Prince George ridings hold debates at UNBC

Yesterday both Prince George ridings held debates at the University of Northern British Columbia. Moderated by Tracy Summerville, a political science professor at UNBC (full disclosure, I have taken classes taught by Dr. Summerville), the debates were a good, in-depth discussion with all candidates jumping into the issues of the day and a very involved and vocal crowd. Some of the issues discussed included resource development and sustainability in Northern British Columbia, missing and murdered aboriginal women, Senate reform, electoral reform, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I recorded both debates (apologies for the poor quality of the recordings), and they are available below.

General debate observations

First up, some general observations: The historic Canfor Theatre at UNBC was at full capacity with Prince George residents, the media, and students from the university. The crowd was very involved with the debates, and even though no questions from the audience were permitted, they made their displeasure or approval of what the candidates were saying known. The vast majority of people to attend this debate were NDP supporters, which makes sense given that historically the central areas of Prince George tend to vote NDP. There was little love lost for the Conservatives in the crowd. The majority of the crowd was hostile toward Bob Zimmer during the debate, and it seemed that his four years in office as Member of Parliament for Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies was a liability. Pollsters talk about the "incumbent effect" - incumbents to an office have a better chance of winning than a brand new candidate - but this seemed to do more harm than good with this audience. It is also possible that the audience was very well aware of Zimmer's past remarks at a previous debate. Conversely, because Todd Doherty was a first time candidate and didn't have the albatross of the past four years of Conservative rule around his neck, the audience seemed much more receptive and good natured toward him. With both Conservative candidates, the incumbency effect seemed to be working the opposite way it is normally supposed to work during this debate.

The moderator of the debate, Tracy Summerville, professor of political science at UNBC, did an excellent job of reigning the candidates in and not letting them go over their allotted time. It was amusing to see a rambling candidate cut off in the middle of a sentence after she had warned them they would be on a strict time limit. The questions for the debate were chosen before hand by the organizers of the debate (UNBC, the Prince George Citizen, CKPG, and the Prince George Chamber of Commerce). The candidates who would answer questions were chosen randomly as the moderator pulled names out of an envelope. Dr. Summerville mentioned/joked that during the break between the two debates that she had people of all partisan stripes complaining that the questions were biased, which means they were probably just right.

Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies debate

The first group of candidates to take the field was those running to be the Member of Parliament for Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies. The candidates in attendance were Elizabeth Biggar of the Green Party of Canada, Barry Blackman of the Progressive Canadian Party, Kathi Dickie of the New Democratic Party of Canada, Matt Shaw of the Liberal Party of Canada, and Bob Zimmer, current MP for Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies, and candidate for the Conservative Party of Canada.

Audio of the full debate (I started recording a little late, unfortunately) is below:

The part that I forgot to record was the moderator asking the candidates to create a "rubric" for what makes a good MP. As you can hear within the first minute and a half, the moderator was careful to ensure nobody went over their allotted time (to laughs from the audience).

Starting at 25:54 minutes in, the moderator gives Bob Zimmer a chance to clarify his previous comments on murdered and missing aboriginal women, and he didn't do a very good job in my opinion.

Moderator: Over the last few days there has certainly been significant conversation about comments that were made about the tragedy of missing and murdered Aboriginal women. I want to take this opportunity tonight to ask, can you please clarify or tell us your views about whether or not there should be a formal inquiry.

Zimmer: Yeah, my point was, I was making a statement based on a RCMP study that had already been done on missing and murdered Aboriginal women. And one of the risk factors listed there is what I spoke about. Just to be completely clear, I believe everybody is created equal, I honestly do. And I have a daughter, I have a mother, I have a wife, and I look at them all the same. And I can't imagine anything worse than losing a child, and a daughter. So, I say this with all my heart, is that we need to fix this, and that's where I'm at, we need to make sure there's action on the ground that deals with the issue of missing and murdered aboriginal women, straight up.

Moderator: Is that a "yes" or "no" to the inquiry?

Zimmer: With forty-two studies already, I think it's time for action.

Moderator: OK.

Audience applauds.

The question then becomes: If the Conservative government of the past four years knows what's going on, if forty-two studies have been done, then why hasn't any straight up action been taken? Is Zimmer admitting that the Conservative government been lax in dealing with this problem, and he will be urging them to take action? He is silent on this aspect of the issue, saying that action must be taken, but not promising to champion any action with the Conservative caucus and not telling us what that action might be.

Kathi Dickie, the NDP candidate and Aboriginal woman herself (she was sitting next to Zimmer), asked "Why am I seen as an inferior, disposable object? And have been for years!" Zimmer replied:

Zimmer: I can speak for myself, that's not the way I see it. I see, again, everybody is created equal and I deeply care about all women and all people in society, and concerned about all their safety. I have a list of things we have done and what we are doing to make sure that this doesn't keep occurring and anyway I just want to say again from the bottom of my heart that's where we're at and that's where I'm at and we need to get this thing done and fixed.

There we have it: Bob Zimmer, lover of all.

Barry Blackman, the Progressive Canadian candidate, then suggests we hire an army of private investigators to solve the MMIW problem, to which Zimmer replies: "That, in one answer, is the RCMP study."

It was then Matt Shaw, the Liberal candidate's turn to speak:

Shaw: Demonstrating intent and symbolism in leadership is very important, and the fact is, this is a national emergency. And the perception out there is that if it were any other demographic, if this would have been white women around the Greater Toronto Area, it would have been on people's radar, let me tell you.

Elizabeth Biggar then began talking about how "white man's apartheid was based on Canada's Aboriginal policies, like just think about that." A search of Google revealed that this was a little used phrase for apartheid in South Africa, and it seems to come mainly from the book It Happened to Me . . . In Apartheid Times by Myrna Gordon nee' Roach. In response to this factoid, the audience seemed to chuckle a little. I don't think anyone knew what to make of Biggar.

In response to Biggar, Zimmer gets defensive and feels that he needs to clarify that he is indeed not racist:

Zimmer: I'll just say for myself, I've grown up with Aboriginals beside me, I've never even thought of them as Aboriginals, they were just my friends growing up in school. I think most of us in this room have been brought up the same way. I don't see it that way with my own eyes. That's why I see the equality there, and I see the need to help them, and I see the need, and I see the need, and I see the need...

Biggar: Many in Canada don't have clean water. What are we doing?

Audience applauds, Biggar and Zimmer say things I can't make out.

Dickie: Bob, I grew up in Canada, I was subject to societal racism from the time I was born all the way through. I've lived through that, I've been, I've been - the education system has taught me that I'm inferior, I'm a second rate citizen and I'm not as good as... This is Canada I grew up in.

Dickie then mentions the 1,200 murdered and that her community worked with the RCMP on a recent murder and that the RCMP "doesn't have the resources to deal with the job." This got a round of applause from the audience.

Another interesting part of this debate was when every single candidate, except Conservative candidate Bob Zimmer spoke out in favour of electoral reform. Every candidate agreed we need to adopt some sort of Proportional Representation, with Zimmer stating the reason he is not in favour of Proportional Representation is because there would no longer be a local candidate to address local concerns. I find this reasoning a bit rich coming from the MP who moved his family to Ottawa as soon as he got elected in 2011. Zimmer no longer lives in the riding he is supposed to represent, so how can he be an effective local candidate?

I also have to wonder if anyone has ever informed Zimmer of Mixed-Member Proportional Representation. In such a system, you have local candidates that represent a riding as well as proportional seats based on the vote share the parties got in the last election. Below is a video on how New Zealand runs their Mixed-Member Proportional Representation:
 

Personally, I am absolutely in favour of electoral reform. I wrote about this in my previous blog post: As someone who lives in a "safe" riding that is always won by a single party, I feel like my vote does not count for anything. If we had a Mixed-Member Proportional Representation system I could vote for whoever I felt was the best party/candidate, and I would know my vote helped someone get elected. The type of Mixed-Member system that I really like is called "Best Near-Winner" and it's used in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. In this system, the candidates who most narrowly lost the election in their riding go on to fill the proportional seats. This means that every MP represents and was elected by a riding, there are no party lists, and there are proportional seats as well as seats assigned by riding.

After the discussion on electoral reform, the Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies debate ended, there was a break and the Cariboo-Prince George debate began.

Cariboo-Prince George Debate

The second group of candidates to square off was  those running for Member of Parliament for Cariboo-Prince George. These candidates included Tracy Calogheros for the Liberal Party, Sheldon Clare, an independent candidate, Trent Derrick for the New Democratic Party, Todd Doherty for the Conservative Party, Richard Jaques for the Green Party, Adam de Kroon for the Christian Heritage Party of Canada,

Audio of the full debate is below:

As I already wrote in my general observations section, Todd Doherty had a much easier time at this debate than his counterpart Rob Zimmer did during the last debate. The discussion also seemed more robust and the candidates seemed to be a higher calibre than from the more Northern riding. For example, while the Green Party's Elizabeth Biggar came across as a hippy who lost her way from Southern California, the Green Party's Richard Jaques came across as much more credible and he was eager to burnish his "Northern-man" cred.

One of the most interesting exchanges of this debate had to do with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which led to the strangest exchange of the night: When Doherty claimed that he had read the text of the TPP:

Derrick: Have you read the TPP, all the fine details?

Doherty: Yes I have.

Derrick: Have you gone through...

Audience reacts

Derrick: You got a copy?

Doherty: We've got copies of it.

Audience and candidates react

Moderator: Everybody wants to hear the answer to this, right?

Doherty: We have a summary of the document.

Audience and candidates react

Clare: You were asked a specific question and you didn't give the right answer.

I'm not sure why Doherty would claim to have seen the details of the TPP yet, when by all accounts the deal is still highly secret with only a summary of selected information released to the public. In the end, Dohertyy had to walk back his claim and admit he saw the same summary as everyone else.

Doherty's claim opened up an opportunity for Calogheros to call him out on his misleading statement:

Calogheros: My problem is with what you just did, Todd. You were asked a direct question about whether or not you read that document, you said that you had read it in detail. No one has seen that document in detail. You've come back and said you've read a summary, you answered a question falsely and then tried to pivot.

Audience applauds

Calogheros: You sat here beside me and told this room you read a document that has never crossed your desk. You've read a summary, that I'll give you, but you didn't read that document in detail and yet you led this room to believe, and would have happily allowed them to leave this room believing, that you had read it in detail if you hadn't been called on it.

During this speech, Doherty physically turned his back on Calogheros after that exchange, so he must have felt appropriately chastised by the Liberal candidate. Doherty also sounded a little rattled when he responded in defence of the TPP. The TPP debate also allowed Adam de Kroon to get in one of the most clever lines of the night when he remarked: "Like everyone else here, I have not read the TPP."

All in all, two good debates, and lots for the Northern British Columbian voter to think about. Hopefully I'll have another update out soon. As for now, I have many papers to write!

As always, follow me on Twitter: @WendelSchwab