Thursday, March 28, 2019 ~ NATIONAL / WEST SHORE
by Mary P Brooke ~ West Shore Voice News
About one-third of the current federal NDP caucus will not be seeking re-election in the October 2019 election. That’s 13 of 40. The new ones who first became MPs in 2015 are running again. The attrition is just “natural churn”, says Randall Garrison, MP (Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke).
“They’re retiring,” says Garrison, with reference to NDP MPs who were first elected in the orange-wave of 2011 or even before that. “It’s nothing to do with Jagmeet’s leadership, it’s normal turnover.” Some have served eight to 15 years. New candidates are coming forward where people are retiring. “I’m not at all worried.”
The political buzz since NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh became party leader in October 2017 that he would need a seat in the House of Commons in order to gain greater visibility with the Canadian public. Singh achieved that, handily winning the recent Burnaby South by-election on February 25.
“People who see him tend to like what they see,” says Garrison, who was instrumental in helping Singh work his way to the top of the leadership race two years ago. “He’s only been here a few days in the House,” said Garrison by phone from Ottawa on Wednesday March 20. “Winning the by-election got him the visibility. He is clearly offering the alternative.”
“The NDP has made significant inroads among younger voters,” says Garrison. The party is promoting universal Pharmacare, low-cost or free post-secondary tuition, pro-environmental policies, and various equity-related policies.
Randall has served two terms in office here on south Vancouver Island (first elected in May 2011, then again in October 2015) and is running again in the October 2019 federal race. He has a high profile throughout the Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke riding.
He makes a point of trying to return from Ottawa every Thursday evening when the House is in session to be in his constituency office on Tillicum Road on Fridays and around the community on weekends.
Garrison says he’s done a lot as the NDP Defence critic. He was in West Africa in February where in Mali he witnessed first hand the peacekeeping operations that he says “offer the best chance for a society to emerge from prolonged conflict by creating the necessary political, socioeconomic, and security conditions”. Locally, Garrison has been helping people in the Canadian forces get equipment, training and support that they need for doing their jobs. He’s defending the ship-building program, saying vessels should be built in Vancouver and Victoria jointly. He helped to keep that on track.
As well, Garrison has done extensive effective case work in his riding (some of that is high profile, but some is not so high profile though its effective work for individuals and sectors of the community). His constituency office has seen over 1,000 Phoenix pay cases. “It’s taking two to three years to get them solved,” he said about the debacle of the computer pay system that failed miserably by paying federal service workers incorrectly for long periods of time.
As the NDP LGBT spokesperson a few years ago, Garrison is proud for his part in seeing transgender rights now being enshrined in the human rights code and in the hate section of the criminal code. His efforts were first scuttled by the Harper government but when Garrison reintroduced his LGBT2Q rights bill when he “came back in 2016” and it got passed under this Liberal government.
Garrison lives in the west shore in Colwood. He’s excited that the proposed Westshore Express Ferry from Colwood to downtown “would be feasible”, including the application of federal infrastructure funding if BC Ferries “doesn’t have the capital”, he explained. “It would be one way to cut down congestion in the west shore,” Garrison told West Shore Voice News. In response to hearing about Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps saying she hopes a west shore ferry wouldn’t impact how much people use buses, Garrison responded: “That shows she’s not very familiar with west shore and how full the buses are.” He adds that the “lack of a regional transit entity and plans is still a problem”.
Garrison was in Sooke last week to tour the T’Sou-ke Nation food sustainability project. T’Sou-ke Nation is switching from producing wasabi as a specialty project to instead producing food for local consumption. “It could be a million oysters per year,” says Garrison. T’Sou-ke Nation became energy self-sufficient in 2008 with the installation of solar panels, with additional energy being sold back into the BC Hydro grid. Under the leadership of T’Sou-ke Chief Gordon Planes there will soon also be a Tim Hortons/PetroCan combination enterprise at the entry point to Sooke. “These are very impressive projects for local sustainability. I commend them for being leaders and creating local jobs,” said Garrison.
Environmentally conscious, Garrison says he can’t get around the fact that he must fly to and from Ottawa on a regular basis. To do his part, he buys carbon offsets through Air Canada, through a program that contributes to tree planting and other sustainable projects. For his own car he was driving a plug-in hybrid starting in 2013, then in December 2018 bought a fully electric car. With a battery delivery range of 400 km range capacity his “range anxiety is gone”.
And with that, the MP who is enthusiastic about political process was off to the House of Commons for all-night voting as part of an Opposition effort to filibuster discussion of the federal budget as a way of protesting the ongoing SVN-Lavalin legal/ethical debate.
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This article was first published on page 3 in the March 22, 2019 print-PDF edition of West Shore Voice News.