There were more audible slams in the jiu-jitsu class next door than between the two candidates who actually showed up at the Pemberton All-Candidates Meeting held Wednesday night, nine days before B.C. decides its next government.
The Oct. 9 debate hosted by the Pemberton Chamber of Commerce was mostly a staid affair—with a few notable exceptions—between the NDP’s Jen Ford and the Greens’ Jeremy Valeriote, who are vying for the progressive vote in what should be a tight race in the West Vancouver-Sea to Sky riding.
“I think we’re more alike than we are different,” said Ford in response to an audience question about what the two candidates and their parties have in common. “We agree on Woodfibre LNG. Well, the NDP [doesn’t], but Jeremy and I do. We also agree on health-care. We also agreed on $10-a-day childcare. We agree on regional transit.”
That doesn’t mean barbs weren’t thrown. Each candidate took Yuri Fulmer’s last-minute absence as an opportunity to criticize a Conservative candidate who turned heads with his economic acumen at the Oct. 1 debate in Whistler, the first held in the riding this election season.
“Our friend over there,” said Valeriote, pointing to Fulmer’s empty chair, “isn’t showing up at all, which tells you all you need to know about how he’ll show up for you.” The remark drew applause from the 60 or so assembled crowd at the Pemberton Community Centre.
In a statement, Fulmer said he owes it to “the people of West Vancouver-Sea to Sky to speak with them about their concerns over the direction of our province and how we can make it better,” and would therefore be spending the remainder of his campaign “engaging with voters directly” door-to-door.
Moderator and Chamber VP Sierra Townley told attendees Fulmer notified organizers the night before he would skip the meeting. Fulmer also previously missed an environmentally themed debate in Squamish due to his participation in an economic panel the same night with BC Green Leader Sonia Furstenau and former NDP Minister Moe Sahota.
Split decision
Skipping Pemberton’s debate was likely a political calculation for the Conservative entrepreneur and West Vancouver resident, whose party is banking on the Greens and NDP to split the left-leaning vote in the Sea to Sky. According to projections by Canada338, based on provincial and regional polls, at press time, Fulmer is polling at 44 per cent (with a seven-per-cent margin of error), with Valeriote at 30 per cent (+/- six per cent), and Ford at 26 per cent (+/- six per cent).
It may end up being a safe bet for a region that has long espoused social and environmental values and helped push the Greens within 60 votes four years ago of winning their first-ever mainland MLA, in Valeriote, a fact he has hung his hat on from the outset of his 18-month campaign.
But times have changed since that pandemic-era election, as they have for Ford, who canvassed alongside her political opponent in 2020, waving Valeriote’s Green signs on the side of Highway 99.
“Jeremy keeps saying the NDP was a distant third [in 2020]. But it wasn’t distant,” she said, pointing to the NDP’s Keith Murdoch garnering 6,197 votes to Valeriote’s 9,186. “[Murdoch] didn’t have any time to build a campaign. It was a snap election; that was crummy for all of us.
“It was a close third, in spite of the very challenging election that it was, so stop saying that.”
The potential vote split has certainly been on the minds of Sea to Sky residents, including an attendee Wednesday night who asked Valeriote why voters “terrified” over John Rustad’s Conservatives taking power should choose a party with virtually no chance of forming government over the NDP.
“We typically get 15 to 20 per cent of the vote [provincewide] and two to three per cent of the seats because the way our system runs, and this is one place where that can be corrected, taken into account, and we can bring representation that brings something different than the binary system of the two parties that we’re currently living under,” Valeriote said.
On the issues: Affordability
Wednesday’s debate was a looser and more informal affair than Whistler’s all-candidates meeting Pique also attended—and not just because of the jiu-jitsu class on the other side of the gym partition. While the format placed time limits on the candidates, audience members taking the mic had no such constraints, allowing them to, at various times, air out their frustrations and share poignant and personal anecdotes.
Several attendees, from a local farmer to a public service worker, brought up the issue of rising unaffordability and a ballooning provincial budget.
“The provincial government [under the Liberals] had decades of cuts, and we have a growing population that requires more help and more services,” Ford said. “So, when you have a government that is investing in services, that is investing in $10-a-day childcare, that is investing in housing solutions … they have to spend that money, and therefore, the only option to growing your spending is also growing your economy.”
Valeriote took on a pointed question asking how he could relate to voters having to choose between “paying their hydro bill or buying decent groceries” in a given month, when his wife, Whistler’s CAO and the municipality’s top earner, made $284,449 in total remuneration last year.
“You can look up what the CAO of Whistler makes and that’s been our sole income for the last year while I’ve been the candidate as well as a volunteer. No doubt I’m in a privileged position to be able to do that. We are a family of four, we live in Whistler, and I feel what you feel when I go to the grocery store,” he explained. “However, I think the idea of representation is being able to listen with empathy. I can’t walk in your shoes—and every family has struggles on what they can pay for and what they can’t, regardless of salary—but what I can do is listen carefully to where people are.”
First Nations
A Lil’wat Nation leader took to the mic to express her deep concerns over BC Conservative Leader Rustad’s pledge to repeal provincial legislation adopting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), instead claiming his party would honour the declaration “as it was intended” by advancing economic reconciliation and Indigenous autonomy. She asked what the candidates would do to protect that legislation, as well as support local First Nations.
Ford started by highlighting the Nuk̓w7ántwal̓ Regional Gathering, a forum for the Lil’wat and other Stl’atl’imx Nations to gather with local governments such as the SLRD to share information and strengthen relationships for a brighter future. “I have committed to Nuk̓w7ántwal̓ because I believe in the power and opportunity for us all to work together,” she said.
The NDP hopeful also spoke about her fear of a Conservative government repealing UNDRIP legislation, as well as Rustad’s recent comments around Indigenous rights and title in the B.C. Land Act. “We cannot let that happen. We cannot go backwards,” she said. “[The Conservatives] also started this fear around the Land Act, and you can go and watch the YouTube of that. It’s gross, so we can’t let that happen.”
In his response, Valeriote said non-Indigenous Canadians “don’t talk enough about [their] relationship with Indigenous people. We absolutely need to. We need to talk about the elephant in the room, the threat to repeal [UNDRIP], the opposition to the Haida [Nation Recognition] Act, which gives the Haida the rights to own their land and secures their property rights, contrary to what Conservatives would have you believe in their fear-mongering.”
Transit
Local and regional transit came up several times at Wednesday’s meeting, a sign of the public’s frustration with the current state of transit in Pemberton.
Regional transit, or rather the lack thereof, has been a persistent, longstanding headache for residents, as well as Sea to Sky and First Nations officials who have yet to see successive B.C. governments agree on a model to fund it.
Over the years, both municipal and provincial representatives have promised to get a deal done, but they have so far been just that: promises. Less has been said about how exactly they plan to convince a B.C. government that, no matter the party in charge, has seemed reluctant to pony up its share of the money.
Valeriote committed to making regional transit his “primary focus” during his first year in office, even going so far as to say he would “camp out in the middle of the Minister of Transportation’s office” if that’s what it would take.
“Maybe it’s a little extreme,” he admitted, “[but] that is not civil disobedience, that is just the dedication I will pursue this with because nobody’s questioning that it is long past overdue.”
Ford is the only candidate with direct experience developing a regional transit plan, primarily through her past role as chair of the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District (SLRD).
“The last six years on the [SLRD], we’ve had intense work on advocating for and building an actual plan to deliver regional transit that will connect Mount Currie to the Lower Mainland. We weren’t willing to accept a little bit here and a little bit there,” she said. “The BC NDP has committed to an intercommunity express transit system, as well as reevaluating—because it’s been years—the viability of train service from the Lower Mainland to Pemberton.”
Local transit was also brought up, specifically a decision that, as of Dec. 1, will no longer permit transfers for riders travelling on the Pemberton 99 Commuter bus to Whistler Transit buses, a punch in the gut to Mount Currie and Pemberton commuters who rely on Whistler buses to get to their workplace in and around the resort.
“It’s unacceptable there are so few bus runs to Whistler, and we can’t get beyond that without a transfer. This is something we know needs to happen,” said Valeriote. “It needs to have every resource thrown at it, and an MLA who represents you well and who works hard and is effective can bring that from any party. That’s how the legislature works.”
Ford took the opportunity to explain how the transit funding model works among the local governments in the Sea to Sky.
“The fact there are two different bus passes between the Pemberton Transit system and the Whistler Transit system is because they are both paid for by those municipalities. And then the hours that have been given by the [B.C.] government to expand the transit system, that’s not nothing. There’s been thousands of hours added to expand transit in each municipality,” she said. “The connection between them is challenging, and I’d absolutely like to take that back to the transit committee, of which I sat on for six years.”
Conflict of Interest
The tensest moments between the otherwise amicable candidates Wednesday night came when an audience member asked Valeriote about the conflict of interest that could arise if he were elected, with his wife, Ginny Cullen, being Whistler’s top municipal staffer.
“There is potential for conflict of interest, but we’re both professional engineers. We’re both professional people. We both have a strong sense of ethical and moral duty,” Valeriote said. “We know what the rules are about confidential information, and we absolutely respect that … This does happen in small communities, when people put on different hats and they have to be trusted to figure out which hat they’re wearing and compartmentalize that. I can do that, and I’ve shown I can do that for many years, and so has my spouse.”
Ford, who has rarely engaged in political attacks this campaign, questioned Valeriote’s ability to represent the Sea to Sky in Victoria given the potential conflict.
“My experiences as a current elected official, three times elected in Whistler and at the SLRD, is that when we go to advocate with the province on behalf of our community, we take our MLA with us. Typically, that MLA provides support,” she said. “If that person can’t go, free of conflict, to that advocacy meeting, it’s a challenge for the local council.”
B.C. heads to the polls Oct. 19. Advance voting is available at Pemberton Secondary School on Saturday, Oct. 12. Advance voting opened in Whistler Oct. 10, and runs through Oct. 13, at the Conference Centre.
