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People’s Party candidate in South Okanagan-West Kootenay steps forward

Taylor talks about PPC platforms on economics, immigration and climate change
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Sean Taylor was recently named the candidate for the People’s Party in South Okanagan-West Kootenay. (Robin Grant/Western News Staff)

Sean Taylor, the new People’s Party of Canada (PPC) candidate running in the South Okanagan-West Kootenay, said he entered politics because leader Maxime Bernier was the first politician with policies that resonated with him.

The political newbie is an emergency room nurse with Interior Health and a reservist with the Calgary Highlanders infantry where he was deployed to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010. There, he worked in psychological operations with a Canadian battle group based in Kandahar. He lives in Vernon where he grew up but is moving to Penticton.

READ MORE: South Okanagan-West Kootenay candidates ready for federal election campaign

“We rely on immigration to make the economic wheels in this country turn, right? I think we should be using it to our benefit and that’s what the policy is — immigration for the benefit of Canada. Not at the behest of UN mandates,” said Taylor of Bernier’s controversial immigration policy calling for a maximum of 150,000 immigrants per year as opposed to the Liberal plan to bring in 350,000 a year by 2021. Fifty per cent should be economic immigrants or people who want to become Canadian residents based on their skill set, Bernier said.

The People’s Party of Canada was formed by Bernier last September shortly after he resigned from the Conservative Party. He described the party vision as putting “the power back into the people’s hands,” and presents the PPC as a much-needed alternative to the federal Liberals and Conservatives.

Because Taylor, 46, was recently nominated, he said he is still gauging what issues are important to residents in the riding. So far, he said he has heard about the high cost of living. He pointed to the PPC’s platform on scrapping corporate welfare and lowering corporate tax rates as potential ways to foster economic growth in the country.

Election promises like $10-a-day childcare coming from the NDP party sound good but he said he wondered where the money would come from when asked about growing concerns about childcare expenses in Penticton.

His party focuses on “getting government out of the way of the economy and creating an environment where the economy thrives and putting more money in the pockets of the average Joe Canadians,” Taylor said, adding that maybe then the government could afford policies like 10-a-day childcare.

READ MORE: People’s Party of Canada leader talks B.C. trade to Penticton supporters

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Regarding climate change, Taylor said he feels there is plenty of misrepresentation and hyperbole surrounding the issue and used the dialogue between gasoline and electric-powered vehicles as an example.

“When you look a little deeper at the carbon footprint through lifecycle and manufacturing and end of life, there is not a really big disparity between electric vehicles and gasoline-powered vehicles so the misrepresentation is distracting from the real issues,” he said.

“The hyperbolic claims, like an ice-free Arctic by 2000, an ice-free Arctic by 2012, no more snow on the mountain of Kilimanjaro, they just speak in hyperbole and keep pushing it off. I’ve been hearing this for forty years (…) I think there is a lot of hysteria and I don’t think it is the big emergency they are saying it is.”

“We have a beautiful country and we are blessed with an abundance of fresh water and we have to protect that. I think we need a sound economic policy to address these issues (…) next-generation nuclear reactors and thermonuclear power are going to take us off oil,” he added. “That’s what is going to get us there”.

To report a typo, email: editor@pentictonwesternnews.com.

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