margery good morning says how do we have a show about the upcoming federal election with a guest who is well known to our listeners so perhaps you can take it from here well i i shouldn't have to introduce lyn white who is pretty well one of the founders of this show of station welcome back then thank you it's good to be here now we asked you today because we want to talk about the election in terms of the issues that should be important to canadians and you became the first person that we thought of who would be tearing her hair out because nobody was making any references to these issues and all sorts of ridiculous distractions are being discussed instead indeed so let's let's remember that election day is only five and a half days away he so the polls will be open from seven until seven fragment of a fragment produced police and i'm not saying full vote and we're here to help you try and figure out what some of the issues are now there are issues that should be of importance to canadians party policies and the individual candidates seem to not always have exactly the same the same priorities shall we say and that's fair enough because every region should have its own issues but there are some issues that should be of concern to us all as you say like climate change for example which is something that has been woefully and addressed in the leadership debates   less it was one of the topics and there has been a lot of around international policy although the platforms are addressing that to some degree that's been up in the in the  leadership debates but that's not the one that's the forum by the way and things like population of course not even on the on the map not for anybody including the greens which is interesting i think  elephants in our living room that people are afraid of that one is an unspeakable yeah and elephants are not just a interests of some other creatures i'm sure that elephants can be persuaded to leave the l living room if if if there is a political will i wanted to suggest that i haven't seen the local conservative candidate say anything about climate change but that's all surprising because the there climate in the conservative policy for the election nor presumably after the election they are promising jobs and they're promising a few othe small things but basically their their campaign platform is business as usual what you what you have seen for the last ten years is what you're going to get for the next four now the climate thing really has a lot to do with  lifestyle because we are concerned about the human impact on climate climate change deniers are saying it's not people right anything is happening in the climate it's not people it's just a natural progression of the way climate behaves comes and goes now i think that's pretty well exploded i think pretty well exploded on the basis that humans have added so much and made so much change to the surface of the planet that definitely we are in for climate change so could it be that climate change lifestyle and corporate control of our lifestyle are related could it be the deed yes i think so  what's interesting is that the liberals who actually have the second best environmental platform next to the greens both the liberals and the greens talk about bolstering the economy by increasing green infrastructure by bringing in transit systems and even specifically green transit systems clean energy the only ones to address water issues which  huge here in canada protection of our waters from both export and from pollution other liberals liberals have a strong policy around water they've figured out they've got that one figured out and they have a strong policy around oceans which interesting enough even the greens have not addressed in their in their platform now that's not to say they want to dress it i'm sure they will will but that is not in their platform so that's that's those are important because what both the greens in the liberals a doing here is saying yeah the economy is important but we can do something about our economy we can do more for our economy by turning it into a green economy then we can if we ignore these issues which of course country after country after country in the world has borne out in in practice this is this is not a ground breaking stuff this is not pioneering this is following the foot steps of places like sweden denmark and germany who have done amazing things with green economy and amazing things with their economy overall and you would think that this would have some traction with those people those  going to come crashing down well my position on that is if everything is going to come crashing down then all the more reason for us to be pursuing cleaner energy so that we are prepared for a future which will be much more labor intensive than the lifestyle that we're living no where we're living as if we had forty thousand horses working for yeah well and for things like mitigating the effects of climate change flood mitigation and particular is in the they're also recognizing that we are already experiencing the effects of climate change particularly with flooding in the in the the east and all three parties address flood mitigation very specifically on their platforms so that's adventures around the world which seem to be leading to immigration problems is it not the case that in fact the disasters in syria are the reasons that the people are fleeing from syria and right and we need to go one step even further back than that and recognize that a part of the crisis and large if not primary part of the crisis in syria is environmental degradation and an ongoing drought and so we have a situation there that goes back to mitigating climate change but yes again three non conservative policies have addressed the syrian refugee crisis in particular go has come out very strongly about that it's obviously an issue very close to his and there is a they have the the liberals have a multi multi faceted revised refute g platform about not only bringing in much more quickly and many more syrian refugees but making canada more refugees friendly and immigrant friendly getting rid of some of the the financial barriers that are in the way for immigrants and refugees to come in and but all three the greens the n d p and the liberals very strong on the syrian refugee crisis didn't a red book in which all his wonderful policies were written down and just anybody remember whether any of them were followed through militarization thing is very interesting because again it's the liberals who primarily address that and then physicist we need to go back to a peacekeeping roots and get away from the more aggressive stance we've got to pull out of iraq altogether and we have got to have a humanitarian presence in syria not a not an aggressive bombing bombing presents a militaristic  the same time they want to put more money into the military but it would appear that the emphasis is more humanitarian and very much the peacekeeping but i notice is that this government said was not interested in regime change but that's what everything seems to be about now oh yes not about reacting resisting helping a population to stay  clear of militaristic activity it's about changing the government and frankly putting a puppet one in instead exactly what's been happening all around the world but we sorted out iraq if ghana stand seeing it yeah yeah yes all these things are about trying to get a government in that will be friendly to us and so we get support first so do your ab which is one of the most horrific of the  middle eastern nations with the most horrific practices and attitudes simply because there's something in it for our site and i assume that the leading family of saudi arabia are pretty scared that us support might be withdrawn from them because the us is still the major military power right yes and it's interesting that none of the parties except for liberals have addressed canada's militaristic presence in the world but as a say they they're quite clear on pulling back from this aggressive we go in with the us because they're our buddies kind of attitude to know we we go back to canada to canada's humanitarian peacekeeping and we know that that hasn't been the case for a very very long times well he says top up by a long way but trudeau seems to be wanted to go back to back kandahar yeah so there are two sides to many of these political faces oh yes and it becomes very very worrying because over the last few decades both liberal and conservative governments at the federal level have allowed us to drift in riyadh to the us empire oh absolutely but and create did to his credit refuse to attack iraq yes bush and the reason he did it this is really interesting because i have one or two inside sources in ottawa the reason he did it was because canadians erupted in revolt against joining the adventure and mr christian made an under the table deal with the united states that he would do afghanistan they went ahead and did it and we were the first into afghanistan with the soldiers yes that was no peacekeeping mission and in fact that was one of the biggest really well done p r things from the government in a long long time is that canadians were under the illusion most canadians run to the illusion that we were in afghanistan as peacekeepers and of course we went in as a military aggressive f immediately and preceded the american significantly and certainly the the situation of women in afghanistan is no better probably worse since they adventures there of the west and that that's not the only kind of trouble recently chris sonic founder anyway he was he was our pastor enough afghanistan and got a lot of kid us out of that a lot of our civil servants our diplomatic servants were you happy to be in afghanistan oh yeah militia they were all stirred in together and that was our first peculiar adventure in geo political activity from canada ever since then it's been a mess as in oh yeah yeah i just have verified  alexander is or we could say was the minister of citizenship and immigration under the conservative governments and he's the one who's been trying to pretend to the government our government is doing anything i'm told to help the people being driven out of syria where we are busy our jihadists who are not the  current leader of syria has under his control right that is a very confusing situation isn't it because in the states as well they're saying well these are the bad guys regime has to be changed we have to obviously somebody we whoever we prefer to put in his place and therefore we have to fight against those people who are trying to support him who are internal to syria and from my point of are actually addressing canada's international role and saying this has to be seriously seriously revised reputation he is going down the tubes in fact i've said that quite explicitly  seriously compromised and we need to go back to being seen as a primarily humanitarian aid nation the other thing that's interesting is that you don't want to decouple aid to other countries from development now this is something that is very intriguing seeds the the liberal the conservatives and goes back to to the liberals as they began to collapse really give aid to countries with with whom we had direct trade relations economic benefit of us yeah yeah and trudeau is being quite open about decoupling those two originally the distinction was that it was emergency agencies like red cross world vision so on where very skilled into living emergency aid but they had absolutely no experience her interest in some of those major issues yeah so one of the things we really need to look at and i hope you too can maybe help me a bit because i am only thinking about and then you know and i'm a lady smith constituency and li the political constituency whatever that may be but generally speaking the vancouver island reality is that liberals are not strong here no never have been and therefore it's interesting to talk about the liberals in the canadian context and it will be extremely important in terms of the decision about the election because there are far more people back east than are here yeah but this election these people back east are really starting to look closely at us in the west because we've got is strong and surging green interest and there is no liberal strategic voting i mean you don't really be wasting your vote young person yesterday about voting and she said that she wanted to vote a certain way and now writing down and cuts in my hat i said well that would be a completely wasted vote this is because you know that party's not going anywhere it's not going anywhere and unfortunately we have to you know do whatever we can to see if we can shift the current to make a regime change of iran and she said i really resent not being able to vote with my conscience just because we don't want somebody we have to vote a certain way and you know it's a totally valid position to take and it's this first past the post electoral system that we have in canada where one of three remaining democratic countries in the world that has a fish past the post system and cheese did right we should be able to vote without conscience and know that our votes will be proportionately represented in parliament and it's interesting that the greens the n d p and the liberals have all said this will be if any one of the three get in as a majority or even as the lead minority that this will be the last first past the post election in canada the greens and n d p have specifically stated proportional representation and the liberals have said there are there are several options of a venn first boss the post which we will study and and come up with what is the best one after consulting places and so forth just that two but also the provinces specifically he mentioned so that's that's really important because i think it's one of the things that's the scar edging a lot of young people from voting is that for the last my many years we've had to vote strategically to oust or get in a particular posse and i know that i would not be voting what i normally vote because i'm not happy with their platform i would be voting a different party if i didn't feel it was going to be a wasted vote and if i wasn't feeling that it really is time for a change here in canada i would vote very differently but i can't i have to strategically because i think four more years of hoppe will be a disaster both internationally as far as our reputation goes and also as far as this all important paris congress that's coming up on the environment in december that is so crucial and if we have the conservatives in canada will again play an obstructionist role in getting any kind of meaningful agreements through internationally on climate change the scientists is saying this is the year we have massive agreements that are not only agr but implemented or basically we have facing runaway climate change so twenty fifteen is the crucial year we have to change to a party that will that will represent the wolves as well as us and we have to therefore vote strategically and that i n this continent so that just leaves me completely confused but there's two things that i think merely confuse the issue and one of them is proportional representation everybody knows we need something different that's all we know ye who knows how the different forms of proportional representation where you could have a party splits right up in the cabinet level as i understand to get in switzerland and people say well that's so very well for switzerland because they don't really need an int surrounded by mountains in the center of everything in europe but but one of them i think that people find confusing is proportional representation i think we're all agreed the change in anything could be better and that's that's the federation and the other one is strategy and the reason they're telling me this is because there's this one bogeyman and after a while i don't believe it's just one bogeyman who is causing us trouble i believe it's corporate control of our governments that are causing us trouble and i believe the people who support that kind of control of our governments are the people who are voting strategically and wrong it could be it could be i think i only because of the first past the post system yeah for me it's about getting a posse in that will protect people and protect the environment do you have announcements you need to make this on because i want to say that we should come back to this is then where we're going to come to is the point of view that a lot of people have that they're sick of party there's a significant problem about vote splitting perhaps one party could sort of give it some votes if you would to the other party concede so yes somehow i don't know how that would work i doubt that it's going to happen there there's a lot of talk about it but anyway to many a type leaders a rate we will just remind you that you're listening to c h o y one a one point seven f m and c h l why does ca your members supported campus and community stations are full fund drive is ongoing and we thank everyone who has donated the phones are open now we've got steve and others out there you couldn't call two five zero seven one six three four one zero or from outside of our calling area one eight five five seven four zero one zero one seven or go to c h l y dot ca and click on click to donate word will give you all the information about making either a one time donation or you can sign up for a monthly donation but that's up to you so thank you once again to everyone who has don't david and please keep up the  donations the activity because we we are still ongoing with trying to reach our goal of twenty thousand one hundred one dollars and seventy cents now just a few things all candidates meetings this is important if you are undecided about your vote tonight at seven o'clock at bevan part social center in room c there will be an all candidates meeting hosted by the great and imo early years partnership so we can suppose the questions asked of the candidates will have to do with early childhood in your nations and things related to that family i should think and then tomorrow october fourteenth wednesday at six thirty at the vancouver island conference center there will be what i expect as the big one hosted by the in and imo chamber of commerce so that's a good one if you have any illusions about who might be the best party for the economy or the best candidate or not imo yes those who might see that might be an interesting one for you to attend and just a reminder if you have not received a card in the  elections canada please check elections dot ca to make sure that you are registered you can also check there to find your voting place it has come to light that people in some areas have received incorrect information about where to vote so make sure that you know where your voting place is and also of course the tie again monday october nineteenth seven am to seven pm there are no more advanced polls now those those have finished so it's just next monday the nineteenth and make sure that you take loads of i d with pictures of the signatures yes and your address because they will check their being quite sticky i should say about that and your card that you received in the mail from elections canada does not count as an id hopefully it's correct about where your vote and hopefully you did receive one that says you're registered but do take loads of id when you go to vote now there are a couple of events coming up on thursday one is in victoria with renowned oil spill expert dr riki ott who actually lived within throwing distance of the exxon valdez spill so she has become a quite an expert she will be speaking thursday october fifteenth seven o'clock at first metropolitan united church one thirty two balmoral road in victoria this is a free or by donation if vent but spaces are limited so it's good to register and the best way to do that is to go to the georgia straight alliance facebook page click on the word event and then see more and they are saying the english bay oil spill earlier this year provided proved that we aren't ready for even a relatively quote unquote small spill let alone a massive tar sands spill from one of the four hundred tankers a year that would travel right past victoria at some of our other communities if the kinda morgan pipeline is approved that would be right through cooper as well so this is a rare opportunity to learn lessons from ott's experience from the front lines of the exxon valdez b p deepwater horizon and kalamazoo river oil spill disasters and discuss how island residents can take action locally to strengthen our oil spill planning in the sailor's sea or try obviously to prevent it and actually there's another issue that we might talk about in a minute and that would be the closing of the coast guard station and the lighthouses as well because i think those are related to this another thing that's happening on october fifteenth here in the nih mo is a consultation on zero waste to the regional district and you can show dot b c dot ca for more information on that and the program that you're listening to on c h o y is changes today marjorie stewart is talking with lynn white and barack about issues in the federal election so we have a whole pile of them to go back to you over to you len the b c and national foot security net sent out an information that in july of this year c n n commissioned a poll in which twenty nine issues were presented to canadian citizens and they printed the top five where the first two issues the rising cost of living and rising food prices nobody as far as i know has been talking about the rising cost of living or rising food prices i did hear ralph nader on a different radio station this morning absolutely  government for the increased poverty and related issues in canada so let's just start with with looking at at some of these issues i'll make a little list and you choose the one you want to go off on ok canada given the crisis production is in thanks to climate change so it's all related and seventy percent of our contribution to climate change comes from industrial agriculture yes yes that's huge and self so the signed signed on it's not it is not finalized at this point but the conservative government did all the negotiations with all the other countries involved which include the you completely behind closed doors there was no input from the provinces from ever any other party in the government from the canadian public most people didn't even know it was going because it's really just for businessmen and we shouldn't have both or our silly little civic well because won't have any effect on us so one of the big concerns is in the dairy the dairy industry i don't like to use the word industry for agriculture but i guess that is an industry that  basically has given away the right to canadian dairy farms to to have prices that are guaranteed and also to have first access to the canadian market this is one of the problems of these kind of trade deals is the first thing to be given way usually and definitely in this case is local or even national industry agriculture etc etc having the first rights to the canadian market and that has been sold out and to simplify it a little bit for people listening i think what we're talking about here is export first culture post ra in other words our government believes that we should be growing for export and that must be why it only eleven percent of fortis agriculture in canada is connected with fruits and vegetables everything else that they will not only will not honor it and they will not finalize it because it's not finalized and it won't be finalized before the election so that means we do have a small window of opportunity to pull out of the tepee trudeau has interesting when he said that he wants to study it further mind you it only became available for public viewing including for the leaders of the parties last week it's quite ironic that we have one of the national experts in the t p p running in the one i'm going to do smith election isn't it yes so but trudeau said he wants to study it and make sure that you know canada is properly protected now given some of his other policies it seems to me that the t p is going to be in direct contradiction to some of his other policies because for one thing we i lose all control over environmental restrictions because you're not have all the things the tuffy corporations nafta and we've certainly paid out many many millions of dollars in fines because we've wanted to have some kind of control of something this this will totally dissolve municipal prevent chael and federal control over quite a few sectors if not most sick to us in in canada because most sick does have some kind of corporate component and the corporations get  i'm interested in the fact that trudeau is hemming and hawing on this one with the other two parties a very very clear with a stand given his very strong policies on some other things we should be directly threatens it may than then the liberals but so that might be what he's what he's playing at because none of his other policies are actually to be quite honest the corporate friendly don't he's even come out directly and said that there will be no more subsidies  so i'm wondering if he has a mission to say these things but they might not actually because it's not the case that traditionally the liberals and the conservatives have carved up the corporate support between them but that's the thing that's interesting traditionally yes but in this case the liberals are coming out strongly against an awful lot of corporate positions and so that that is i'm finding that fascinating and finding a fascinating the n d p so strongly against  v fee and yet they have made it very clear that they want to pour money into and support into the logging industry the the aerospace industry the mining industry which is one of the most destructive industries  on the planet and the automotive industry it's like a down system to us but the right shoulder mr mulcair meets mr trudeau was mr true to us moving to the left and mr mulcair is moving to the right yeah the other thing that's interesting about the n d p position on all those kind of things is that he's talking about supporting the industries not supporting the workers in fact the only platform secondary secondary whereas both the liberals of the greens have very strong statements on education and all three parties to have statements on strengthening the public health care particularly looking at home care disability mental health more funding in those areas and for seniors so there's a strong emphasis for for that but affordable no strengthening public health and found home care but they don't say anything about five a kid oh yes they do is sorry yeah they do all right so all three do but nothing about education so that's that's fascinating the greens have the strongest education policy including wanting to get rid of tuition fees for university altogether the over time i think but still well if their children are problem is how many of the mediocre children of the rich do we want to put up with until we get the brilliant children of the right who haven't had it so and all three have to have  strong statement saw poverty especially focusing on child poverty and senior poverty which is interesting seeing your poverty i don't remember it being a particular topic in previous elections as a as a topic it's it's been a topic that one or other every so often has referred to but i guess with the increasing aging of the population often is becoming quite an issue the conservatives have pushed back the relief and health care help foreseeing is so that's that's a very very positive now how they going to deal with that is not to mention an interesting enough the n d p h not said very much about affordable housing in general which is a major part of poverty relief and health and health whereas both the greens in the liberals have very strong policies of minutes nothing to pm mention it but it's been sort of in passing will suit them and the people and so on and so on and that's why i think people are disaffected with parties because what parties are saying it's not necessarily what strikes right home to people and what strikes right home to people is taxes and taxes is a word that means entirely opposite things to different people doesn't it yeah so the the liberals are very strong on taxing the wealthy more and cutting middle class taxes they don't say much about cutting texas for law classes and they they have a again a number of policies that are trying to rein in the loopholes for the wealthy both corporate and personal and cut taxes for for those underneath the greens want to cut taxes you know the greens i'm not sure what they said about texas the n d p want to again they want to cuts taxes for those in the lower echelons also but i know that the local green candidate has said that the people who should be paying taxes are the ones who should be funding the programs that we want to have in place for our population yeah yes grants for small businesses also help for small business as opposed to subsidies for corporations since he wrote that book small is beautiful yes there has been there has come a huge division then in politics and in economics between the people who believe in the economics of size and the people who believe in the economics of appropriate yeah yeah yeah i'm looking at the the the policies here the greens because i was fairly sure that they had said anything about taxes and i'm right they haven't specifically they've however about poverty and whatnot and protecting seniors quality child care and this is the strongest and best platform on education foreign way of we should have looked at the green claim that they have costed everything they're offering they have budgeted for everything they're offering because if they've got a budget they've got a place that the money is coming from as well as a place that the money will be spent well i think everybody that not only are the liberals in the pm greens talking about taxes corporations but they're talking about returning them to the level of a few years ago not anything outrageous i mean when we think about times in the past when corporations were taxed at a much higher rate than they are now all the country was quite prosperous and wealthy individuals who have become wealthy through no effort of their own simply because of stuff that they threw stuff that they own it's a different use of the we're doing the time something over here my husband's first income tax statement before the flood tax a mountain it of ninety percent of the donor in other words anybody who was earning a ridiculous amount of money in say not earning receiving a ridiculous amount of money at that particular level they would be taxed ninety percent of that money and it would become of it well can you imagine the one percent putting up with that now  and old the extra things they have and closing loopholes for offshore banks the things they've they've got some very very good policies on on that so there is some stuff around tech sation and poverty but to are they have actually been quite specific about quite a few of their policies like they they have made their policies quite clear and very specific as to  amounts and how they're going to do things most a very impressed with cheetos honesty saying he is going to run a deficit budget for the first two years to get canada back on its feet to get social programming back where it should be including health care and  deficit for two years because we are in so much trouble that i can't see any way of not running a deficit if we have got to get us social safety net back and i've been pressed with that chris with that level of honesty yes and we'll see where it takes us because and i blame the woman who's taking it to the supreme court for handing an issue to a government who uses it as a political football and uses it simply in order to consolidate they sort of bigoted i don't like the thought of people taking an important oath of citizenship in disguise i think it's rude discourteous and unnecessary and i've listened to the lady in question and i don't think she's a serious contender for any think so so i wish that people would put that whole subject out of their minds when they go to the polls it has nothing to do with any particular religion it's only to do with one rather silly person pushing a really silly point and nothing to do with us here and the not this is the one thing that i think one of the things that i think has dealt with extremely well he simply has said in the most recent debate the courts have spoken and we will abide by the court's decision and the courts will continue to speak because she's taking it to the supreme court but what he's doing is he is not he's not weighing in on the argument he's saying this is got nothing to do with i wish they hadn't responded i wish they hadn't talked about it a total well first of time i think the problem is that when a when in a debate they are asked that question they have to say something but i think the best the best response the whiting brook tune in next week for a librarian's on the radio show a special thanks to the volunteer who helps us with our podcasts and on behalf of our production team thanks so much for joining us