. Does your party feel the provinces with more should support the less fortunate provinces and be cut back on federal funding?
The Maverick Party supports scrapping the existing equalization formula. We advocate, for example, for a fair equalization formula that includes provincial income revenue from renewable energy (e.g, Hydro Quebec) not just from non-renewable energy (oil), rather than abolishing the principle of prosperous provinces sharing with “have-not” provinces as enshrined in the Constitution of Canada. And rather than certain provinces getting equalization money with no strings attached, without any incentive to improve their economy to become a “have” province, checks and balances need to be part of the program. We cannot forget that Saskatchewan was itself a have-not province for many years and we did benefit from the equalization program. However, we did eventually become a have province and we need to find ways to ensure the current have-not provinces are able to one day do the same.
We have veterans sleeping on the street and/or suffering from mental issues (PTSD) caused by serving this country. What plan do you have in place to assist these veterans?
Our veterans put their lives at risk with great sacrifice to themselves and their families, and for that, we owe them a debt that cannot truly ever be repaid. It is a travesty how our government has failed in ensuring our veterans have adequate services and support to help them with their physical and mental health needs and to help them reintegrate into society after their service to this country.
What are your party’s thoughts on Canada’s immigration policy and the allocation of its funding?
The Maverick Party believes the current refugee policy is unsustainable, costly and is being constantly abused by refugees illegally entering our borders. The statutory responsibility of Canada’s government is to first help those in need amongst our own population, and then give priority to genuine refugees in need. Strong legislation and enforcement are required. We advocate for individual provinces, including Saskatchewan, to have the same control Quebec has of its immigration program. Immigration must be based on the economic needs of the provinces and fulfill the employment skills that are needed.