Kootenay-Central candidates went head-to-head last night at an all-candidate forum in Nelson focused on environment and climate action issues.
Over 200 people packed the Nelson United Church to hear what the candidates had to say.
One key topic was the protection of old growth, primary forests and create a sustainable forest industry.
NDP candidate Brittny Anderson relayed the importance of protecting our forest and committing to her party’s policies.
“We are recommitted to all of the recommendations in the old growth strategic report that is critically important. We’re going to be doing a review of the BC timber sales, the entire process. We’re going to be doubling community forests and we’re going to be reinvesting in small local mills.” said Anderson.
BC Greens candidate Nicole Charlwood echoed Anderson’s commitment but called for further action to back the words, and to keep resources local.
“We need to remove old growth from the Ministry of Forest Control. They have lost their chance. So I would like to see that removed. We continue to talk and blog. We’re seeing dozens of trucks, so going by some of them with very large trees on them.” said Charlwood.
“We don’t want to be shipping all our trees out of the country like all the other resources and funding that we are pumping out of this province for international, multinational interests.”
Independent candidate Corinne Mori says we need action in the best interests of local people, not party’s pulling strings from Victoria.
“The government has had decades to implement some improvements. There’s been several reports and instructions given that would give a good plan and unfortunately none of these have actually been implemented.” said Mori.
“What’s going on at a provincial level obviously doesn’t work but we could create a template here where we take the expertise that knows what to do on how to manage our forest here on how to use lumber and timber as a sustainable economy, and we start making our region a template for how the rest of the province could actually produce solutions.”
Home Heating
Another hot topic of last night’s forum surrounded home heating and subsidies for home heating pumps.
When asked whether the candidates support the current phase of the zero carbon step code to stop installing fossil gas lines in new homes and if they would support subsidies to make installing home heating more affordable, the three candidates had a lot to discuss.
Anderson says home retrofitting subsidies are something her government already offers and remains committed to expanding.
“Our government has been subsidizing people to retrofit their homes and install heat pumps. We recently announced that we are going to be bulk buying heat pumps. This is a model used in the European Union, so we’re going to be subsidizing heat pumps to go into people’s homes, and right now you can get large subsidies for energy retrofits on your homes.”
In terms of not allowing the installation of gas lines in new builds, Anderson admitted that it’s something her party has yet to make a commitment about, saying that such legislation could be challenging to roll out provincially, although she supports the energy step code process.
“We’ve been investing in mass timber with local companies like Kalesnikoff to ensure that our buildings are not only energy efficient, but also that their carbon footprints in construction are as low as possible. This is something we’ve been working on as a party.”
Meanwhile, Charlwood says while she agrees with the NDP’s plan to make heat pumps more available, she has some concerns surrounding local resources to maintain and install the technology.
“Making heat pumps available is an effective technology, but one of the concerns I have locally is access to folks who can maintain and install them. That is one of the gaps, I would say, in our riding. The technology is there, and there are lots of reasons this technology should be making its way into our homes.”
She says the BC Greens would work to try and offer the technology completely free to incentivize climate action initiatives.
“If we are simultaneously saying we don’t want any new builds to have gas pumped to them, but we’re offering them free heat pumps, I think that is going to help propel more folks into reducing their emissions and also being more comfortable. I mean, that literally comes down to saving money in the long run, and the government can help give you that nudge. That’s the role of government, and we’re happy to help make that happen.”
But for Mori, she has an issue with the word “free.”
“I’m a little bit concerned that this terminology, ‘free’ and ‘the government can provide,’ gives us this image that there’s just an ATM machine we can go to for money. Things are not free.”
Mori reiterated Charlwood’s concerns about the local ability to maintain heat pump systems, stating there’s not enough supply to meet the demand if the system were free for every BC resident.
“The cost to change a heating system is just not financially possible for homeowners. We actually don’t have enough contractors to install these systems, and we don’t have enough supply to meet the demand. Are we being given enough information to make informed choices about these decisions that will have significant financial impacts? They’re causing us to reduce our access to energy sources in an irresponsible manner.”
BC Conservatives candidate, Kelly Vandenberhge was unavailable to attend last night’s event.
Meanwhile, more candidate forums will be held throughout the Kootenays in the lead up to the October 19 election day.
All Kootenay-Monashee candidates have been invited to address the community at the Slocan Legion on Monday October 7 at 7pm, and the Kootenay-Central candidates will meet again in Creston at the Kootenay River Secondary School Auditorium on Wednesday, October 9, from 7pm.
An all-candidate forum for the Boundary-Similkameen riding has yet to be confirmed.
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