Finding enough seats for all candidates is challenging

Those who organize election debates have a right to invite anyone they wish. There’s no law that says otherwise.

There’s also no law that says a candidate can’t complain about it, nor that a candidate can’t tell a forum sponsor, “No, thanks, I’m not coming.”

Under normal circumstances, candidates thrive on organized debates. This week, though, TV7 finds itself in the unusual situation of having a shortage of candidates for an April 29 televised federal-election debate.

Inviting all the local candidates to take part — as we’ve done for the April 27 media-sponsored forum at the TRU Grand Hall — is the normal and fair thing to do. (And all of them will be at that one.)

But sometimes fairness and practicality don’t coincide. It would have been fair, for example, of the broadcast consortium to have Green Party leader Elizabeth May in the federal leaders’ debate, but they couldn’t invite everyone. There are, I believe, 18 registered parties eligible to run candidates in this federal election.

The resources of national broadcasters, not to mention the patience of voters and viewers, have their limits. So, rather than endure a debate that includes the Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada, the Rhinoceros Party, and the Marxist-Leninist Party, restrictions were reasonable.

Here at home, there are five candidates. CFJC news director Doug Collins defends his decision not to include Donovan Cavers of the Greens and Chris Kempling of the Christian Heritage Party in a televised forum.

He wrote on the station’s website that only about 25 minutes is available for an edition of the Midday show featuring the candidates. Since neither the Greens nor Christian Heritage has any MPs, their local candidates were excluded.

Setting guidelines is tricky. If the rule is that a party must have elected at least one Member of Parliament, how is a party supposed to elect its first MP without getting exposure to its policies and ideas?

The opportunity to be matched against opponents in a live or electronic setting is essential for third-party candidates. It can make or break them.

TV7 now finds itself in a rather awkward position — in a show of solidarity with Cavers and Kempling, Cathy McLeod refuses to take part in the Midday program. And Kempling, as of Wednesday, is boycotting a profile piece the station had planned to do on him.

“I realize it limits my exposure, but they weren’t going to allow discussion of policy issues anyway,” he says.

So what’s left for the local TV debate is a conversation between the NDP’s Michael Crawford and the Liberals’ Murray Todd. Crawford, as in the previous two campaigns, is easily the best debater on the slate, while Todd is new to campaigning.

Without the other candidates, it might not be all that illuminating.

But there’s another interesting angle to this. Some pundits insist the order of finish in this riding could actually put the Greens ahead of the Liberals.

Cavers ran only a thousand votes behind the Liberal candidate in 2008, and has been conducting a good campaign, especially given he has no budget. He was off the starting blocks early, earning himself good media coverage.

If he really does have a shot at a third-place finish, it further complicates the wisdom that parties with elected MPs should be favoured over those without.

All candidates were in attendance at chamber of commerce forum this week. Keith Anderson photo.

Will Denis Walsh run for mayor of Kamloops?

Will Denis Walsh, arguably the most popular politician in Kamloops at the moment, run for mayor in November?

No, he won’t.

There are two reasons for that, says Walsh. The first is that he needs a little more political experience before he’d think about it.

The second is his discomfort with public speaking. Walsh confesses that standing in front of a large group of people is not a happy place for him.

Mind you, the incumbent mayor is living evidence you don’t need to have a love affair with the microphone to do the top city job. Peter Milobar wasn’t crazy about public speaking before he ran for mayor in the last election, and he still isn’t.

He admits he gets the jitters every time he has to make a speech, especially his annual “State of the City” address to the annual meeting of the Kamloops Chamber of Commerce.

Milobar isn’t good at reading from prepared text, so instead he roughs out a few notes, tosses off a couple of one-liners at the start, and he’s good to go.

That’s not a bad thing — there’s a knack to reading out loud, and if you don’t have it, it’s far better to use notes as a guide for keeping your train of thought organized. Milobar, in fact, is a much better than average public speaker because he sounds natural, unforced, and seldom stumbles.

But back to Walsh. What he has going for him is sincerity. People hear it in his voice, the way he expresses himself. His instinct is an honest answer rather than the politically expedient quote.

Last week, for example, he admitted he sometimes doesn’t get all the homework read in time for Tuesday night’s council meetings. Well, really, the agenda and all its attachments shouldn’t take more than two hours on a weekend to digest, so acknowledging he has trouble fitting it in is being pretty candid.

The issue on which his popularity currently rides, of course, is the so-called “parkade at the park.” He opposes it, as do a lot of other people. So, since he’s not in the running for mayor, it’s a safe bet he’ll be up near the top of the heap of council candidates.

But speaking of the parkade, there’s more on that parkade listing in Kelowna-based Business Thompson Okanagan that appeared recently.

I finally made contact with Simone Sunderland in Port Moody, who produces the Green Sheet, a compilation of current and upcoming construction projects published in various B.C. trade journals and subscribed to by contractors.

Business Thompson Okanagan runs Green Sheet listings that pertain to the Interior of B.C. Sunderland explained that one of her researchers called City Hall about the parkade. She thought it might have been engineer David Trawin who provided the information, but Trawin says not.

“I apologize if it’s created controversy,” said Sunderland. “It (the listing) doesn’t mean there’s any approval.”

So we still don’t know the exact source of the information in the listing, but Sunderland, of course, didn’t have to create controversy — it was already there, and will undoubtedly play a role in the civic election.

Chris Ortner, heading up the new anti-parkade Kamloops Voters Society, confirms, “I’m interested in (running). I think I can make a contribution but I haven’t made up my mind at this point.”

He says it would depend, in part, on who else runs, and whether he thinks there would be a “good team” at City Hall.

Ray Nyuili and Arjun Singh will join most of the incumbents in the race, but realtor Peter Oswell, who had been rumoured to be interested, says definitely not — he’d have too many conflicts between his job and City business, he says.

As summer nears, a lot more names will be coming up.

‘Insulting” council the object of voter discontent

City Hall has a problem. Its name is the Kamloops Voters Society.

What began as a coffee klatch has emerged into a community force that has already set the agenda for this November’s civic election. The issue is accountability, and the incumbent council has been handed a vote of non-confidence.

It would be easy for Mayor Peter Milobar and his council to write off the KVS as a collection of the usual anti-everything tree-hugging ship-disturbing suspects, but that would be a serious mistake.

November is going to be about civic democracy. Though the KVS is officially non-partisan, at least three undeclared but likely candidates and two incumbents were at last Thursday night’s inaugural public meeting of the society.

The incumbents — Jim Harker and Denis Walsh — were there mainly to listen, and they got an earful.

The parkade at the park is the main bone of contention, but not the only one. It’s the poster project for the disaffected who are convinced council doesn’t care what the public thinks and makes up its mind long before they raise their hands at the council table.

Chris Ortner, who heads up the society and is, himself, a potential candidate (the other two are former councillor Arjun Singh, who’s a given, and entertainment manager Ray Nyuli, who will announce later in the spring), gave a sense of that in his opening remarks when he said, “The preconceived outcome (of council decision-making) is insulting.”

Another said, “Somewhere in here the process is wrong.”

City CAO Randy Diehl received a shot from another, who said, “He doesn’t seem to listen to the citizens of this town.”

When Ortner asked, “What City council would not be in favour of an informed electorate?” there were more than a few snickers around the room, the obvious translation of which was, “This one.”

Ortner stressed the new society will not run candidates. Any executive member who does run will have to resign from the board. The group’s focus will be on process more than outcome, but that’s a line that’s almost impossible to draw.

At the suggestion of Sandy Wiseman, a straw poll was called on whether the City should be asked to put off its May 3 decision-day deadline on the parkade. The 70 people in the room were virtually unanimous in support of the idea.

The reason, of course, is that they oppose the project. The society is thus on a collision course with council that has the potential for a political train wreck.

Walsh, who opposes the parkade, was in a friendly room, but Harker, who hasn’t yet decided, scores points for being there and explaining some of what’s going on within council.

While the parkade is the main irritation, it’s not the only one. They won the day at the recent public hearing but the folks up on Cowan Street aren’t feeling especially grateful — one resident called the process “a fiasco.”

Alarm over the Jacko Lake mine proposal is gaining some steam, and even the plan to enlarge meeting space in Interior Savings Centre is on the table for the KVS.

As is to be expected in an information vacuum, there are a few conspiracy theories and a good dose of misinformation among those joining this new experiment in public engagement.

Sticking to the avowed goal of working constructively with City Hall will be a challenge. But that’s a two-way street — one the mayor and council would be wise not to avoid.

NOT THE FIRST. Coun. Pat Wallace reminds me that Action Team ’88 wasn’t the first civic party here. In 1978, then-mayor Mike Latta led the Kamloops Voters Association, which elected him and councillors Lois Hollstedt and Diane Kerr.

Who cares what Jack Layton was wearing?

It would seem that some New Democrats are disappointed I described what people were wearing when Jack Layton came to town last week rather than writing about what he had to say. I should be writing about policies and issues, they said.

I write a lot about policies and issues, but when I attend the same event as one of our reporters, I prefer to write about my impressions of the event rather than the message.

Jack Layton, dressed for comfort, speaks in Kamloops. Daily News photo.

The City’s public hearing on affordable housing is an example. There was no use in me repeating what our reporter wrote, so I got into the whys and wherefores of what was being said, attempting to go beyond the news story. In the case of the Layton town hall, I was interested in why he is the only leader to come to Kamloops this election, at least so far.

I actually think it’s admirable when a leader shows up in Kamloops even when his candidate is not a favourite. What Layton had to say was pretty much what he’d been saying for the past few days, so readers didn’t miss out on anything from the fact I left it to our reporter to replay his words.

I also wanted to put the visit into the context of expectations for how things will play out in Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo. While I did make reference to the casual dress of those in the room — including Layton — it was simply one more way of putting the meeting into visual terms.

Forgive a slight digression from the dreariness of political rhetoric.

Why Jack Layton came to Kamloops

Jack Layton at town hall meeting in Sports Action Lounge. (Murray Mitchell photo)

It was an energetic crowd at the Sports Action Lounge this afternoon (Friday), ignoring common wisdom that local candidate Michael Crawford is, at best, a second-place contender.

The set-up for Layton’s pep talk was smart — the room wasn’t too big, not too small. When the doors opened at 4 p.m. sharp all 220 chairs were quickly filled, with another 50 or so standing.

It was a somewhat older demographic, though there were a good number of younger supporters, too, including some high school kids. They were dressed casually for a sunny Friday afternoon. TRU instructor and one-time provincial candidate Tom Friedman had shed his tie. Crawford milled about like a nervous bridegroom, marveling at the efficiency of Layton’s advance team, watching as handlers decided between a chair and a stool for their leader.

They picked the stool.

Asked where else Layton had been that day, Crawford wasn’t sure, but, he told me admiringly, “The man is a machine.” (Layton’s other destination on his two-city-a-day schedule was Esquimalt.)

At 4:31, without an announcement, Layton walked in dressed for comfort in a sweater and slacks, walking with his cane, as his plainclothes RCMP security man carefully scanned the crowd.

Within a couple of minutes, the “next prime minister of Canada” was painting a picture of what Kamloops and Canada would be like under an NDP government. If talk on the street means anything, Crawford has an uphill battle despite Layton’s support. 

Conservative incumbent Cathy McLeod should have little trouble holding the riding. It doesn’t exactly take brilliant punditry to figure that out.

In October 2008, nobody had a clue who McLeod was. She was an appointed candidate, filling a space nobody else seemed to want after the unpopular Betty Hinton decided not to run again.

McLeod had an unimpressive pedigree, with only a dash of small-town political experience before she moved to Kamloops, added to a career in health care.

Leading up to the election, McLeod was supposedly in a neck-and-neck race with Crawford. The Conservatives apparently thought so, too — they targeted Jack Layton and the NDP in local advertising, rather than the Liberals.

McLeod defied the predictions. She sailed to a comfortable 5,000-vote margin over Crawford, with Liberal candidate Ken Sommerfeld a distant third, barely edging out Donovan Cavers of the Greens.

The fly in the ointment was a Liberal vote that disintegrated, boosting Crawford five per cent above what he’d polled two years before, but boosting the Conservative vote even more.

Since then, McLeod has acted nothing like an accidental MP. She does her constituency work, stays out of trouble, wins people over with her amicable personality, and even manages to distance herself from the more objectionable actions of her leader.

B.C., of course, is a tough place for a Conservative to lose a federal election.

Add to that the fact that Stephen Harper seems to do pretty much anything he wants without making Canadians getting really mad at him, and McLeod could probably win re-election if she spent the next three weeks on a beach in Hawaii.

No other elected leader has indicated an interest in showing up in this riding, though Michael Ignatieff has been here a couple of times in the past, and Harper was here briefly six years ago. (Green leader Elizabeth May will pop in a week from Sunday.)

So why would Layton bother with Kamloops?

Layton answered that today when he referred to “the reality” of this riding, which is that Crawford has made two strong showings.

The inference being that maybe, just maybe, the third time will do it.

As one couple left the building, the wife commented, “I’d forgotten he’s such a little guy.”

“But he’s a big fighter,” the husband assured her.

Some day, everyone will have a home

Kamloops got together to talk about homelessness last night. We’ve been talking about it since 1895.

HAP — the Homelessness Action Plan — held a forum at the Alliance Church, a sort of status report on where we’re at on this most fundamental of social issues.

HAP has the ambitious goal of ending homelessness by 2015, which coincidentally would be 120 years since the city’s first social-housing project.

Two years after Kamloops incorporated as a city in 1893, the Provincial Home for Old Men was built.

Unfortunately, what began with the best of intentions and widespread community support deteriorated over time into a place avoided by “regular” people.

City council was involved in the issue early on. Elisabeth Duckworth at the museum tells me the story of a mother thrown out of her home by her son early in the 1900s. Council created a pension for her.

In 1922, a homeless man named Thomas Hornby left a note, then drowned himself in the Thompson River. He wouldn’t be the last to die.

Jump ahead roughly a century to the past dozen years, when we started talking seriously about the issue of homelessness in a context that was broader than just finding a place to store people.

We started forming committees and community coalitions like Kamloops Active Support Against Poverty, the Kamloops Steering Committee on Homelessness, The Kamloops Community Action Team, and, more recently, The Changing Face of Poverty and HAP.

As we turned the corner on Y2K, the Victory Inn taught us that social housing has to fit with the aspirations of neighbourhoods to be successful — a lesson repeated on Cowan Street just last week.

Then the Liberals came into power and it was an era of cutbacks. Street services weren’t exempt. Nor was welfare.

“We have to focus on the core things — health and education,” said MLA Kevin Krueger.

So homelessness became a municipal issue as well as a provincial and federal one. Somebody, after all, had to fill the gap.

In the spring of 2005, a makeshift shelter down at the river caught fire and a homeless man died.

Tent cities on the river shore became a regular part of summers in Kamloops. Sometimes, for “fun,” teens would get together and go down to the river to “beat up a bum.”

So we put up fences — literally — and in 2006 City council started tearing down the tent cities. Businesses built barricades to stop the homeless from sleeping in their doorways. As always, shoppers complained about panhandlers.

In January 2008, Henry Leland — known as “a good guy” —  froze to death in a snowbank. The former Whistler Inn is now a social-housing apartment block named after him.

Politicians began talking about “social issues such as homelessness, drug addiction, prostitution, panhandling, mental health and crime.”

Was this recognition that there are sometimes connections, or a suspicion that homeless people are all drug-addicted crazy criminals?

Persuaded by the B.C. Supreme Court, we allowed the homeless to pitch their tents in parks between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. As long as they didn’t try to use the public washrooms.

At 7 each morning they were rousted out of bed by police and bylaws officers.

Slowly, we’ve made progress, a lot of it. We’ve had failures like Blueberry Lodge, but many more successes. Services are much better. The community and government are, at last, edging toward the effective partnership that has proved so elusive.

Some day, maybe by that targeted year of 2015, somebody will stand at a forum and mention that we once had homelessness in Kamloops.

Wouldn’t that be a fine thing?

 This column is based on a speech to the HAP forum by Daily News editor Mel Rothenburger.