Across the country on Thursday evening, the same four questions relating to the environment and climate change were being asked to local candidates in the upcoming federal election during the 100 Debates On The Environment event.
The local event at Centennial CVI included Mark Paralovos of the People’s Party of Canada, incumbent Liberal candidate Lloyd Longfield, Aisha Jahangir for the NDP and Steve Dyck for the Green Party. Conservative candidate Ashish Sachan was invited, but did not attend.
Candidates were offered many of the questions in advance, which resulted in a lot of looking down at prepared statements for Jahangir and Dyck, while Longfield and Paralovos mostly spoke directly to the crowd, referring to notes from time to time.
Each candidate had two minutes to answer the four primary questions, the same questions being asked at similar events across the country.
The debate was moderated by retired Superior Court Justice Cas Herold.
For the duration of the debate, each candidate was allowed to use two ‘wild cards,’ allowing them to rebut a point or defend their own position.
Water and water quality were often a topic of discussion throughout the debate, with Nestle and its water taking near Guelph mentioned a number of times.
The most recent Liberal government was also taken to task for not eliminating boil water advisories on First Nations reserves fast enough. Jahangir said people must stand up to companies like Nestle even when it’s hard.
Moving to First Nations’ issues, the topic of boil water advisories came up.
Jahangir said land, water and air should be public goods and that there are ‘100 Walkertons’ across Ontario, referring to the 2000 contaminated water crisis in that community which resulted in six deaths.
“Every drinking water advisory on Indigenous nations in Canada ultimately point to an ecological disaster,” said Jahangir.
Longfield noted that as MP he served on a parliamentary committee struck to end boil water advisories on First Nations reserves. He said 86 have been eliminated to date, with 55 still to be removed. Longfield said the Liberals are on pace to have them all eliminated by 2021.
Jahangir responded: “How expensive is it, really, to get them safe, clean drinking water?”
“I am a mother. I have children,” said Jahangir. “I can’t imagine living in that environment where, not only do you have to boil water to drink, but you can’t even use the water for cooking, you can’t use the water for bathing. That is appalling.”
Paralovos noted the PPC is the only one promising meaningful reform of the Indian Act.
“We are talking about making sure that reserves are places that are being cared for properly and unfortunately that’s not happening, despite a $21-billion yearly budget” said Paralovos. “It’s unfortunate, but mis-managed spending and poor execution is to blame.”
Dyck noted that the Green Party has been at the forefront of the discussion about climate change.
“Science tells us that we are not too late to avert catastrophic climate change — but we must act now,” said Dyck.
He said the Green Party will reduce carbon emissions by 60 per cent by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050.
“We have to be that aggressive to meet what the climate scientists tell us,” said Dyck.
Longfield used one of his wild cards to press Dyck on issues that were identified recently in the media about the Green Party platform.
Dyck said the Liberal party has put forth seven of its initiatives for the Parliamentary Budget Office to review, versus 21 by the Greens.
“I fully expect our plan will have a green go-ahead light and no I don’t expect we are going to back down,” he said.
Dyck then used his own wild card immediately afterward to push back on Liberal promises made in the previous federal election.
“This government — the same day they declared a climate emergency, was buying a multi-million dollar pipeline,” Dyck said to applause. “How can your government claim environmentally-centred economic decision making when your government also ignores the evidence that this pipeline was a mistake.”
The audience questions gave candidates an opportunity to ditch the scripts and come up with a response on the fly.
In a question from the audience about how a proportional representation system of voting would help toward a path of sustainability and a solution to the climate crisis.
Dyck said the current first-past-the-post system of voting puts 100 per cent of the power into the hands of a party that receives 39 per cent of the vote.
He said multi-national corporations are the ones who don’t want to see a change in the voting system to proportional representation.
“They really like having a prime minister’s office that has 100 per cent of the power that can be the target of their lobbying,” said Dyck.
“If we had proportional representation, where we had to have conversations in the sunlight of our parliament, we wold have much better regulations, much better outcomes for Canadians and that includes much better climate regulations,” he said.
Jahangir said proportional representation would allow for more collaboration and cooperation through minority governments.
“When it comes to global warming and the climate crisis we have here, it would hold everybody accountable,” she said.
Longfield said the work toward instituting voter reform in Canada died in committee due to partisanship.
“We do need to change the system of voting and it’s still an open issue,” said Longfield. “But the biggest issue is partisanship within the House of Commons within committees.”
Paralovos said in 2015 he was excited at the possibility of Canada moving to a proportional representation system of voting and admitted that he voted Liberal in the last election to see it happen.
“Now we are in a totally different election — I think the issues are starkly different than what was being talked about in 2015,” said Paralovos.
“When you talk about partisanship, I think it’s interesting that the committee partisanship you mentioned, the Liberals closed ranks and refused to let anybody investigate anything — SNC, ethics violations, nothing,” he said.
Paralovos caused the biggest stir of the night when he was critical of 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg. That situation was detailed in a separate GuelphToday story.
