Housing, democratic renewal and misbehaved candidate dominate Edmonton Centre election forum
Conservative candidate's absence allowed the NDP and Liberal candidates to focus on defining themselves for progressive voters.
Conservative candidate Sayid Ahmed was a no-show at Wednesday’s Edmonton Centre all-candidates’ forum, which appears to reflect the Conservatives’ nation-wide approach towards local debate.
Ahmed’s absence opened up an opportunity for the Liberal and NDP candidates to focus on their cases for who should be the riding’s progressive standard bearer.
In the 2021 federal election, the downtown Edmonton riding was one of the few genuine three-way races, with since-disgraced Liberal candidate Randy Boissonnault edging out Conservative incumbent James Cumming by 615 votes, or 33.7% to 32.4%. New Democrat Heather MacKenzie, who received 28.8%, trailed Cumming by 1,774 votes.
This time around, the NDP candidate is Trisha Estabrooks, who was chair of the Edmonton Public School Board until she stepped down to seek the NDP nomination in October 2023. She’s been endorsed by former premier Rachel Notley.
After initially announcing his intention to run in January, the scandal-plagued Boissonnault announced in March that he was out, likely upon orders from recently anointed Liberal leader Mark Carney.
Within days, Boissonnault was replaced by Eleanor Olszewski, a pharmacist by trade who was originally supposed to be a sacrificial candidate to run against Heather McPherson in Edmonton Strathcona, one of a handful of safe federal NDP ridings. Olszewski has been endorsed by former PC deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk.
Joining Estabrooks and Olszewski at the Matrix Hotel for Wednesday’s forum were three socialist candidates—the Communist Party’s Naomi Rankin, the Marxist-Leninist Party’s Merryn Edwards and the upstart Revolution Party’s Gregory Bell.
Christian Heritage Party (CHP) candidate David John Bohonos and independent candidate Ronald Billingsley Jr. were also in attendance.
John Ross of the People’s Party was supposed to attend but didn’t show up at the last minute, leaving an empty chair behind his placard.
Absentee independent candidate Mike Dutcher will also be on the ballot.
The event opened in an extraordinary fashion after Billingsley, a suspended family lawyer wearing a cowboy hat and sunglasses, brought a half-empty bottle of gin on stage with him.
“I can't believe I have to say this, but this is an unlicensed room, so please, no open alcohol,” said moderator Robyn Paches of the Wîhkwêntôwin (formerly known as Oliver) Community League, who demonstrated the patience of a saint in dealing with Billingsley’s erratic behaviour.
“I’ve been in the psych ward eight times. I just got out today,” said Billingsley in his introduction. “I’ve been diagnosed with every illness on the spectrum since 2005.”
The event was a forum, not a debate, so all candidates were asked the same questions, which they were expected to answer in an orderly fashion.
Billingsley repeatedly interjected when other candidates spoke. He cursed with children in attendance. Many of his answers were totally unrelated to the questions asked.
Near the end of the event, Billingsley asked if he could have a “break for a cigarette and a drink,” which was firmly rejected by Paches.
In his closing remarks, he spoke over “White America” by Eminem playing on his phone.
It was funny, it was annoying, it was sad, and I’ll leave it at that.
The first question Paches asked was what the candidates would do “to ensure the Canadian economy grows sustainably while addressing current challenges with inflation and the cost of living.”
CHP candidate Bohonos said his party would “phase out the income tax system,” replacing it with consumption taxes (which already exist).
Bell of the Revolution Party said he rejects the notion that “eternal economic growth is compatible with sustainability” (something which I’ve argued elsewhere).
Instead, the Revolution Party would instead focus on “big businesses and billionaires who are taking money out of your pockets and putting it into their bank account,” instituting caps on rent, food prices and grocery store profits.
Marxist-Leninist Edwards, who repeatedly referred to the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP as the “cartel parties,” said Canadians “need a new direction for a self-reliant economy” that isn’t dependent upon the whims of American capital.
After receiving millions of dollars in tax breaks from the Quebec government, Amazon shut down all of its warehouses in the province in response to the company’s Laval warehouse unionizing.
“There was not a peep from the cartel parties to demand that Amazon pay back the public funds they had received,” said Edwards.
This is not entirely correct. NDP MP Charlie Angus, who isn’t seeking re-election, did join union leaders in calling on Amazon to pay back its subsidies, encouraging a consumer boycott to make it happen.
Advocating for the creation of Canadian “infrastructure and transportation corridors,”NDP candidate Estabrooks used the opportunity to slam Alberta’s premier, who is immensely disliked in Alberta’s capital city.
“Unlike the Conservatives, all of us at the NDP are on Team Canada, and I’m looking at you, Danielle Smith,” she said, referring to Smith’s unusually convivial approach to U.S. president Donald Trump.
Estabrooks added that the federal government needs to invest in “Canadian infrastructure,” but that “it doesn't really matter if the stock markets are up if you cannot pay your bills.”
She touted NDP proposals to increase seniors benefits, “stop price gouging by big grocery stores,” and remove GST from essentials, as well as its role in pushing the Liberals to adopt the beginnings of a national child care program, dental care and pharmacare.
“During the election campaign, everyone’s a Communist,” quipped Rankin, which got a chuckle from Estabrooks.
The Communist candidate continued:
We can break the corporate control. This is actually a wonderful opportunity when the economy is in chaos, we do not need to go back and negotiate to resume our position as hewers of wood and drawers of water for the American economy. We can use our abundant wealth of resources to rebuild manufacturing in Canada in a green, sustainable way.
Liberal candidate Olszewski touted her party’s proposal to lower the rate of the lowest income tax bracket to 14% from 15%. Left unsaid was how this policy will benefit all those in the highest tax brackets.
She also cited the Liberals’ much more promising housing policy, which would create a centralized entity called Build Canada Homes that would provide grants and loans to builders to build 500,000 homes annually. Olszewski called it the “most ambitious housing plan since the Second World War.”
The order in which candidates answered questions was a snake format, meaning the last person to answer one question was the first to answer the following question.
It just so happened that Paches’ next question was about “housing supply and affordability,” which gave Olszewski the opportunity to almost immediately elaborate on the Liberals’ housing plans.
She added that the Liberals provided $175 million to the City of Edmonton from its Housing Accelerator Fund, which gives funding to municipalities that remove barriers towards building more homes, chief among them zoning restrictions. Carney has promised to expand this fund.
Olszewski also highlighted the Liberals’ joint funding agreement with Alberta to provide $35 million over two years “to support investments in shelter safety and capacity, as well as transitional housing,” in its four largest cities—Edmonton, Calgary, Lethbridge and Red Deer.
Rankin astutely noted that there’s “not a shortage of number of units of houses and apartments, but what there's a shortage of is affordable housing.”
Rankin said a Communist government would build a million units of publicly owned housing to “break the stranglehold of the corporate landlords” by “managing the supply and preventing rent gouging from taking place.”
Estabrooks said that no federal government, whether Liberal or Conservative, has made a “significant investment” in housing in 40 years.
“We need an investment plan, and we also need rent control,” she said. An NDP government would make adopting rent control a condition of receiving federal housing funds, Estabrooks said, emphasizing that this would force Premier Smith to adopt some form of rent regulation.
The CHP candidate’s rationale for his housing position sounded very much like Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s infamous biological clocks remark, emphasizing the impact of a lack of housing affordability on the family.
“Our goal should be to have housing affordable again, so that even one parent can stay and take care of the kids at home,” said Bohonos. “We have come to a place where it is so hard for people to raise a family, it’s so hard for young people to afford a home.”
The CHP, he added, would make housing affordable by “restricting foreign purchases of homes and land” while working to “stimulate the economy.”
The moderator’s final question before audience members had the opportunity to ask their questions was on how they “plan to support long-term prosperity in Alberta” in the midst of an energy transition.
Once again, the CHP candidate sounded an awful lot like the Conservatives.
“We have the cleanest, ethical oil in the world. We shouldn't be importing oil from conflict nations,” Bohonos said. “CO2 is plant food.”
Estabrooks proclaimed that “Alberta is always going to be an energy province.”
“The question in my mind, though, is what's the balance? We know that we can't put all of our eggs in the fossil fuel basket. We can't do that for our kids, for our grandkids, for future generations,” said the NDP candidate.
She slammed Danielle Smith for a third time, noting that Alberta’s premier “walked away from” millions of dollars in renewable investments when she issued a seven-month moratorium on renewable approvals.
Estabrooks highlighted, by contrast, her party’s proposal to establish a “beautiful east-to-west renewable energy grid,” which Jagmeet Singh initially proposed during his first federal election as NDP leader in 2019.
Olszewski emphasized Mark Carney’s commitment for Canada “to become an energy superpower.”
“But for that to happen, we need to invest in both conventional and clean energy projects,” she said.
Due to the volume of audience members who lined up to ask questions, this portion of the evening became a sort of lightning round, with the amount of time candidates had to answer questions reduced to 30 seconds from one minute.
Riley Dawson, who identified himself as a volunteer with the NDP campaign, asked for each candidate’s position on electoral reform, specifically on proportional representation.
Every candidate agreed that Canada’s archaic first-past-the-post system was due for an update.
“It's really important, because we need voices of truth in Parliament speaking,” said Bohonos, who then pivoted to talking about Canada’s “totally out of control” MAiD regime, which he calls “murderous assistance in dying.”
As readers of this newsletter will likely know, this is a rare instance of social conservatives being on the right side of an issue.
Edwards of the Marxist-Leninists noted that the “number one block of voters are non-voters.”
If non-voters are included in the numbers for this year’s Ontario election campaign, for instance, Premier Doug Ford only has the support of 19% of Ontarians, compared with the 55% of eligible voters who didn’t participate in the election.
“This speaks to the need for democratic renewal and the need for new arrangements,” said Edwards. “People should be able to select their candidates and have their candidates be accountable to them, not to the political parties.”
Estabrooks pointed towards former prime minister Justin Trudeau, who repeatedly promised in no uncertain terms that 2015 would “be the last federal election using first-past-the-post.”
In January, Trudeau said that perhaps his biggest regret of his decade in power was not moving forward with electoral reform.
“All the mainstream parties talk about it until they get elected, and then they choose to do nothing about it,” said Estabrooks.
Olszewski expressed support for electoral reform, but provided a self-serving revisionist account of why it didn’t occur.
“The Liberal Party did make significant efforts to make changes to deal with electoral reform, but they just weren't able to do it. At a committee level, things all fell apart, and then it wasn't pursued,” she said.
The committee, which included five Liberal MPs, three Conservatives, two New Democrats, one member of the Bloc Québécois and one Green, offered a unified recommendation in December 2016—a referendum on some form of proportional representation.
Trudeau, who always preferred a ranked ballot, which would favour a centrist party like the Liberals, officially abandoned electoral reform a few months later, arguing it wasn’t “in the best interest of Canada.”
Electoral reform only fell apart after the committee made its recommendation, which wasn’t to Trudeau’s liking.
A young woman named Madeline who also identified herself as an NDP volunteer asked what the candidates would do to get an obstinate Alberta government to cooperate with the feds.
Olszewski expressed her desire for the federal government “to establish a collaborative working relationship with the premiers of all provinces,” but was unable to explain how it could do so before her time was up.
“It's not helpful if the relationship is toxic and adversarial,” she noted.
Rankin described it as “loathsome” how right-wing politicians “try to make the rest of Canada the enemy to cover up their own short shortcomings.” In a poor choice of words, she said this dynamic is “akin to racism.”
She said the feds need to essentially “bribe” recalcitrant provinces to implement their national priorities.
“This is how we got Medicare. They couldn't afford to pass up the amount of money the federal government was willing to put into Medicare, even though they were ideologically opposed,” said Rankin. “Just pay for all the programs.”
Estabrooks said the federal government needs to better enforce its own laws to get provinces in line, again invoking Alberta’s premier.
“I use the example of the Canada Health Act. It's not being enforced. It hasn't been enforced by previous governments. We have to stop Danielle Smith from privatizing health care. It's right there in the Canada Health Act,” she said to applause.
Bohonos didn’t answer the question at all, pivoting to how the CHP is “concerned about life, family, freedom, physical responsibility,” citing its opposition to drug use, MAiD and abortion.
Peggy Morton, who has previously ran for the Marxist-Leninist Party, asked the candidates what actions they would take to end Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.
All candidates except for the CHP’s Bohonos and the Liberals’ Olszewski of the Liberals explicitly affirmed that they agree with a growing consensus among genocide studies scholars that Israel is committing genocide.
But Bohonos was the only candidate who took the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs line that Israel is simply defending itself, and that the Palestinian militant group Hamas is the second coming of the Nazis.
The NDP’s Estabrooks has endorsed the Vote Palestine platform, which asks candidates to support a two-way arms embargo on Israel, end Canadian involvement in illegal Israeli settlements, address anti-Palestinian racism and protect freedom of expression on Palestine, recognize Palestinian statehood, and appropriately fund relief efforts in Gaza, including the embattled UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees.
“I've listened to stories, I've met with organizations and people who have had loved ones and families killed in Palestine. It is a horrific situation,” said Estabrooks. “How can Canadians act? Know who you are electing.”
Rankin, who was the only Jewish person on stage, said that it’s “very important that we, not just through the election campaign, really insist that the Canadian government must stop arming Israel and must stop supporting Israeli genocide.”
“I'm Jewish, so I get upset about this,” she added. “Not in my name.”
Olszewski claimed that the Liberals have “constantly been calling for a ceasefire and Gaza for the last two years.”
This is an outright lie. In October 2023, I participated in a sit-in at her predecessor Boissonnault’s office, in which we demanded that he call for a ceasefire. His staffers called the cops on us almost immediately.
Trudeau himself didn’t call for a ceasefire in Gaza until February 2024. So resistant was he to calls for a ceasefire that in November 2023, he almost said the word, but quickly corrected himself to say “humanitarian pause.”
Olszewski said “this endless loss of life has to stop,” but couldn’t bring herself to call it a genocide.
“Resources like electricity, medicine, water, they should never be used as weapons of war,” Olszewski said, correctly calling this an “obvious” position.
She noted that her party has provided $250 million in aid to Gaza, which is of little use when it’s being actively blocked by a country Canada has a free trade agreement with, sells weapons to and provides diplomatic backing for at the United Nations.
Olszewski offered no indication that a re-elected Liberal government would use any of this leverage.
Thanks to your excellent journalism and this article I believe I am an informed prospective voter.