The Kimberley and District Chamber of Commerce held an all candidates forum at McKim Middle School on Friday, April 11, giving residents a chance to hear from incumbent Rob Morrison of the Conservative Party, Kallee Lins of the NDP, Liberal candidate Reggie Goldsbury and independent candidate Jim Wiedrick.
People's Party of Canada candidate Laurie Baird and Green Party candidate Steven Maffioli declined to attend the forum.
The event was hosted by Chamber of Commerce general manager Andrew Wilson and moderated by City Councillor Jason McBain.
After giving opening remarks, the candidates responded to a variety of questions that had been submitted in advance by Kimberley residents. The subjects covered included rural access to health care, public safety, infrastructure, industry and the environment, and relations with the U.S.
After a candidate responded to their question, the others had the opportunity to give a rebuttal. Here are just a few of the highlights of Friday's discussion.
Health Care
Goldsbury was asked "Rural communities, like Kimberley, face a critical doctor shortage — what will you do to improve access to family doctors and primary health care for residents here in our region?"
Goldsbury replied saying "Where you live should not depict what type of health-care services you get."
"I think that we in the last six years have not taken a strong stance to find solutions that can actually be brought here."
Goldsbury said local representation can play a strong role in being the glue between the provinces and the federal government and suggested providing tax write-offs for doctors who run their own practices so they can focus on their medical work rather than on administration. He also touched on limiting inter-province barriers, saying doctors and nurses shouldn't have to re-apply for licences when they move to a new province.
Wiedrick, who is a physician, said one frustration he deals with in his work is the "absolute stasis" of the bureaucracy. He highlighted that while doctors and nurses in other parts of the province receive a salary top up from the Provincial Rural Retention Initiative (PRRI), those in Kimberley and Cranbrook still do not.
He said the 40-year-old Canada Health Act should be updated, imaging services like CT scanners should be more readily available in rural communities and that Canada needs timely care and patient-focused funding.
Lins highlighted a pilot program happening in the West Kootenays to address the administrative burden on doctors that Goldsbury referred to, saying those types of services don't have to be delivered by the federal government, but can be provided by community organizations.
She added the NDP has committed to increasing transfer payments to provinces to one per cent and specifically tying that to doctor hiring and retention, with work still be done to expand that to nurses and other health-care professionals.
Industry and the Environment
Lins was asked "What importance do industries such as mining, forestry and energy have in the valley and do you see these industries playing a bigger or smaller role in the region's future."
She said these industries play an absolutely critical role and she sees them playing a growing role in the region's future. Discussing forestry specifically, she touched on the potential for "value-added industry," saying that instead of shipping raw timber to the U.S., it could be processed here in Canada. She discussed retrofitting mills that have sat empty since processing timber affected by pine beetle infestation and investing in solutions to get more out of every tree.
Morrison said numerous companies are leaving Canada due to it taking up to 20 years to get a mining permit. He highlighted the Conservative's plan to create a "One and Done" rule for resource projects, with "one application, one environmental review, and a maximum one year waiting time."
He also an east-west pipeline across Canada is essential for the country to sustain itself, especially with "the U.S. trying to bully us and push us around." He said the Conservatives would cancel Bill C69 that he said "has stopped us from developing pipelines."
Wiedrick said developing national economic strength through industry is essential as Canada's "Trump protection plan."
Goldsbury rebutted Morrison's statement, saying that Bill C69 has not stopped the development of pipelines, but it adds accountability for key stakeholders and Indigenous rights holders.
He said ridings need to look at the projects that are available within them to lower operational costs to address the tariffs head on, highlighting the Waneta Expansion into Trail that will reduce travel time for resources by over four hours and save Teck enough to directly offset the impact of U.S. tariffs.
Morrison was asked about what the plan would be to ensure a sustainable future for forestry, amid impacts such as pine beetles, wildfires, mill closures and U.S. tariffs.
He said Canada needs to change the way we export wood and explore selling more products to Europe and Asia. Lins gave a nod to forest fire workers and said fire mitigation work to limit damage and invest in resilience is a big area for growth.
Goldsbury said that the U.S. doesn't need to be our biggest market for timber, Canada should. He again talked about limiting provincial barriers, to sell to Canadians and create resource security.
Trump, Tariffs, Public Safety
Towards the end of the forum, the candidates were asked: "Given the recent damaging policies and rhetoric from the U.S. towards Canada, how would you approach this relationship moving forward and what is the most important actions government can take to protect Canadians?"
Goldsbury said Canada needs to protect its sovereignty, diversify trade, modernize its defence, look to new markets, ports and corridors, earn the respect of the international community, get fair trade for Canadian workers and "unite behind strength." He said Mark Carney is the only leader that has a proactive plan that is working.
"We saw the reciprocal tariffs in the States going across all the countries and Canada was exempt because of the direct lobbying from the Carney government in red states," he said. "51 to 48 was the vote to exempt Canada. It was not the time for a soft approach or to say that we we don’t need to do tariffs and we’ll bring a deal to the U.S.
"The deal that we will bring will be better for Canada, where they will respect our sovereignty. The threat of Donald Trump is the biggest question and I have significant fear of a career politician versus an economist with crisis management, like the ’08 recession or Brexit out in Britain. Now Mark Carney is coming here because he’s got a bold plan. The Carney Liberals are not the Trudeau Liberals, and we are pulling it back to the centre by engaging conversations at the local level to understand how we can do the best for our area."
Lins said that Canada's open trade relationship with the U.S. was fundamentally based on shared values and that Canada can "no longer take those values for granted."
"We simply can not trust on the U.S. to be a stable trading partner anymore and of course diversifying our trade, diversifying the partners we do business with is absolutely critical," she said. "I am fully in support of the strong retaliatory measures that Canada has displayed and at the same time, as MP I would take very seriously ensuring that there is not disproportionate impacts on our local industries.
"The NDP has committed to putting direct investment into communities through infrastructure projects, focusing on by-Canadian procurement to ensure that any resources, any supplies that are needed for those projects are kept within the country."
She also said that in order to take care of Canadian people during this uncertainty, the NDP has committed to expanding Employment Insurance (EI).
"While 40 per cent of Canadian workers are concerned about keeping their jobs during this time, only two in five are actually eligible for EI under its current design," Lins said. "We need to enfranchise more people so that those supports are ready to go and reliable in these incredible moments of instability."
Morrison said that what the U.S. has done came as a "huge shock" particularly to those who travel, or used to travel, to the country and that have American friends and family.
"I do believe right now we do need tariffs until we form government," Morrison said. "And I think once we form government we need to go to the United States and reopen USMCA, which is a Canadian-U.S.-Mexico agreement, and see what tariffs are going to be and finalize so that we can get some stability to move forward. But diversification? Absolutely.
"It has opened our eyes to say we just can’t rely on the fact that these guys are going to be trading with us on what they promised they were going to do, they’ll just change it the next day. So diversifying and talking to Japan for the sale of natural gas, talking to the European Union on some of the products we can give them."
Within Canada, Morrison said removing provincial tariffs would be something to move forward to and highlighted the Conservative's Keep Canadians Working program, that they would institute for any business impacted by tariffs to get them through until this uncertainty is dealt with.
Wiedrick said that it heartens him to hear there's a "broad sense of solidarity" on the approach and that Canada needs to "look after our own knitting," ensuring that whatever economic levers can be engaged, need to be done quickly so we can trade amongst ourselves.
Having previously discussed enacting sweeping changes to revolutionize Canada's tax system in order to make it smoother and allow Canadians to innovate, Wiedrick said that we need to "blow away barriers that are inter-provincial" and then let the provinces sell to each other.
Switching gears, he said that at the core Trump is a "chaos agent."
"He likes watching other people squirm and when you break it down from a psychiatric,psychological, physician point of view, ultimately he fits the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder," Wiedrick said. "That’s what he thrives on. He has no coherent message other than he’s trying to solve the United States government debt crisis, where they owe more on interest every year than they have income taxes coming in.
"But with all of his fluctuating changes of mind, he’s actually made the U.S. bond market worse. So core point to us, there’s no point logic-ing or arguing — it doesn’t work for that kind of personality, just fix your own stuff and take care of your own knitting."
Lastly, the candidates were asked to give a short answer to the question: "If, after governments form, we go back to the table and renegotiate, even if a new agreement is signed, can you even trust Donald Trump?"
"No, logic doesn’t work. No," replied Wiedrick.
"I hope so, but I have to admit that would be a pretty hard no," Morrison said.
"No, I will add a qualifier that I think the architects of this plan, the advisers to Trump, did not count on countries like Canada fighting back," replied Lins. "I think we find ourselves with leverage but I would need to see absolutely more concessions before advocating to getting back to the table."
"We can achieve it by applying pressure by Canada directly in a proactive response," Golsbury said. "I worry about Rob Morrison’s response because when we go to the table and say ‘Hey let’s make a deal’ and what the other person is the deal is you become our 51st state, that’s not strength, that’s surrender.
He added Canada can leverage its industry the U.S. military relies on, such as metals, oil and energy.
The Kimberley and District Chamber of Commerce has uploaded the forum in its entirety to YouTube: https://youtu.be/BTfc7YFaAMw?si=w2a-h5-TBvQXa3gx so you are able to hear everything each candidate had to say on a wide array of questions.
