by Katya SlepianBlack Press
More than 500 people packed the hall at Darvonda Nurseries Saturday afternoon to hear a dozen candidates fight to lead the Conservative Party of Canada.
The Langley debate, the only one in the Fraser Valley, might have failed to bring in Kevin O’Leary or Deepak Obhrai, but the 12 candidates there didn’t shy away from the hard issues.
The three-hour debate was moderated by Conservative senator Yonah Martin.
Following a round of opening statements, the 12 candidates were broken up into four groups of three to debate one policy question each before answering audience questions.
The emphasis for the entire three hours was on the return to Conservative values, something the party feels is lacking both in Canadian society and Parliament.
Justin Trudeau’s plan to legalize marijuana didn’t go over well with the first trio.
“We don’t need to legalize marijuana,” said Brad Trost, MP for Saskatoon-University. In a rare bit of criticism for past Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Trost admitted that the Conservatives should have done more to educate Canadians on the dangers of the drug.
Safe injection sites were also unpopular with both Milton MP Lisa Raitt and Trost.
“We need to take legislative action to stop these things from spreading,” Trost said.
One candidate broke from the crowd.
“I favour the safe injection sites, having lived in Vancouver and done volunteer work with First Nations youth and others in the Downtown Eastside and having listened to people on the ground,” said Rick Peterson. Peterson, a Vancouver-based venture capitalist, was the only one on the stage with no political experience.
Smimcoe-Grey MP Kellie Leith vowed to interview every single person who crossed the Canadian border – and send those who are there illegally back.
“We have laws about this. These individuals should be detained. We should talk to them about whether they really are refugees and if they aren’t they should be sent home,” she said.
Leitch drew on her experience as a former surgeon when questioning the federal government’s euthanasia legislation.
Wellington-Halton Hills MP Michael Chong appealed to social conservatives.
“I believe in freedom of conscience,” Chong said.
Former North Vancouver MP Andrew Saxton reminded the audience that he had voted against assisted dying.
“I was concerned that people at their most vulnerable time would be making decisions that were irreversible,” he said.
Trudeau’s carbon tax was met with derision across the board.
“Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Carbon dioxide exists naturally in the atmosphere,” said Regina–Qu’Appelle MP and former House Speaker Andrew Scheer.
Scheer, former Ontario MP Pierre Lemieux, and Ajax-Pickering MP Chris Alexander all spoke out against the Liberals’ carbon tax, vowing to remove it if they took the top spot.
Beauce MP Maxime Bernier, Durham MP Erin O’Toole, and Lévis–Bellechasse MP Steven Blaney all said they would reverse the Liberal deficit.
Cutting taxes was the popular choice across the board while some, like Peterson, advocated for getting rid of corporate taxes entirely.
Trost had one other idea.
“Let me offer a helpful suggestion where we can find $1 billion. Get rid of the CBC – privatize it,” he said. The Conservatives have tried to make cuts to CBC before – the latest round launched the Save the CBC campaign in 2015.
Increased military spending, and particularly more ships for the Navy, received universal approval.
“As a founding country in NATO, we should all be embarrassed that in the last generation, we have not made the two per cent commitment we pledged,” said O’Toole. Alliance member nations pledge to spend two per cent of their GDP on defence funding.
“And now we see [U.S.] President Donald Trump questioning NATO because of all the free riding countries like us.”
Lemieux spoke out against the untouchability of Supreme Court decisions.
“The Supreme Court is almost sacrosanct. You’re not allowed to breathe a sigh of concern about the Supreme Court of Canada and that’s wrong,” said Lemieux.
“The most controversial issues of our day – abortion, euthanasia, prostitution – they haven’t been decided by parliamentarians, they haven’t been decided by Canadians. They’ve been decided with the Supreme Court.”
Lemieux believes that all of those issues should be up for debate. That includes abortion, which Harper did not touch during his time in office.
Trost and Blaney joined in on the debate, both saying that they were willing to use the notwithstanding clause which allows Parliament to override portions of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The Conservative Party will choose a new leader on May 27 in Toronto.
