ABOUT THE CANDIDATE
Age: 47
Have you held office in past? If so, please specify: I have not held office previously.
Bio: Kaija Farstad is a full-time teacher-librarian in an elementary school, and is fluent in both French and English.
She was a national athlete in both gymnastics and trampoline and has two teenagers, one who played hockey through the junior level and is now in second year at SFU, and one who’s reluctantly proficient in a variety of sports and loves woodwork and the MCU.
Kaija serves on multiple book selection committees for Surrey schools, writes YA fiction, is an omnivorous reader, and is a direct descendant of the founders of the NDP.
Her father led the successful opposition to the former dam proposed in the Peace Valley and is internationally recognized for his urban impact climate change studies, while her grandfather spent 40 years mapping the soil of B.C. to empower and inform the creation of the ALR.
Kaija backs non-partisan and nation-to-nation collaboration in all aspects of government, immediate nationwide mobilization to address climate change, and MPs who can vote as their constituents want.
Facebook: Kaija Farstad Green Party Candidate Langley-Aldergrove
Twitter: @KaijaF
Telephone : 604-802-3444
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ELECTION QUESTIONS:
Each candidate for the Sept. 20, 2021 federal election has been provided with these five (5) questions, along with the following instructions.
To help voters make their choice on election day, the Langley Advance Times is asking local candidates a series of questions on issues of importance.
Each question MUST be answered: yes (Y), no (N), or (D) Don’t Know. This is not meant to make things difficult. But reality is that if you’re in the House you’d have to vote yes, no, or abstain. The bonus is that each candidate can expand on ANY or ALL of our questions with answers of up to 200 words each that will appear online.
Please note, that due to space limitations, only one of your answers will be included in the print edition of the Langley Advance Times on Sept. 16. You get to pick which one. So, you must CLEARLY indicate which expanded answer you want to see published in print. If you don’t specify, we will choose.
1. Would you support a federal vehicle tax based on CO2 emissions?
Farstad: “Yes (pages 5-12 and 34-5 of the GPC platform)”
2. Does your party have a plan to fill the many staff vacancies in the RCMP?
Farstad: “No (pages 68-9 in the GPC platform)”
3. Would you support the federal government cancelling the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion to fight climate change?
Farstad: “Yes (page 5 of GPC platform)”
4. Should Ottawa provide cash incentives to parents for fully vaccinating children, including vaccination against COVID, flu, measles, etc.?
Farstad: “No. (Fuller answer on pages 71-2 of the GPC platform): The Green Party plans to tackle this and many other issues that lead to polarization, discord, unrest, discrimination, hate, incarceration, violence, and poor physical and mental health in our population by reducing the spread of misinformation and supporting the ease of access to accurate information.
The first will be achieved through supporting research and development to improve artificial intelligence’s ability to de-emphasize and correct misinformation, while also positioning Canada as a global leader in requiring large online companies to detect and prevent proliferation of misinformation, while holding publishers of malicious disinformation accountable.
The second goal will be tackled by investing in initiatives and partnerships that increase citizens’ opportunity and ability to differentiate between misinformation and verifiable, evidence-based content.
This includes enhancing education in media and digital literacy for all age groups. Finally, teaching science-based decision making – which means the science of how we make decisions, and revolves around evaluating different outcomes of our decisions with reference to our own values/ethics/mores – to generate confidence, clarity, and consensus in both individual and group decision making.”
5. Given our inability to make vaccines at the start of the pandemic, should Ottawa double its investment in research, science, and tech startups?
Farstad: “Yes (pages 14-6 of GPC platform).Here is a link to the GPC Platform 2021:
https://www.greenparty.ca/sites/default/files/platform_2021_en_web_-_20210907.pdf
It can also be found by simple searching greenparty.ca and then choosing to download the platform.”
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Is there more to the story? Email: news@langleyadvancetimes.com
