By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle
Local riding candidate Linda Sankey was in Oliver today for the Punjabi community’s Vaisakhi festival, but without party leader Jagmeet Singh who cancelled his visit as he felt it was inappropriate given the 11 deaths at the hands of a 30-year old man who rammed his car into a crowd of visitors at a Filipino community event on Friday evening.
“Jagmeet felt it was very much appropriate to not have the big celebration that we had planned for today, to recognize that people are hurting and need a different kind of leader today. So he withdrew from the big events for this afternoon,” Sankey explained.
Addressing the substantial Vaisakhi crowd that filled much of Oliver’s Community Park, Sankey emphasized the NDP “is the party for the people, for people who have a need for government to hear their voices, for the common person in the community.”
She added that the NDP has a history of supporting people, and has had a hand in many of the familiar things “that make us Canadian,” she said, including universal healthcare, education and dental for instance.
“What I want to do is create new housing opportunities so that young families can have a place to live or people with disabilities get the care that they need and for seniors, our elders, to be recognized by government that their needs cannot be forgotten,” she said.
She said the reason she is running is to make sure that “we maintain our healthcare, our dental care and our $10 a day daycare programs as examples of things I fear might end if the NDP was not elected.”
Don Urquhart photo
When asked about an editorial in the National Post gloating over what it sees as the demise – according to polling data over the weeks – of both the Greens and the NDP which would then take Canada a step closer to the US-style two party system.
“Well, I think that comment is a little bit premature on their part. I think the outcome of the election will be known tomorrow or perhaps Tuesday,” Sankey said Sunday afternoon.
Sankey is optimistic of her bid to get elected as MP for the Similkameen – South Okanagan – West Kootenay riding, noting the substantial number of voters that cast advanced ballots – over 29,000, in this riding.
“I think it’s the largest advanced vote in the entire country and I think what we’re seeing is people who actually are exercising their right to vote in this election and in this riding, thanks to my predecessor, Richard Cannings,” she said.
“And I believe my support is holding quite well, so I don’t think that you’re going to see the end of the NDP party here in this election. I don’t think that’ll happen.”
She says while there are a lot of issues going on at the moment, the key issue for people in the riding is affordability. “What I see is big government forgetting about middle income earners,” she said adding its important to ensure that in Canada, “we remain a middle income country.
Sankey adds, “We can’t be in a situation with folks with all the money and then folks in poverty. It’s really important that we stand up for those things. And the NDP are behind those folks. It’s important. Our economy depends on middle income.”
Cannings, who has been on the hustings with Sankey, said, “Linda is an amazing candidate. I always tell people how, when I started, I was new to speaking to people as a politician. But because of her lived experience she’s just so very confident about the things that are important to her and important to her riding like housing, mental health and the healthcare system.”
He also highlighted the various pieces of legislation that the NDP was able to bring to bear such as the dental care, daycare and so on, that would not have happened with the NDP, he said. He feels that Canadians got that message, but like virtually every possible election issue, it was simply knocked off the table by the Trump problem.
While he knows full well that the NDP has no chance of forming government, he says that “even when there’s 20 or 30 or 40 of us, we accomplish a lot. I would argue that in the last 10 years, we’ve accomplished more for Canadians than not just the Conservatives who’ve done nothing, but the Liberals as well, because we’re always focused on people and what people need and how people are struggling.”
Cannings adds that the Conservatives “haven’t done anything over the last 10 years because they’ve been laser focused on tearing down the government and becoming the government themselves, that’s all they care about.”
ELECTION DAY: Polls open Monday morning at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m.
