One day Steve Gunner was cleaning out a chicken coop, the next day he was addressing a large group as a political candidate.
This is how Gunner’s introduction to political candidacy went in the 2009 provincial election. This time, in his second campaign as NDP candidate for the Shuswap, he knows more what to expect.
“I got thrown into it very quickly and I guess I enjoyed it enough to want to do it again,” he says.
Gunner was motivated to work for change through active politics in 2007 by the drafting and implementation of the Meat Inspection Regulation. Despite having 300 families who he and his spouse, an agrologist, had been selling chickens to for years, they were suddenly told what they were doing was illegal.
He said they have been fighting since to continue farming and, last year, started up their own mobile processing facility with three other farms to serve the North Okanagan.
Gunner says his experience looking after the assets of large groups of people is one of his attributes as a political candidate.
Now in his 17th year on the board of the 13,000-member Armstrong Regional Co-operative, which is giving back $4 million in patronage this year, his biography notes he was instrumental in doubling the size of the co-op.
Gunner says he believes the NDP will fair better in this election than last.
“The political landscape has changed fundamentally. The NDP has an excellent leader – Adrian Dix is an extraordinarily hard-working individual.”
Asked about what some people refer to as ‘the dark days of the NDP,’ he notes that when a party is no longer in power, it can no longer control the narrative. If a message is repeated enough, people start to believe it. He said his observation is that organizations and individuals had it better in the 1990s.
“You can see it – things have gotten significantly worse,” he says, adding that he has spoken to seniors who must choose whether to insure their car or buy groceries.
He said the NDP can’t create money or suddenly allocate 20 per cent of the budget, but it will be a little less hopeful and more pragmatic about where its money will come from.
“We don’t boldly forecast billions of dollars in revenue from an industry that’s about to be developed. We call it pragmatic modest budgeting… What you will be looking at is a very detailed analysis of what isn’t a whole lot of money; you have to put it where it will do the most good.”
