Meet your candidate: Richards Cannings for South Okanagan-West Kootenay

Castanet is conducting a Q&A with each candidate running to represent the South Okanagan-West Kootenay riding in the upcoming Sept. 20 Canadian federal election. Look for one each day this week. Each candidate was asked the same questions, with some additional personalized inquiries.

NDP candidate Richards Cannings has been the area’s MP for the past six years and hopes to earn another four with his dedication to environmental policy and plans for the area.

Q: Let’s start with the basic question: Why should you be chosen again to represent this riding?

A: Well, you know, I have represented the riding the last two sessions, I've been the MP since 2015. I think there's more that I can do. I entered politics because I thought there was a real need for a voice of science and reason, in Ottawa. This was back in the Harper-era, when scientists were being muzzled. It was something that really drew me into that issue.

I think there's still, as I say, more to do here, we have a climate crisis going on right now that we saw this summer. There are so many things we need to do to fix our social safety nets, our healthcare system that we saw the pandemic expose, there were problems there.

I think the NDP has the solutions that Canada needs for that. So I'm more than happy to run again and run on the NDP record over the past two years.

Q: What's the biggest issue locally that has not been correctly addressed by the federal government?

A: I think the biggest local issue is housing. And when I say it's local, I recognize that it's an issue in many parts of the country. But here in this riding, it's an issue, whether you're in Penticton, or Grand Forks or New Denver. This is something where it affects young people trying to buy their first home, that dream of owning your first home.

It affects seniors who may be forced out on the street, because their landlord decides to sell the house they're renting because prices are so good. Or it might be, you know, homeless people who literally, there's no social housing, there's no subsidized housing.

So if you lose that you are literally, as I say, on the street, and it affects businesses, because so many businesses I talked to are finding it hard to find workers. It's not because workers are sitting at home on CERB at less than minimum wage, it's because workers can't find a place they can afford.

Many businesses have taken to buying homes so that they can house their own workers and because of that, they're unable to make other investments that they could normally do. So that's something that we need to fix right away and the NDP has a plan.

The experts say the only way to fix this problem is to increase the amount of affordable housing, and the NDP is the only party with a plan to do that, to build 500,000 units of affordable housing over the next 10 years to catch up to where we should have been if the federal government's liberal and conservative hadn't got out of the affordable housing game 30 years ago.

Q: As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, what in your opinion needs to happen in order to get it under control? Do you support vaccine passports?

A: What we saw earlier in the summer, I remember writing a brochure to send out to my riding, back in early July, things were looking good. We were seeing vaccine rates increase. We were seeing COVID cases dropping precipitously. We were getting things well under control.

Then we had the Delta variant come in very, very violent, very transmissible. We saw the people who hadn't been vaccinated, the people who had concerns about the vaccine for whatever reasons, suddenly filling our hospitals. Right now, intensive care units in hospitals in the Okanagan, and the Kootenays are all full or near full. Cancer treatments, cardiac treatments are being canceled. Our frontline health workers have just had it.

I've been talking to nurses for the past two weeks. One of them just said to me, thank you for bringing in the vaccine passport program. It's what's going to get us out of this, and then she broke down crying. These people are at their wits' end and that's what's going to get us out of it.

The vaccine passport ... I'm all for people choose whether to get vaccinated or not. But since the only thing getting us out of this is having enough people getting vaccinated, they might find that people who are vaccinated, who pose less of a risk to themselves and the public, will have restrictions lifted for them. And well, unvaccinated people will have to wait until we get that number up.

I'm heartened to see the number of vaccinations going up and the number of COVID cases, maybe slowly going down now in this region. And so I'm hoping that we are seeing the end of that light at the end of the tunnel. But it's been a long road, and we're all tired of it.

Q: So moving forward in this pandemic, really, what we're looking at it at the best solution here, in your opinion, is continuing for people to get vaccinated continuing to follow those passport restrictions. And hopefully, as those numbers vaccination numbers grow, increase cases die down, and that's when things move forward?

A: That's right. I mean, as I said, if people choose not to be vaccinated, they will have to wait longer to have the full freedoms that vaccinated people may have. Whether it's going into a gym or a restaurant or a bar, or traveling on a plane, those are places where transmission can easily take place. That's where these cases filling our hospitals are happening.

So we have to protect the public, protect our healthcare system and the way to do that is allow people who have been fully vaccinated to access was like keep these businesses open, these businesses have been suffering for the past year and a half. And so to keep our economy going, our tourism economy going to allow travellers in from elsewhere, we have to use this vaccination as the way to do that. And hopefully we will get through it.

We're all waiting for a return to that new normal, whatever it may look like. But there's a lot of tired and frustrated people after a year and a half of this, it's naturally very concerning.

Q: This summer has also been tiring in the way that it's been gravely impacted by wildfires and unprecedented heatwave, what should be done to better protect the area and its residents? And where does climate action land on your list of priorities?

A: Well, it's right at the top. You know, I said housing was the biggest local issue, climate action, I think it's the biggest issue globally as well as across Canada. There's two parts to that climate action. One is the part where we have to stop climate change from getting worse.

So we have to cut our emissions and the NDP has a very bold plan to do that. Scientists have told us we have to cut our emissions in half over the next 10 years, only the Green Party and the NDP have plans to do that.

But at the same time, what many people don't realize is that if we stopped all those emissions today, we would still be where we are in terms of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, we would still have the same temperature levels, the same forest fires, the same floods the same extreme weathers.

We have to go to the climate adaptation, things that we have to do. And you know, with the fires this year they really showed how desperately we need fire smarting communities making our communities safer from interface fires. When you have a town like Lytton destroyed in seconds. We need to have mitigation measures in place, thinning of forests around communities, even individual owners fire smarting their properties. That will give us the time to fight those fires and avoid the catastrophic losses that we've seen this year and in past years.

This is where the federal government can take a role, the NDP has pledged a $3 billion fund for this to for climate adaptation in communities whether it's making them safer from fires, making them safer from future flooding. This is something we have to turn our attention to unfortunately, because those problems will continue while at the same time we have to fight climate change itself in a very, very urgent manner.

Q: Your party is once again not anticipated to gain a majority. So how do you propose to get more done for this area when your party doesn't seem to have a major seat at the table?

A: Well, first I'll say, we only had 24 MPs over the past two years and I think we accomplished more than any other party, even the government, on supporting Canadians in that two years. The Liberals came in with, really, it seemed intent on doing the bare minimum, when it came to supporting people during the pandemic. They wanted to fiddle with unemployment insurance, when three million people were suddenly out of work in the first week of the pandemic.

We pointed out, the NDP pointed out that 60 per cent of Canadian workers don't qualify for EI. They would have been, you know, without money without food without without rent money. And so CERB was born, that was an NDP initiative. Same with the wage subsidy that kept so many businesses alive. I meet business owners every day, who thanked me for that. That again, the Liberals came in, they were going to produce a 10 per cent wage subsidy.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business said that's not enough. They went to the Conservatives, the Conservatives weren't interested. They came to us, we went to the government with a demand to make it work, we needed 75 per cent. So that's where the wage subsidy happened and all the other supports the rent supports, the loans supports for seniors and students and people with disabilities. They all were NDP initiatives.

So I think we've accomplished a great deal in the last two years, and we will continue to do that whatever position we're in. If we're in a majority government position, great. I think Canadians will see a much, much better Canada. If we're in a minority government situation, you know, with another party, as forming a minority government, we'll be happy to work with them as long as they are focused on Canadians.

So that's where I think the NDP, we punch way above our weight wherever we are. And I always say Canadians always benefit when we elect more NDP MPs and that's my pitch to voters.

Q: How do you plan to work with Indigenous communities in the area and address their needs and concerns?

A: I've always worked closely with First Nations communities here before I became a politician, I was an ecosystems biologist who worked with the Osoyoos Indian band, with the Penticton Indian band, the Lower Similkameen. I mean, I remember visiting the Kamloops residential school site, with community members there 15 years ago, talking about ecosystem recovery.

But at the same time, I remember touring that school grounds and people telling me about the children that were buried there. That revelation of those unmarked graves, I think really woke Canadians up in a way. We all knew that this had happened, we all knew children had died, but it hadn't really hit people in their hearts. When you just sit down and realize there's 215 kids that were taken from their homes that didn't come home.

I have friends who had brothers and sisters who didn't return and their parents weren't told for years that those kids had died. Maybe two or three years, and they were never told where they were buried. That's something that has really, I think, struck a chord with people across Canada that really, I think, understand at least a part of what reconciliation is all about. And so reconciliation starts with land and culture, includes language, those are all things that the NDP as a government would support in First Nations across the country.

Q: Is there anything else you would like voters to know about you?

A: Well, I think one of the major pillars of the NDP platform is that we've been struggling for the past year and a half. We have spent a lot of money in the last year and a half, keeping the economy going. Those supports cost a lot of money, and people are still struggling.

What we don't want, you know, the Liberals would have regular Canadians pay for those supports. The Conservatives say they wouldn't cut the programs, they would grow the economy. Well, that's just like them criticizing the liberals for saying the budget will balance itself.

Only the NDP has a real plan to pay off those debts without affecting the people are struggling and that's by putting out a wealth tax on the super wealthy of Canada. If you have more than $10 million in assets, we're going to ask you to pay your fair share, a 1 per cent tax, that will probably generate something in the order of, you know, $20 billion every year to pay off those debts, so that regular people don't have to shoulder those costs.

The billionaire families in Canada made 78 more billion dollars than they normally did during the pandemic. That just isn't right. So we have to make sure those people pay their fair share, they can easily afford it and that's how we will get out of this. That's how we will create all these benefits for Canadians.

Whether it's free pharmacare, dental care for those who don't have it now. All these things everybody wants, and 89 per cent of Canadians are in favour of a wealth tax.

The Liberals and Conservatives would never touch it and only the NDP has that political courage to do it. And so that, I think is an important difference between us and those other parties.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.