Newly elected Member of Parliament Richard Cannings signs the register after being sworn into office last month. NDP Leader Tom Mulcair recently named Cannings as critic for post-secondary education and deputy critic for natural resources. Cannings has been busy setting up two offices in the constituency and one in Ottawa. (Photo supplied)
Newly elected federal MP Richard Cannings is getting up to speed in two critic portfolios assigned to him in the opposition NDP shadow cabinet.
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair named the South Okanagan-West Kootenay (SOWK) MP in mid-November as critic for post-secondary education and deputy critic for natural resources.
Opposition critics become their party’s point people on chosen issues, often directing questions on related topics to government ministers during the daily question period in the House of Commons.
Cannings said Mulcair asked newly elected MPs especially to send a note outlining their areas of interest and expertise. Cannings said these two portfolios were on his list, which also included environment and heritage.
“The new MPs tend not to get full critic portfolios,” he said, referring to portfolios that match a government department or a House of Commons standing committee.
There is no federal department or standing committee for post-secondary education and many aspects of it fall under provincial jurisdiction.
Nonetheless, Cannings points out that the federal government does fund post-secondary education through transfer payments to the provinces, even if this funding is lumped into the Canada Social Transfer and is not specifically earmarked for education.
Cannings said the NDP platform called for a designated allocation to provinces for post-secondary education.
Student loans are another area where the federal government is involved, he said.
“That’s a big issue in post-secondary education, just the cost of it,” he said. “It’s gotten very expensive for students that are graduating with crushing loads of debt. Part of that is because the amount of money that the federal government has transferred to the provinces for that purpose has declined dramatically over the last 20 years and universities are getting less money.”
Cannings said he worked at University of British Columbia for about 20 years and that many of his former colleagues have risen to senior levels at universities across Canada so he has lots of contacts.
He has also spoken with presidents at Okanagan College and Selkirk College to gain an understanding of the key issues affecting the two major institutions in the riding.
In the natural resources portfolio, Cannings will be working with lead critic Carol Hughes, a three-term MP from northern Ontario. Cannings will mainly be dealing with resource industries because Mulcair is handling the energy portion of the portfolio.
“I have a fair bit of experience on the forestry side,” said Cannings. “Mining less so. But they’re both very important industries across the country and in our riding.”
Cannings said he is interested in extraction of resources in a sustainable manner and also emphasizing value-added industries in Canada.
He has spoken with companies in Penticton that are making forest products that go beyond creating raw lumber.
“They develop products that give us hundreds of good jobs in our riding because they don’t ship those logs out of the country to be processed elsewhere,” he said. “So that kind of opportunity is here.”
The NDP will have one seat on the Natural Resources committee, so Hughes will represent the party while Cannings serves as an alternate, he said.
Cannings said he’s been “squatting” in the office of Burnaby South MP Kennedy Stewart until he is assigned his own office space on Parliament Hill. The second-term MP has been helping Cannings get started.
Cannings last week hired veteran House of Commons staffer Jennifer Ratz, who worked for former MP Alex Atamanenko, to staff his Ottawa office.
He plans to open an office in Penticton at 202 – 301 Main Street, where local MP offices have been for many years, and another in Castlegar in the Century 21 building at 1695A Columbia Avenue. He is in the process of hiring staff for those offices.
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
