Source: Langley Teachers Association
Dear Candidates,
Here are the questions we will be discussing during your interview! If you would like to be in our Election Bulletin that we provide to all of our members, please respond to each question in writing. We will publish exactly what you provide, without editing or altering anything. If we could have your responses by Thursday, December 5th, by 4:00 pm, that would be fantastic, so that our members have this info in time for the advanced polls! If there is any additional info you would like to provide for our Election Bulletin, please feel free to include that as well.
1. Where does Climate Change fall on your list of priorities and what are you and your Government prepared to do to combat Climate Change?
If the Libertarian Party of Canada chose to prioritize Climate Change, we argue that the government is the last group Canadians would want in charge. Governments historically are the worst polluters.
Government interventions in the energy sector negatively affect technological advancement. As the market looks for cleaner, greener, sustainable, and cheap energy sources politicians should not be picking winners and losers when it comes to research and development. In doing so we are incentivizing businesses to focus on one technology over the potentially development of another one that could possibly be more efficient and effective at producing clean energy, like nuclear power.
Climate Change is very low on our list of priorities. Climate-related deaths have dropped by 98 per cent in the past century. Humans have adapted to changes in our environment for thousands of years and will continue to do so, utilizing vast arrays of technologies. Meanwhile, according to one study, Canada is set to positively benefit from the estimated change in temperatures, increasing our national GDP by up to 4%.
There are more pressing matters that need to be addressed before we have the luxury of focusing on Climate Change. The Kuznets Curve suggests that as a civilization becomes wealthier it pollutes more, until it reaches a certain level of affluence and then it begins to invest efforts into maintaining and improving their environment. Canada needs to solve many other issues, including monetary policy and healthcare, before we can begin to focus on healing our homeland.
2. What are your thoughts on immigration, the immigration process and supporting new immigrants upon arrival?
The government has no role in dictating maximum or minimum immigration levels.
Refugees have some great community supports that already exist, including charities like New Hope. If Canadians were able to keep more of their earnings there could be more voluntary funding for those programs through charitable donations.
The Libertarian Party would continue to allow citizens to sponsor immigrants and refugees provided that they agree to underwrite the financial costs associated and agree to accept liability for any criminal activity that their invitee partakes in. This gets government out of immigration policy and gets away from arbitrary cap numbers and values testing and ties immigration to the level of personal responsibility Canadians are willing to take on.
3. How would you approach the rise in hate targeting various groups, including Anti-Semitism, Palestine and LGBTQ?
Credible threats to the safety of any individual or group must be taken seriously and if necessary be prosecuted criminally.
4. How do you plan to address the housing situation in Langley City-Cloverdale?
There is a shortage of housing in many cities in Canada, and Langley City, the Township of Langley, and Surrey are no different. Due to this shortfall in homes there is upward pressure on prices, making this one of the most unaffordable places in the world, in terms of housing costs, both owning a home and renting.
The federal government does not currently have a major effect on the creation of housing – provincial and municipal governments play a much larger role.
However, the Japanese model is one we would enact if the LPoC was in power.
The Japanese federal government solved their own housing crisis by taking a top-down approach, limiting zoning to only 12 simpler categories, as well as rolling out the Urban Renaissance Policy in 2002, which made it easier to rezone land and sped up the process for building permits.
Generally libertarians favour decentralized governance, but in this scenario the federal government has the opportunity to make reforms that will benefit individuals who are under-housed. Local restrictions on the type of housing that is allowed also need to be revisited, like Tiny Home communities for example, that have been successful in other jurisdictions.
5. What supports would you put in place to support the opioid crisis?
The War on Drugs has failed. It’s time to End Prohibition.
Research suggests that legalizing illicit drugs will not lead to more use, but the benefits will be plentiful.
The products will be legal for sale at reputable establishments, whether that’s a pharmacy or other dispensary, and will ensure the drugs themselves are not laced with toxic additives.
Those struggling with addiction will have a better path towards recovery, able to utilize the resources already available without fear of prosecution.
Police will be able to focus on violent crime if not being asked to prosecute drug possession and dealers.
Coupled with our party’s plan to increase the amount of housing, this would lead to fewer homeless who are using drugs openly in our communities.
Obviously it would not completely eliminate vagrancies, since there is a portion who prefer that lifestyle. This is where law enforcement comes in to utilize the tools they already have to maintain a safe community. While tent cities on their own are not the problem, their proximity to busy streets, business fronts, and parks is of concern. Law enforcement and the judicial system would need to work in tandem to maintain a safe community.
6. What will your Government do to move forward with Truth and Reconciliation?
It’s time for Canada to correct the theft of land that occurred prior to the 20th century.
The Libertarian Party of Canada advocates for scrapping the paternalistic Indian Act and actively undoing years of discrimination.
Eighty-nine per cent of Canada is Crown Land, and should immediately be transferred to any First Nations that have a claim to it. The federal government has done everything in its power to stonewall the Land Claim process, creating a massive bureaucracy that has resulted in a large percentage of claims taking longer than a decade to settle. This process has resulted in massive debts for many Indigenous claimants, which would likely be impossible to repay without first obtaining their land claim. The status quo of long-term costly lawsuits benefits no one involved. Furthermore, the federal government should return culturally and religiously important sites on Crown Land used by multiple indigenous groups to their collective care whenever possible.
Obviously it will not be possible to return lands that have become privately own by millions of Canadians. However, First Nations with claims to that land will need to be made whole through financial compensation.
Furthermore, the lack of action regarding missing and murdered aboriginal women and men must be rectified. With police resources being freed up from ending the War on Drugs, resources can be effectively used to solve murder and ongoing cold cases.
Finally, the federal government must stop utilizing First Nation children as political and financial pawns, and fully implement Jordan’s Principle so that no more children are neglected by the healthcare system in such an unfair and discriminatory way.
7. How will your Government move forward to research the impact of Long-Haul Covid on Canadians and how will your Government ensure that citizens are aware of Covid in our community today?
The LPoC has no appetite to invest any additional resources to raise awareness of Covid-19.
In fact, far too many resources were misdirected in the attempt to contain the SARS-CoV-2 virus, causing our nation to be further in debt, destroy our purchasing power, trample individual rights, and decimate people’s overall physical and mental health.
We sincerely hope anyone struggling with Long Covid symptoms gets support from the healthcare system, just like any other malady.
8. Despite some progress being made on Mental Health awareness, many people are still struggling to access support. What actions will you and your Government take to support people living with Mental Health challenges?
The best way the federal government could support mental health is to change policies that lead to food insecurity, housing insecurity, and job insecurity.
9. What is your response to the rising amount of people who can no longer afford to pay their bills due to the higher cost of living?
The federal government is complicit in the decimation of our dollar’s purchasing power. By ballooning the money supply it escalates inflation and the majority of Canadians are worse-off for it.
The Liberal government is liable for people’s struggles and need to be held accountable.
Each time the government incurs a deficit it is the Bank of Canada that monetizes that debt, literally printing money out of thin air.
But it’s worse than that.
The practice of Fractional Reserve Lending is also increasing the money supply. Banks can lend out more funds than they have in deposits, and each time they do that it inflates the money supply.
Any solutions other candidates or parties offer to address the high cost of living are bandaids at best, unless they put a stop to Fractional Reserve Lending and demand balanced budgets from the government.
10. What is your plan and your party’s plan to address the shortage of workers here in Langley City-Cloverdale, and across the country in terms of Education and Health Care?
Our party would facilitate people’s ability to move from one province to another, start work immediately. In too many fields credentials are not transferable between provinces.
We’d work with provinces to fast-track the ability for immigrants who have adequate training to work faster, helping vet their credentials quicker.
But shortages of workers in a specific industry occur when market forces have disincentivized people from entering those fields.
Why don’t people want to be teachers? Or SEAs? Or healthcare workers?
These are tougher questions that need to be asked, and it is no coincidence that these shortages both are in industries administered by governments.
11. What is your and your party’s plan in response to Donald Trump’s plan on the tariffs proposed towards Canada?
Tariffs are a tax on the consumer.
The Libertarian Party of Canada is very disappointed with the rhetoric coming from the incoming president. These policies will be a net-negative for Americans, as much as Canadians.
The LPoC would not respond with retaliatory tariffs.
Canada should negotiate with the U.S. to eliminate all tariffs and allow the free trade of all products freely across borders, without any duty, taxes, or tariffs applied.
12. What do see as some positive and also some negative approaches/decisions that the current Federal Government has made since being elected in 2015?
Canada is complicit in murder around the world, funding wars, and arguable genocides, across the globe.
Regardless of the reasons for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the conflict could have been avoided if NATO stayed out and allowed the two nations to negotiate peace. Instead, Canada has committed $19.5 billion to Ukraine since Feb. 2022, including $4.5 billion in military assistance, further encouraging bloodshed.
Just between October and December 2023 Israel has received $28.5 million worth of military exports from Canada, and $114 million since 2015 when Trudeau’s government was elected.
Meanwhile, the federal government sent $140 million in humanitarian aid to the region, stemming from the conflict in Gaza and the West Bank.
Still in the Middle East, in Yemen, Canadians were also funding both sides of a genocide there. Saudi Arabia bought $1.2 billion in military goods from Canada in 2022.
On one hand, since 2015, the Liberals sent $150 million in aid to Yemen. But also were actively arming Saudi Arabia.
I can go on.
Canada needs to stop funding war across the world. These are all dollars that were borrowed – further putting our Canadian children in debt, while Ukrainian, Russian, Israeli, Palestinian, and Yemeni children suffer as a result.
13. For any negative examples in the question above, what would you and your Government have done differently, or, if you are representing the current Government, would could they have done differently in retrospect?
Canada needs to stop funding war across the world. These are all dollars that were borrowed – further putting our Canadian children in debt, while Ukrainian, Russian, Israeli, Palestinian, and Yemeni children suffer as a result.
Any military dollars we spend should be to protect our sovereignty in the Arctic Circle and provide disaster relief to all parts of Canada.
The Libertarian Party of Canada would consider exiting from NATO and the United Nations, as both of those organizations have a history of military adventurism, intervention, nation building and imperialism.