The lone independent candidate in Cariboo-Prince George for the April 28 federal election doesn’t just think that federal political parties have his riding’s best interest at heart, he says they shouldn’t exist.
Speaking to The Citizen in a video call on Thursday, April 10, Quesnel-based family and criminal lawyer Kenneth Thomson said that in Canada’s representative democracy, he sees the validity of city- or region-based parties because they have similar concerns.
But in regions like this one, he said the issues are very different than in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver.
“I’ve been around for quite a few years now and there’s issues that remain outstanding,” Thomson said. “They’re not solved because there’s no interest on the part of the large political parties in actually solving them. They don’t get elected by solving these small issues.”
He accused successive governments of facilitating the collapse of the country’s domestic manufacturing, eliminating the federal role in home building and switching the tax burden from corporations to the general population through the GST.
Also, he brought up former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s almost decade-old promise to improve water quality in Indigenous communities if elected.
Thomson said Canada could solve that issue for a fraction of the cost of the aid it has sent to Ukraine during that country’s war with Russia.
Discussing homelessness, he said he’s been purchasing shipping containers and has been redeveloping them into small living spaces with a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and small sitting area for less than $10,000 apiece.
He said other countries have been using small homes like those to provide housing for immigrants, adding that it would be cheaper to do that than the $7 billion Canada has sent to Ukraine.
According to a media release posted online by Trudeau back in February, the value of Canada’s assistance to Ukraine is greater than $19.7 billion.
On foreign aid, he said Canada should be more selective about foreign aid and categorized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a response to actions by Western nations.
He said the protests in Ukraine in 2013 and 2014 that led to the impeachment of pro-Russia president Victor Yanukovych was an American-engineered coup d’etat and said Russia was fighting back against NATO encroaching towards it.
What Western nations should do for foreign aid, he said, is help countries they’ve had a hand in destabilizing, like Haiti.
Another local issue he’d like to tackle is youth participation in the labour market. From his work as a lawyer, he said he sees that there’s a risk of a “tsunami of young people who have no future.”
“When they reduce to hopelessness, then we’re going to have a real problem because those are the people who are going to end up on the street and as drug addicts,” Thomson said.
The region’s forestry industry is one of the sectors threatened by the escalating trade war between the U.S. and Canada. The Trump administration recently announced plans to increase anti-dumping duties on Canada softwood lumber from 14.4 per cent to 34.45 per cent.
Thomson said Canada needs to start developing secondary industries to make products out of its lumber, saying that the country could produce a competitor to Ikea.
He also suggested that in the face of the new American duties, Canada could impose export duties because the U.S. needs our lumber to rebuild after recent natural disaster and it might cause the other country to back down.
From what The Citizen can tell, Prince George hasn’t elected an independent Member of Parliament before — at least not in recent memory. Thomson said unlike members of political parties, he would voice the needs of Cariboo-Prince George in Ottawa if elected.
Next week, he said, he plans to attend the April 15 all-candidates forum in Vanderhoof and visit a Sikh temple in Quesnel as part of his campaign.
Those interested in following Thomson’s campaign can visit his website, enough.ca. Election day is April 28.
