Federal candidates answer your questions

Revelstoke Mountaineer asked readers what their top questions and concerns would be for Kamloops—Shuswap—Central Rockies candidates leading up to the 2025 federal election. Housing, interprovincial trade and healthcare were top of mind for folks. Here are the Columbia River – Revelstoke candidate answers to your questions. Responses have been lightly edited for grammar and length.

What would your party do to decrease interprovincial trade barriers as we deal with international trade conflicts?

Ken Robertson, Liberal Party of Canada: The federal government would not really impose or tell people how to run their province and territories, because that’s not how our constitution works. We have to really buckle down when it comes to how to get goods and services across Canada with provinces and territories. We do have a vital role in negotiating that, and Mark Carney definitely has a clear understanding of when we try to approach this issue at hand. I would gladly be part of that negotiation if called upon and try to execute so that we can get trade across our provinces and territories.

Owen Madden, Green Party of Canada: I mean, the fact that there are interprovincial trade barriers in a nation state is unbelievable to me. I have to thank the Trump administration for pointing out what is a ludicrous scenario within Canada. We have some big nation building projects in mind, like running an electricity grid from east to west, and connecting up the whole nation. On a very local level, my neighbours are successful dairy farmers, and they hear the Trump administration talking to our administration about our protected dairy industry. One of my key intentions as a representative in this area, would be to make sure that that doesn’t get traded away. In the shuffle over tariffs and what we’re willing to do with the United States, I don’t want our protected dairy or egg industry to be traded off against something else. I want to be a voice for my valley and for this region at the highest level, to make sure that we don’t get traded out in that scenario.

Michael Henry, People’s Party of Canada: The PPC party is proposing an interior ministry to specifically reduce the inter provincial tariffs and to have each province accept each other provinces standards for producing the goods that come across the borders. It’s important for us to be able to trade across Canada. I think especially with our riding being a border riding, a lot of farming goods and productivity from Kamloops, we can benefit from that.

Mel Arnold, Conservative Party of Canada: I’m fully aware of a chicken producer here in the riding that can sell into BC and Alberta with provincial certification, but you can’t sell to the rest of the country. If the food is safe for British Columbians, why isn’t it safe for the rest of the country? It’s barriers like that that need to be broken down and changed.

Phaedra Idzan, New Democratic Party: The NDP would address inter-provincial trade barriers by harmonizing environmental, health, and safety standards so skilled workers credentialed in one province could work in any province, and goods certified by one province could be sold in any province.

Temporary foreign workers and those seeking permanent residency make up a notable part of Revelstoke’s work force. How will your party work with employers and employees to protect these programs?

Ken Robertson, Liberal Party of Canada: There are many factors when we try to support small businesses and medium sized businesses that are trying to thrive. Obviously these programs play a vital role. We’ll continue supporting these programs. I would advocate with Ottawa, conveying the voices of small businesses in regards to the support that needs to continue so that we can be competitive, so that we get these products that we have here in our riding to market.

Owen Madden, Green Party of Canada: I arrived on the temporary foreign worker visa, and I went through steps of becoming a permanent resident and then very proudly, becoming a citizen of the country. That pathway has to be available for temporary foreign workers of all types, doors must be open to permanent residency. We struggle every single year to be able to find seasonal workers. Part of the solution to that is to support programs like the Canada Summer Jobs Program, which is a lifeline for us. There are programs that the government has for Canadian workers to end up being of great value to farms like ours. We can’t be fully and totally dependent on the agricultural stream of the temporary foreign worker program. However, that stream is critical to ongoing farming operations. Any changes made there, or any reduction in the ability of farmers to be able to avail of the program, needs to be managed carefully. It’s a part of the food security conversation, with the right treatment and the right accommodations, I do believe that it can be managed. And that temporary farm workers in the agricultural stream can be taken care of quite well here with respect and with dignity.

Michael Henry, People’s Party of Canada: I think Maxine Bernier has been very clear that we would be looking to put a moratorium on immigration right now. Just to cool off many things but primarily the housing market crisis. We currently had around 500,000 immigrants a year in 2025. We would be looking to roll that back to a more sustainable 100,000 to 150,000 foreign workers or immigrants annually. We would be focusing specifically on immigrants with skills that Canada needs, where we may have a shortage of those types of skills. That’s our position on immigration, and that would include foreign workers for seasonal picking or or things of that nature.

Mel Arnold, Conservative Party of Canada: The foreign workers, and especially the temporary farm workers program, is essential to farming and food production within the Kamloops—Shuswap—Central Rockies. If we’re going to have immigration run smoothly in Canada, it needs to be run efficiently so that processing times can be brought back to where they’re manageable. Weeks or possibly a couple of months, rather than a year or 18 months, as they are in many cases right now.

Phaedra Idzan, New Democratic Party: The NDP will make it easier for qualified immigrants to work in key sectors like healthcare by improving foreign credential recognition. They are committed to ending Canada’s reliance on temporary foreign workers and will eliminate closed work permits, which have allowed too many employers to exploit and abuse workers while denying them basic rights. Most importantly, the NDP will implement a broad and inclusive regularization program, giving people without status a clear and accessible pathway to permanent residency—because if someone is good enough to work in Canada, they’re good enough to live here with full rights and dignity.

With over half of Canada’s food imported and the climate crisis increasing food insecurity around the world, how can your party support Kamloops—Shuswap—Central Rockies and Canadian farmers? What other ways can the federal government support building food systems within Canada?

Ken Robertson, Liberal Party of Canada: Some of what we want to do is protect supply managed sectors such as dairy and poultry and eggs. Making permanent the doubling of revenue protection for farmers under the AgriStability program from $3 million to $6 million per farm in case of significant revenue drop caused by the impacts of tariffs, extreme weather events and other external shocks as well. We also want to build our domestic processing capacity, including food processing capacity in rural and remote areas, such as ours with a $200 million domestic food processing fund. Also increase support for farmers, ranchers and producers to access new markets for food products, with an additional $30 million in the AgriMarketing program. Also increase the help of farmers and ranchers to build new, more efficient farm equipment with $30 million top up to the agriculture clean technology program. Needless to say, we need to double the loan guarantee from $500,000 to $1 million for the Canadian agriculture loans Act program and expand terms from five to 10 years. And that’s a sort of snapshot to understand that we need to buy locally but think globally too.

Owen Madden, Green Party of Canada: I live and breathe this stuff. The thing about a big, unwieldy system like that it’s been shown to be supremely vulnerable to the after effects of allowing our emissions to run out of control globally. In 2021 the highway between our region and the Lower Mainland was washed out, and the local stores began to panic. For that week, [Nature Delivered] moved about a month and a half worth of product in about five days. In some of the mainstream grocery stores, ours were the only products on the shelves. Sovereignty is about relocalization. The Green Party is aware of how powerful it would be to support local food systems and we will support organizations like land-to-table and so on. There is a Food Systems group in Revelstoke, [Local Food Initiative] that’s funded to a degree to engage in re-engineering the food systems that supports local producers. The Green Party wants to support those groups. It does take a lot of networking. It does take a lot of strategy and planning. I know Revelstoke has a very strong initiative to support local growers, some amazing farms up there like First Light Farm and Terra Firma Farms as well. Sometimes I’m a little jealous of how integrated and how supported the situation is up there, it’s a little bit of a shining light for the rest of the region. I always point to Revelstoke and say, ‘look what these folks have done through the LFI initiative, and look how they’ve supported their local farms.’

Michael Henry, People’s Party of Canada: We’re looking to help produce inputs, tariffs, farmer space to grow the product. Obviously, we’re in a northern climate, obviously we have to import some foods, largely because of the weather and stuff in Canada. But we’re very concerned about getting rid of tariffs on products that farmers have to put in soils in order to grow organically. We understand that farmers face challenges and eating Canadian food is paramount to being our first choice. Quite frankly, we produce some of the best quality food, I think, in the world. So, we’re dedicated to putting Canadian farmers first and trying to reduce the impact costs to our farmers.

Mel Arnold, Conservative Party of Canada: First thing to strengthen food systems in Canada is to reduce the cost of producing that food and transporting. Conservatives have pushed for years now for the removal of the carbon tax mark. Reducing the cost of producing food in Canada is, I think, the first essential step in making food more affordable and attainable here in Canada. We are going to introduce legislation to completely remove the carbon tax, whether it be at the retail level, where it was, or at the industrial level. All of those steps, where a tax is applied initially and then compound at every step of the way, makes it just so much more expensive. 

Phaedra Idzan, New Democratic Party: The New Democrats stand unwaveringly with Canadian farmers, championing a bold vision that safeguards their livelihoods and secures our food future. We will fiercely protect supply management in every trade deal, defend farmers’ rights, and shield consumers from volatile markets. To break free from over-reliance on the U.S., we’ll aggressively diversify global markets for Canadian exports while launching a produce payment protection program to restore fairness for growers. Our Pan-Canadian Food Strategy will position Canada as a global leader in sustainable agriculture, backed by climate-resilience projects to fortify farming communities against droughts, floods, and fires. We’ll empower families with clear food labelling and traceability rules, ensure confidence in every purchase, and invest in public agricultural research to spur innovation that directly benefits farmers—not corporations. Recognizing that modern farming demands connectivity, we’ll deliver high-speed broadband to rural areas, bridging the digital divide. For the next generation, we’ll tackle the barriers young farmers face, from crushing costs to succession planning, ensuring agriculture remains a thriving, equitable pillar of our economy. This is more than policy—it’s a promise to fight for every family that feeds our nation.

Within rural communities like Revelstoke, healthcare can be increasingly inaccessible. How can your government support provinces in increasing healthcare resources and reducing wait times?

Ken Robertson, Liberal Party of Canada: We definitely have to negotiate with the provinces and territories to ensure that they are using and utilizing those resources when it comes to this. More importantly, I think there are obviously things that happen under Covid, where our Liberal government supported us through those horrible times. Covid showed the cracks within our healthcare system. And we have to learn from these challenges and needs. This comes down to proving that we can have a long term strategy within this country when it comes to healthcare. But more importantly, I want universal healthcare. I don’t want to bring my credit card instead of my BC Care Card to the doctors and to access private clinics instead of publicly funded hospitals and doctors.

Owen Madden, Green Party of Canada: We simply are not being provided with the healthcare services that we need. And so the focus of the Green Party is how the providers, the actual healthcare workers themselves, are being treated. Being able to focus on supporting their profession, supporting them as humans, so that there’s more of them to provide the services that we need. The Green Party echoes the call for full coverage of our pharmaceutical needs and products. Same with dental care, they want to be able to expand that to everyone who’s eligible for dental care. They want to make sure that the support from the government goes to nonprofit and public service providers, as opposed to the ever burgeoning private coverage that folks are being forced to opt for when they can afford it, which creates a two tier healthcare system. It should not be that the difference between you and I and how healthy we are and how well our health is taken care of comes down to how rich we are. I do believe that we’re dealing with a mental health crisis in this country. It’s a key driver of crime and key driver of addiction challenges. It should not come to pass that a person who requires the assistance of a mental health provider has to choose between paying for their groceries or paying for counseling and therapy. That is very much the case for many people, they just simply can’t afford to get the desperately needed care that they require. 

Michael Henry, People’s Party of Canada: Personally, my GP retired five years ago during COVID. It’s been impossible for me to find a new GP. So, you know, healthcare solutions right now, so much of it is put on ourselves to take care of ourselves right now. We respect the transfer payments, healthcare is a provincial jurisdiction. But we propose a mixed unit universal health care system, encouraging provinces to implement their own reforms inspired by more efficient models in other developed countries. The aim is to improve access and reduce costs without fully dismantling public health care. We are proposing a tax credit system, I see it as kind of a quota system. A province will have a budget of 1200 shoulder surgeries or something along those lines. So we would be proposing that if the province can improve on those numbers, we would be looking at giving the province some tax and credits for money elsewhere, because they’re doing things more efficiently. You can see similar things happen in British Columbia, where with ICBC and and the current credits that people are getting back because they’re doing things more efficiently. That’s the kind of environment that we would like to see in the healthcare industry. Put more onus on the provinces to find the boutique solution within each province that meets the demands of the people.

Mel Arnold, Conservative Party of Canada: As a party, we would implement a blue seal program for the recognition of health care workers, whether they’re doctors, nurses or care providers so that they can quickly be certified in Canada and actually go to work in the healthcare field where they’re so desperately needed right now. We will continue the healthcare transfers to the provinces so that the provinces can administer what is legislated under their purview.

Phaedra Idzan, New Democratic Party: I recently experienced the health care crisis firsthand here in Salmon Arm when my family and I lost our family doctor last year after she moved back to Ontario. We spent over six months on the provincial wait list before finally being matched with a new doctor in Sicamous—quite a distance from home, but I feel incredibly fortunate that we have a doctor at all. The NDP is committed to improving working conditions for health care professionals to reduce burnout and improve patient care, working with provinces and territories to recruit, retrain, and retain more doctors and nurses, and making it easier for internationally trained health care workers to practice in Canada through streamlined licensing and pan-Canadian credentials. They will strengthen the Canada Health Act to stop the expansion of for-profit health care and ensure accountability for better, more accessible services. The NDP also promises to invest in better home care and long-term care, so our elders aren’t left waiting in hospital beds for months.

What will your party do to help Canada through the current housing crisis?

Ken Robertson, Liberal Party of Canada: We need to get the federal government back in the business of building and helping first time buyers. We’re going to create and build Canada homes, to get the federal government back into the game of affordable housing at scale, including on public lands. This will help communities facing affordability challenges, help build addressing rising costs of land and construction, but build Canada homes with the housing industry with over $25 billion in financing for our innovation, for prefabricated homes built in Canada so these factories can scale up production, including through bulk orders of units to create sustainable demand. We will prioritize clean technology and resources such as mass timber and soft wood lumber in this sector, as well as create more apprenticeship opportunities to grow our skilled trade workforce. We’re also going to cut municipality development charges in half for multi-unit residential housing for a period of five years to lower costs of home building and make housing more affordable. We also want to reintroduce a major tax incentive, which, when originally introduced in the 1970s, spurred tens of 1000s of rental housing across the country. But more to that, funding home retrofits, lowering utility bills, lowering household risks to flood and wildfires. Under Mark Carney the government will use a reform Carbon Tax market to finance these climate conscious choices. Meaning that big polluters, not taxpayers, will definitely pay. So there’s a sort of snapshot of how we have to work with provinces in regards to how we have to have a collaboration together and with municipalities.

Owen Madden, Green Party of Canada: We’re advocating for a covenant on the land title that locks in the value of that property. Whatever way you index it, it’s got to be affordable. What is happening, in our opinion, is that our housing stock is falling prey to speculators. We’ve never had such a wide gap between the haves and the have nots. 1 per cent of the country owns 26 per cent of our wealth. Part of that wealth has been driven by property purchase and sale and speculation over critical farmland. That’s a major barrier for young farmers coming through. So we have to stop the speculation. We have to focus on how it is that folks can kind of use our human right to have a roof over our head for money and gain. We cannot allow the cost of living situation to continue to work against the majority of us. One of the key suggestions is if you earn $40,000 or less we don’t believe you should be paying any income tax. The joy of that is that the folks that earn $40,000 or less tend to spend their money in the local economy as opposed to outside of the country or in their cabin somewhere in a different province. So, we need to keep actual affordable homes affordable for the lifespan of the structure itself. And we have to stop speculators in the private market from profiteering on our basic human right to to have a roof over our heads.

Micahel Henry, People’s Party of Canada: The housing crisis, from our perspective, is driven by two factors, out of control immigration levels and government created inflation. The People’s Party of Canada will dramatically reduce immigration from over 500,000 a year to a more sustainable 100,000 to 150,000 per year so that housing demand stops outpacing housing supply. We’d also end the Bank of Canada’s inflationary policies, which have devalued the dollar and driven up the cost of housing, building materials, mortgages and the cost of living in general. Our party opposes reckless government spending that fuels inflation in the first place. On top of that, we propose eliminating capital gains tax on sales of rental properties, encouraging more private investment in housing and more rental supply.

Mel Arnold, Conservative Party of Canada: We will remove the GST from new homes that are valued at up to $1.3 million. We’re going to sell off federal buildings to create thousands of acres of federal land to build on. The other piece that was announced is we’re going to work with municipalities to reduce development cost charges that go on to every lot that is developed. We’re going to reduce the red tape by 25 per cent, requiring any new legislation that comes in to be matched with two pieces of old regulation that need to be removed before the new regulation can be brought in. It’s removing those barriers to building and incentivizing investors to build either rental homes or apartments, condo units, whatever it is we need to host people. We simply need to create more inventory.

Phaedra Idzan, New Democratic Party: I know firsthand how serious the housing crisis is—my 29-year-old son is still living in my basement. Not by choice, but because the cost of housing in our riding is simply out of reach. The NDP is committed to building more affordable homes, and doing it quickly, so families like mine have real options. They’ll support first-time homebuyers, create a housing market that puts people before corporate landlords, and put an end to renovictions that drive up rents. By using public land for affordable housing instead of luxury condos, and focusing on those with the greatest need, the NDP offers real hope for families struggling to find a place to call home.

What’s one more thing you would like to share with Kamloops—Shuswap—Central Rockies readers?

Ken Robertson, Liberal Party of Canada: There are many factors when it comes to this election I hear from voters. Affordability to housing to supporting our industries to the threat down south. Donald Trump and his tariffs are one of the reasons why I ran. This is where we have to step up and stand up for Canadians. That is why I answered the call for Canadians and under Mark Carney, so that we can truly make a difference and protect our sovereignty.

Owen Madden, Green Party of Canada: There’s no doubt that this world is a little bit more frightening on many levels than it’s ever been before. And politicians of some stripes like to use the scenario that we face to have us vote out of fear. And I would ask folks to vote out of hope. Vote for the future that you want to see, for your immediate future, but more specifically for your kids. Don’t let your legacy be, ‘oh, you know, we didn’t do our best. There’s so much more that we can do regarding transitioning this economy. When we do, we generate so much work, so many jobs in clean energy, in the cleaner economy that we need. We really don’t need to stay with fossil fuels as the rest of the world transitions away from them. Just believe that the Green Party should play and can play a key role in the governance of this country.

Michael Henry, People’s Party of Canada: I volunteered to run for the PPC because no other party represents my values or principles as well as the PPC does. For me, it’s time to put principles over politics. The PPC brings together the best of classical conservatism, libertarianism and populism to face the unique challenges of the 21st century with bold, practical solutions rooted in principle. I feel I have a duty of care and obligation to the people of Kamloops—Shuswap—Central Rockies to give them a non-globalist choice on the ballot. All other parties are globalist in nature.

Mel Arnold, Conservative Party of Canada: I look forward to carrying on the work that I’ve been doing over the last nine and a half years representing the people of the north Okanagan shuswap. With the new riding 50% of the population has changed. I enjoy meeting new people and facing new challenges. I’ll continue to work across this massive, beautiful riding that’s as diverse as the people in it, and I look forward to representing that.
Phaedra Idzan, New Democratic Party: This election isn’t just about promises—it’s about who delivers. We’ve proven what’s possible when you fight for people, not power. We delivered dental care for 3.3 million Canadians—saving families $1,700 a year—with over a million Quebeckers already enrolled. We fought for and won free birth control and diabetes medications, lifting the crushing weight of prescription costs. We passed Anti-Scab laws to protect workers’ rights after decades of corporate exploitation. We launched a national school food program so no child learns on an empty stomach. This is the difference between talk and action. We’re not here for billionaires, bankers or big corporations. We’re here for you—for parents juggling bills, workers demanding fairness, and communities like Revelstoke that deserve a voice. The NDP and I will fight for the future you deserve.