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West Vancouver candidates say how they'd stray from party lines

Squamish debate attracts crowd of 200
WV candidates

A group of approximately 200 people gathered at Quest University Tuesday at noon to witness a rare event in the current federal election campaign: an all-candidates debate featuring candidates from all four of the riding’s parties.

The ruling Conservative party has been criticized for many of its candidates’ failures to attend debates. However, John Weston – the incumbent MP for West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky – seemed eager to defend his and his party’s record from the three people hoping to take his seat away from him.

Weston, a lawyer specializing in human rights, won nearly twice as many votes as NDP runner-up Terry Platt in 2011 but is facing tough opposition in the form of two wily veterans of municipal politics as well as a rookie NDP candidate. He acknowledged as much by telling the crowd he felt “there are at least three worthy candidates in this riding.”

Green Party candidate Ken Melamed, a former mayor of Whistler, got in an early dig about being the only candidate truly able to speak his own mind rather than simply “parrot party policy,” but Weston did his best to offset the perception Tory candidates are all tightly controlled by the PMO; he mentioned his record of introducing two private member’s bills and being among a group of 11 Conservative backbenchers who voiced support for the right of all MPs to speak freely in Parliament.

Nonetheless, in the hour-long debate that ranged from such topics as proposed pipelines to tax policies, social housing and the Syrian refugee crisis, the candidates rarely wavered from their party lines.

Possibly the most interesting moments in the Squamish Chamber of Commerce lunch came after a question asking if there was anything in their party’s platforms with which they didn’t personally agree.

“This is going to get us all in trouble,” said Liberal candidate and former West Vancouver mayor Pamela Goldsmith-Jones to appreciative laughter. Her answer, perhaps unsurprisingly, concerned Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s support for the controversial Bill C-51.

“It is a classic Stephen Harper omnibus bill,” she said. “It is bundled together with egregious things that offend Canadian rights and freedoms. The only way to get rid of those pieces of it you want us to get rid of is to get rid of Stephen Harper’s government . . . It is not a balanced bill, but there are aspects that we need and it is time to shine the light of day on it, debate it openly as we do with all legislation and keep the pieces that will keep us safe while balancing that with our rights and freedoms that we treasure.”

For NDP candidate Larry Koopman, who owns a cottage-rental business on the Sunshine Coast, his only concern about his party’s platform is the proposed amount of spending on foreign aid.

“We had earlier made a commitment to increase our foreign aid fund to 0.07 of our GDP,” Koopman explained. “This is something we backed away from because we have priorities and other plans that we have worked out, but this is something that I feel strongly that I think we should be going there. It is still our goal, so I will defend the party that way, but we have taken a back step.”

Melamed took a page out of the Grits’ playbook and said the Greens should consider raising taxes on the rich.

“When I looked at our platform for a fully costed budget, there is one issue, and I applaud the Liberal party for suggesting it, and it’s raising taxes on the wealthiest Canadians.

We are taking other measures to try and capture some of that wealth by trying to close down the loopholes that allow them to park their money off-shore . . . It’s not part of our platform, but as an MP I’m going to work with whoever is Minister of Finance to advocate for that greater balance.”

Weston pointed to his controversial handling of a First Nations land treaty in 2012.

“I’m a big advocate for the Sliammon People but when I saw the treaty, there was a clause that said when there is a conflict between Sliammon law and Canadian law, that Sliammon law would prevail . . . I went to the prime minister and I said, ‘I’m sorry, even though it is in my riding, even though the government is promoting this treaty and even though I helped achieve it, I can’t support that.’ There were intonations of consequences and things like that, but they respected my decision.”