Election 2016: Meet candidate Eric Schalm

Another big one too, that we want to bring in under Medicare, is midwives. The NDP closed a lot of hospitals when they were in power but they had to, it’s really expensive to keep maternity wards open in small towns. But no party has done anything since then to address rural births and we end up with… I’ve heard anywhere between eight to 15 babies born in cars every year in Saskatchewan. So what we want to do is bring in midwives, have them covered under Medicare and we want to give women that option to have a midwife help with the delivery instead. Right now, there is already a system in place for them to be registered and they are able to work with any birthing that is not complicated. They can have a few other people with them as well to help. So you can have home births, or really anywhere, with the midwife overseeing the birth.

Those are the big ones as far as Medicare is concerned. Something else we want to bring in is guaranteed basic income. This is something that’s very controversial right now but it’s also catching on in Canada. We’ve had two different tests within Canada, Dauphin, MB was the biggest one and very successful… this was back in the 50s I believe? 50s or 70s. And then just recently Kingston, Ont. has said they will be bringing in a guaranteed basic income as well. So the idea here is nobody makes less money than the poverty line. The reason it’s going to work is because everyone is given a guaranteed amount of money and then anything they make on top of that they get to keep.

Obviously we take taxes off of it as well but this helps get rid of a lot of the craziness and bureaucracy that goes on with all the different social services right now. I heard a story of a single mother with one daughter and she needed to buy glasses for her daughter, she was working two jobs and the only way she could do it was to quit both of her jobs, and go on welfare in order to afford the glasses. And if she works too much she loses her benefits and we don’t want a welfare system that perpetuates itself, we don’t want people to be relying on the welfare system. We want to enable people to be able to work and want to make sure everyone is able to live decently. On top of that they can do what they want with their time and make as much money as they want as well. This is really going to help us as well because a 2007 report released by the U of R (University of Regina) said that 35,000 children in Saskatchewan live in poverty… 35,000…. 16 per cent. Of that, 50 per cent are Native American children and one third are immigrant children. We can do better. I sincerely believe we can do better than that. I believe the Saskatchewan assured income for everyone is the path for that.

Some other things our government has talked about is bringing in a seniors advocacy group that would be separate from the government and be able to lobby on behalf of seniors. Giving them an option to more directly convey their concerns, and talk with the government.

We want to revamp education as well by working with teachers. Right now, something controversial is teachers aren’t failing children in lower grades specifically. Something I would like to see us adopt is more what Nordic countries do where there are no tests up until middle school. So if children aren’t going to fail anyway we might as well not focus on tests. We need to focus on fostering the learning, getting children excited to learn and teaching them how they learn best, whether it be auditory, visual, or learn best by doing. I want to give children the resources they need to be able to learn, but also love learning as well.

CS: What can be done to reduce the crime rate in Meadow Lake and surrounding communities our RCMP serve?

ES: There’s a direct correlation between poverty and crime so the Saskatchewan assured income, making sure that nobody lives in poverty. That’s going to be a huge step forward for us, and I really believe this will be a huge cost saver long term. In terms of health and in terms of crime as well.

Another big one too is we’re planning to merge the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Economy into one cabinet position and introduce a new position called the Minister of Rural Revitalization. Saskatchewan has always been a rural province and we’ve always had a strong rural community as well, so we want this minister dedicated to making sure that rural communities all across the province are given what they need to succeed. Good road access, fast internet connection and are able to stay competitive with the city’s which tend to be more connected than our rural communities.

I really believe that will be a huge step forward, particularly for the north. The farther north you go in Saskatchewan the more things break down and they often don’t get fixed. I believe having a dedicated minister making sure everyone has what they need will allow people to stay where they are and not have to move to cities or go out of province to find what they’re looking for.

CS: What’s your opinion on public-private partnerships such as the Saskatchewan Hospital and the Regina bypass project?

ES: First off, the land deal, if you don’t know what that is I recommend you look in to it. That aside, I don’t want to get into those kind of politics right now. Besides the shady stuff, there’s very mixed reports for P3’s. They said it is more cost effective, and it usually does happen faster and one other great report I read is specifically for P3 schools. Principals get a lot more free time because they don’t have to worry about cleaning, dealing with janitors, those kind of things because the people who own the building contract those things out. So principals have more time to focus on the teachers, focus on the students and focus on making a really good learning environment. So I’m totally on board with that, but the biggest problems we have with those specifically is there tends to be less oversight and over time things break down and companies are not as quick to fix them. From what we found it also seems to be very difficult for the school employees to be able to lobby the government because they aren’t in charge of it. Employees have to lobby the government, who then lobbies the people that own the building in order to get things done which is just outrageous.

So going into power… one of the big things we don’t want to do is have a partisanship mentality. I don’t want to go in and break down what the SaskParty has created just because they created it. I want to take a very good, hard look at these P3’s, look at exactly what the contracts state and I want to make sure there is the option to directly lobby the company and make them liable if things start to break and they don’t do anything about it. And make sure there’s direct communication between the staffing at the school and the people who own the building so that there are no conflicts.

I don’t think we will be bringing in any new P3’s but if they prove to be effective then absolutely we will reconsider.

CS: Given the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s finding, does our education system adequately teach students about residential schools and First Nations issues in general, if not, what more can be done?

ES: So I graduated about six years ago, so I’m not fully up to date on what they’re teaching now but I do remember when I took social studies we barely scratched the surface on Native American culture. I think I remember hearing Residential School and having no idea what they were.

Yes, I believe we need to do more and I’m not an expert, I didn’t live through the Residential Schools and I barely knew about them even when I was going through school. I believe we need to get our Native American community involved with fixing this problem because they’re the ones who know how that affected them and they’re the ones who can tell us how they were treated in the Residential Schools. I really believe that every single class needs to have a field trip to go out and meet band council members and be able to see that culture for what it is and be able to meet people from that culture as well to give them a better understanding of who these people are. Many of the communities are very close, Meadow Lake, we have a lot of reserve land and people seem to know each other. They seem to interact a lot more. Where I came from (Watrous, SK) there was a reserve reasonably close but I was never on it, I never met anyone from the reserve and that was something I had to learn later on in life when I finally did start to meet Native American people. I think this is something we need our young people to begin to see and begin to experience.

CS: Given the importance of the vast industry sectors in this area, what would you do to improve conditions for ranchers, farmers and loggers, fishing and hunting, etc?

ES: A big one we want to do is replace the arbitration board and bring in a new body for farmers to be able to lobby to. I have heard some terrible horror stories about oil companies who come in and start developing land before the land owner feels things have properly been hashed out. And so I want a board with teeth, a board that can go after oil companies who are trying to develop on land to make sure everything is set in stone before anything happens.

I want to see surface rights be given to owners and that includes all the reserves and bands as well. They should have the ultimate say on what companies are working on and developing on treaty land and what the conditions of that employment are as well. I believe they should be able to directly work with the companies as well and directly make these deals. I don’t think the government needs to be involved in this.

We want to also expand crop insurance to cover cattle, and also losses from cross contamination for seed crops and tornado insurance as well.

CS: Where do you stand on how we provide temporary shelter for the homeless, i.e. the Lighthouse, women’s shelter? What’s your take on the current plans of the new seniors lodge here in Meadow Lake?

ES: I’ve heard about the seniors lodge and how there has been a lot of fundraising for it and it hasn’t happened yet. The fact is we need more seniors’ homes, there are shortages absolutely everywhere. We need to have not just the housing for them but also the access for them as well. I’m going to jump back to my hometown of Watrous. They got a new lodge for their seniors and it’s an extension of the hospital, so it’s connected and the nurses are there all the time and able to give proper care to the seniors in that home as well. I think that’s a brilliant set up to be honest and I want to see more set ups like that as well. I think the government needs to increase its spending because we are getting an aging population as well. A lot of the people in the boomer generation are getting older, getting into retirement age or have already passed that point into assisted living as well and we need to provide for them because they provided for us. So it’s our responsibility to give back to them what they gave to us.

In terms of the housing as well for homeless people. We don’t plan on housing the homeless in grey hound busses to B.C. We plan on keeping them here and providing for them here and giving them the opportunities they need here. Again we would have the Saskatchewan assured income for everyone, we want to eliminate poverty and so we hope the need for lighthouses and homeless shelters goes down but we also want to be funding them as well. Those lighthouses and those shelters give shelter for abused men and women, people who have been kicked out of their homes. They are still very essential, we still need them and they still need to be funded and I do want to work with cities as well to end homelessness like in Medicine Hat, Alta. They’ve built homes for homeless people and have helped them get back on their feet and it’s been wildly successful, so I want to see that happen in Saskatchewan as well.

CS: What are the pros and cons of privatizing liquor stores and adding more vendors to the area?

ES: My party wants to turn all our crown corporations into crown co-operatives, allowing the Saskatchewan people to buy into them and to elect the leaders of the crown co-operatives and determine where the profits are put and what happens from every single portion of the crown co-operatives.

So our current plan is to do that with liquor stores as well. Allow the people of Saskatchewan to own the stores with the government still maintaining the lion’s share.

Something I’m allowed to say, to be perfectly honest, personally I don’t care if liquor stores are private. I think this should be up to the Saskatchewan people and the people of the area. They should be allowed to decide but to me, what needs to be a government service is what is essential. Alcohol sales are not essential. Insurance is essential, health care is essential but not liquor. So I believe if people want more liquor stores, they should be able to have them. This is very much an individual case by case and should be handled by the people of the area and it shouldn’t be our place as government to dictate that.

CS: Is enough being done to recognize issues with mental health? What more can be done?

ES: Absolutely not, I spent a summer working at Camp Easter Seal at Manitou Beach near Watrous. I worked with children and adults with physical and mental disabilities and they were some of the most beautiful people I have ever met. They were so inspiring to me, just to see them living with conditions I’ll hopefully never have to deal with. They were such strong people, especially those my age, they were the ones I connected with the most and were totally on board with the guaranteed income from the government which is another reason I’m so on board with it. The problem they run into is that their benefits only go so far and once they work too much they start losing benefits. And so there is no motivation to keep working because you spend more hours working while still making the same amount of money.

Especially in terms of mental health, I mean La Loche, you don’t have to look any further than La Loche. Not enough is being done. I am an exercise therapist, I am focused on physical health all the time. On people’s physical well-being and it’s becoming more and more apparent to me as I fix these things, we’ve done so much for our physical health but not enough for out emotional and mental health and it needs to become a part of our Medicare. It needs a regular part of our health care and it needs to be put into schools as well, especially high schools.

CS: Premier Brad Wall is against a federal tax on carbon emissions, saying it is far too costly to the Saskatchewan economy and instead electing on a carbon capture storage facility. If not a carbon tax, what can the province do to combat emissions, especially from its two biggest emitters, SaskPower and SaskEnergy?

ES: Victor Lau, our party leader came out against a carbon tax and we all supported him with that. We don’t think a carbon tax is the right way to go because we don’t need to punish the middle class. We don’t have an option where we buy our gas or what vehicles we drive. I mean yeah, you can drive a tesla but those are about a quarter million dollars. Those options don’t exist for the middle class and they aren’t the ones who need to be punished with a carbon tax. Ideally in my perfect world I’d see a carbon tax on big polluting countries with corporations paying them, not the people but again that’s out of my scope. That’s just an ideal world, and it’s where I would like to see that.

The Boundary Dam, I’m not a fan of. It was very much a half-baked idea. They said it was going to be doing one thing and it didn’t perform. It was supposed to be taking 250,000 vehicles off the road and it’s only taken 100,000 off the road. Which I mean, its results and I can’t argue with results but I don’t think it was a great investment on the government’s part.

I look at it this way, we spend millions of dollars pulling coal out of the ground, send it to a facility where its burned and they we spend millions of dollars to catch it and put it back into the ground. It’s just not sound economics to me, I don’t think it’s a great idea. It’s also been attacked for its international viability as well because you need to have a space to store that carbon. So currently we store it 3,300 KM underground and we put it into water making it more acidic. So there are certain environmental hazards with that as well and seepage specifically. In Saskatchewan I think we’ll be O.K, fingers crossed we’ll be O.K but somewhere in China where there are earthquakes, tidal waves and other natural disasters. If you store millions of tonnes of carbon down there and suddenly a natural disaster happens forcing it all to come back up and then your back to square one. You spent millions of dollars to do nothing in that case, so I don’t support it, we won’t necessarily scrap it the moment we got into government because it’s such a huge investment. If we can prove this particular facility works and if it becomes economically feasible to make it work then we’ll make it work because there is a lot of money in it already but if it is a total dud, if it’s not going to do what it was supposed to do then absolutely we will scrap it.

CS: At what point would a disagreement with your party result in your resignation?

ES: This is an interesting question and I want to go over crossing the floor with everybody really quickly for those who don’t know what it is. Crossing the floor means voting against your party and usually in Canadian politics it is a really big deal because if you vote against your party, typically you’re not welcome back either so you cross the floor and join the other party. The Green Party is not centralized, so I am not expected to vote along with Victor Lau on every single decision he makes, I am allowed to make my own decision. So what will make me vote against my party? A better idea. Whoever has the best idea, whoever has the idea I think will move us forward that is who I will be voting with. If that is the opposition or the party with one member in it, I’m voting with them. I will be giving my reasons why, and I will always be explaining my stance and I believe that is how politics should work.

I don’t think we should be electing one person. Technically here you vote for Jeremy Harrison, but you’re electing Brad Wall. Or you vote for Dwayne Lasas, but you’re really electing for Cam Broten because they control the party and make all the decisions. For me, if you’re voting for me, you are electing me and my judgement and what I believe is best. What I believe is best comes from listening to you and listen to what you believe is best because again, I’m running to represent you. You’re my boss, not my party leader.

cswiderski@jpbg.ca

On twitter: @coltonswiderski

by Colton Swiderski

Election 2016: Meet candidate Eric Schalm

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