The federal candidates were in Merritt last Thursday to participate in an all-candidates meeting.

All five of the Okanagan-Coquihalla candidates attended the meeting that was hosted by the Chamber of Commerce and held in the NVIT lecture hall.

The meeting was moderated by Q 101 Radio’s Brian Wiebe, who asked the candidates a series of questions that had been submitted by the audience.

The candidates began with a five minute opening statement that generally covered who they were, why they were running and what they felt made them stand out as worthy of the audience’s votes.

The first question posed to the candidates was as follows:

Our constituency has a large First Nations population; what are you going to do if elected to bridge the socio-economic divide between First Nations and the rest of Canada?

Dan Albas, the Conservative candidate answered first stating that his party has worked hard to build bridges and ensure that First Nations have every opportunity to advance economically, citing the child-care facility at NVIT as an example.

“This facility helps through child-care, to help if someone wants to advance their education,” Albas said.

The Green party’s Dan Bouchard stated that it was the Conservative party that had scrapped the Kelowna Accord, which was a series of agreements between the Government of Canada, First Ministers of the Provinces, Territorial Leaders, and the leaders of five national aboriginal organizations in Canada. The Accord sought to improve the education, employment, and living conditions for Aboriginal peoples through governmental funding and other programs. Bouchard said that his party would re-instate the accord.

David Finnis of the NDP, said that the residential funding set up to address the legacy of abuse suffered by First Nations people who attended the schools has not gone far enough and ensuring that reservations have the funding needed to provide adequate water.

John Kidder the Liberal candidate said his party would remove the cap placed on First Nations educational spending and also cited the disrespect shown the First Nations of Canada through the ripping up of the Kelowna accord.

Kidder agreed with both Finnis and Bouchard that the agreements reached during the Kelowna Accord should be implemented.

Sean Upshaw, the Independent Conservative said that there is only so much that government can do but that he would ensre the First Nations that he would listen to their concerns.

“The reality is that we have a compassionate heart toward them and we will do as much as we can and help them to do as much as they can as well,” said Upshaw.

The next question was concerned with crime and was asked as follows:

With violent crime dropping in Canada what is your position on dealing with crime and punishment?

Albas stated that he believes that victim’s rights must come first and that the pendulum has swung too far to the left.

“We need to ensure that people who conduct violent assaults and home invasions and assaults with hand guns do need to do serious time fro serious crime.”

Kidder for the Liberals said that his party believes that the thing to do is be tough on criminals and smart on crime.

“What we need to be looking at is ways to reduce the incidents of crime, not ways to increase the punishment of crime.”

Bouchard said that the Green Party would do more to ensure that those with mental health and addictions issues would not continue to fill up Canada’s prisons.

“When crime stats are going down we do not need to build more prisons.”

Finnis echoed the views of both Bouchard and Kidder that prisons should not be the solution to homelessness and the mentally ill.

Upshaw believes that it is Liberal and NDP thinking that has created much of the problems in crime today and that the violent criminals must be dealt with in a humanitarian way and a good way.

Some of the other questions asked concerned arts and culture, health-care and what each candidate brought from their professional lives that would serve them as Member of Parliament.

The meeting was conducted in a respectful manner, with none of the candidates talking out of turn or interrupting each other. Each of the candidates appeared calm and quite comfortable in their positions and in their ability to convey their particular parties view point.

With the N.V.I.T. lecture hall almost filled to capacity, local residents had an excellent opportunity to gain a sense of the candidates as well as speak personally to them after the debate if they wished.

Depending on your political view point the Okanagan -Coquihalla has a fine slate of potentional M.P.’s to choose from in the upcoming election.