Kootenay Central all candidates forum

Creston hosted a Kootenay Central all-candidates forum this week, allowing provincial election candidates to answer community questions.

Participants were incumbent Brittny Anderson of the BC NDP, Nicole Charlwood of the BC Green Party, Hunter Corrigal of OneBC, and Gordon Skulnec of the BC Conservative Party.

The candidates introduced themselves and explained why they were running before answering questions.

Topics included forestry, the deficit, grocery prices, backcountry roads, healthcare, housing, and transportation.

The role the provincial government should take to support women and children leaving domestic violence situations.

Charlwood said the provincial government needs to give frontline agencies like the Kootenay Community Center Society multi-year funding to support women and children who have left a domestic violence situation.

“We want stable funding for our services that we rely on that people can’t afford to pay for themselves, and we don’t want to download those responsibilities to local governments because we know we’re already asking local government to do too much, and we are not transferring enough to local governments from the province as it is,” said Charlwood.

The role the provincial government should play in subsidizing, developing, and managing housing.

Corrigal said OneBC’s platform is less government, more entrepreneurship by reducing housing costs and eliminating unnecessary green building policies.

“The province’s main role should be clearing the paths: faster permits, lowering costs, and fewer barriers to building, greater supply, less demand. More choice. OneBC would remove the energy step code requirements that builders say add cost and time. Open more land for development. I’d also support partnerships with nonprofits and local housing groups who already know how to build and manage housing,” said Corrigal.

Improving access to family doctors, specialists, and medical services in the Creston Valley.

Skulnec said longer wait times and millions of British Columbians without a family doctor make health care a priority. He said the Conservatives’ platform emphasizes incentives to attract doctors to rural communities.

“We are looking at how we can bring these doctors back to BC who have had to go into other countries to get training because they can’t get training here in BC, and we have also through immigration, we’re bringing lots of people in here with doctors’ credentials, and we need to figure out how to get them qualified and properly covered professionally so that they can become doctors in BC here as well,” said Skulnec.

Protecting long-term water supplies and helping smaller communities finance safe, reliable, and affordable water infrastructure.

Anderson cited a watershed protection fund and David Eby’s forestry announcement on deferring old-growth logging.

“We have a hundred million fund that we’ve been using in the Creston Valley here, but we’re actually going to be in every single year putting $40 million into it annually because we know that this is absolutely essential, particularly in the face of climate,” said Anderson.

The forum concluded with closing remarks from each candidate. To watch the full forum, click here.

Final voting day in the provincial election is Oct. 24.

Voting locations are available on the Elections BC website.

Opinions are of those attributed and information from individuals has not been fact-checked.