Four of the six candidates wanting to represent the North Island-Powell River riding as MP took part in an all-candidates meeting in Evergreen Theatre on Thursday, April 18.
Questions from Powell River Chamber of Commerce, which hosted the event, and from audience members were fielded by (Green Party of Canada), (Independent), (Liberal Party of Canada) and , (NDP).
In opening statements, Staples emphasized his respect for all candidates and his stance on environmental issues. Lash highlighted her deep connection to the community and her experience in reconciliation, economy, climate change and conservation.
Wegg shared her background as a lawyer and her work in the United States, emphasizing her commitment to mental health, addiction treatment and youth activities. Johnston discussed her background in social work and her experience in health care, emphasizing her core values of respect, honesty, integrity and truth.
(Conservative Party of Canada) and Paul Macknight (People’s Party of Canada) did not attend the evening event. General election day is April 28.
The first question of the evening came from Chamber of Commerce moderator Nanette Kapitan: What are your thoughts on the ongoing issues our members are facing today, particularly around crimes and offenses impacting our communities and businesses, such as theft, harassment and break-ins and the lack of accountability for offenders within our current judicial system. How would you work to address these concerns?
Glen Staples, independent
“This is where I'm on the political right, in a sense, because I believe in law and order and I actually admire the Singapore system, where if there's some behaviour they don't like, they make a law against it, and it comes with a punishment. If the behavior does not decrease, they either increase the punishment or the enforcement or both.
“For example, they didn't like people putting chewing gum on the sidewalks, so they made a law against it. The punishment they ended up with is if you get caught putting gum on the sidewalk, you have to spend a day in an orange suit cleaning the sidewalks. And guess what? It works. The people in Singapore don't miss having gum on the sidewalks.”
Jennifer Lash, Liberal Party
“Obviously, the current system isn't working, and everyone deserves to feel safe on the streets. We also need to help people who are suffering from addiction and mental health with compassion.
“The Liberal Party has committed to reviewing the Criminal Code and making it harder for people, particularly re-offenders, to get out on bail. And we're also looking at different ways of trying to ensure we have a complete system to help support people who are struggling with mental health and addiction issues. We need to both treat the problem, or sorry, treat the illness, and also make sure we are not allowing repeat offenders out on jail.
“We're also taking steps to increase the the border controls, so we have less drugs coming into Canada and less guns coming into Canada as well, and we believe that by having a full suite of different policies knitted together, we can make sure we're caring for people and ensuring that homes and businesses are also safe.”
Jessica Wegg, Green Party
“This is a really important question. I work in this field, and it's not an easy answer. There are lots of different reasons that crime happens, and there are lots of different ways to address it.
“Thinking that you can just keep people in prisons longer isn't a well-rounded solution. Prisons, for one thing, are very expensive, and it costs a lot of money to keep people there and then you've got to work on what's going to happen when they do come out. So we need to look at the underlying reasons that these crimes are happening and try to tackle those.
“I think there are two main reasons that they happen. One is despair, which can be related to homelessness or mental health addiction problems, and the other is that we need to have more activities for young people to do. The Green Party does want to include mental health treatment and make it more accessible under our universal health care program, and we also have programs for youth.”
Tanille Johnston, NDP
“I want to acknowledge the business owners and residents of Powell River. Crime often brings with it fear and frustration, and that's real, and I want to offer that we need our justice system to absolutely play its part, but we need to drastically improve rehabilitation like was already offered.
“You can't just put people in custody for a decade and then expect them to pop out different, get their new career on the go, put a roof over their head and be able to afford their groceries. So we need to get a lot better at rehabilitation, also crime and addiction can be treated or solutioned in the same way.
“We need two different approaches to these challenges. We need to support our provinces to have the continuum of care that we need in place to properly support our folks who are are ready to start a new journey away from addiction and allow them full support along that journey into independence.”
Policing in Canada
A topic raised by an audience member later in the forum was about the RCMP: “I noticed when Justin Trudeau stepped down, one of the last interviews he gave was about policing in Canada. Based on experiences I've had and heard about, I want to say I've met wonderful police officers, but the RCMP, the way it's structured, and the way policing is happening in Canada, I'm super concerned. So after the election, even if you're not elected, would you be willing to work with people like me to address the problem?”
Jennifer Lash, Liberal Party
“I just want to speak of experience that I had with some youth who may or may not have been my children, and please don't ever tell them that I told this story publicly. But there were some kids who got into a bit of trouble, and the police were called and and the owner of the property was called and they set up a restorative justice program. It was miraculous.
“It saved them from hating policemen, setting up a negative relationship with RCMP, from being rebellious, it taught them kindness, it taught them how to apologize, and it was really remarkable.
“I was so grateful that the police officer involved welcomed that approach and encouraged it, and that the landowner also went there. I think we need to set up more systems like that, where the police officers are playing a constructive role in healing, as opposed to a way of harming.”
Jessica Wegg, Green Party
“We have the same ideas as Jennifer just mentioned, but I want to take your question from a different perspective, which is sort of the RCMP, the general idea of them, and we need to restore, and in some cases, build a fresh Canadian trust in what the police are there to do and how they work.
“We need to make sure everyone is heard, and their stories are heard. And this is, you know, police overstepping. What they should be doing is what what I did in the states. I'm trying to learn how to do it here, because I know that it's important.
“I know this isn't the states. We're different here. But we have had American consultants come in to train the RCMP. That doesn't work here, because that's not who we are. We need to have Canadian ideas about what we want our RCMP to do, and make sure they aren't using ridiculous military tactics to do them.”
Tanille Johnston, NDP
“Yes, of course, anything to help policing. As an Indigenous person, we have a really challenging relationship with enforcement, and it's constant, and it's all the time, and the videos that I see get put up on social media of things that happen between enforcement and Indigenous populations in the North Island are just tragic and extremely heartbreaking.
“We do have an indigenous arm of the RCMP, where we do have community officers who are attached to nations. We're very lucky. In my nation, the We Wai Kai Nation, we have an amazing constable. He's fantastic and we couldn't be more happy with him, but that is not the case across the board.
“We really need a better relationship between the assignment of officers and nations where there's some sort of interview relational process that we can go through to make sure that officer does have the right heart in the right place to do that work with the community they're assigned to.”
Glen Staples, independent
“I was thrown in jail once for speeding, and I went home and told my father; he couldn't believe that I was thrown in jail. He thought I'd done something really bad, but it was something about my attitude, I think, because I always had trouble with police.
“Well, the problem was, I think, that I didn't treat them with the respect they wanted. I would treat somebody who was lying on the sidewalk the same as I would treat a policeman. They're all humans. But somehow, it didn't go over very well.
“I think policing has improved because of cell phone video. All the deaths that happened in police cells before were always investigated and found that police never did anything wrong. Now, there's cell phone videos that prove that it's not always the case. I want to just point out also that policing is a really difficult job.”
The candidates also answered questions on , and about .
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