By ROY WOOD

In what was often a three-on-one gang-up at the Frank Venables Theatre on Wednesday evening, the four main candidates in South Okanagan-West Kootenay laid out their party positions on a number of issues and touted themselves as the best choice for Member of Parliament.

Conservative Marshall Neufeld gamely defended the Stephen Harper government’s record and steady-as-she-goes platform against the would-be agents of change, New Democrat Richard Cannings, Liberal Connie Denesiuk and Green Party candidate Samantha Troy.

Questions were electronically submitted by the pubic and posed to the candidates.

To a question about how corporations should be “held accountable” by the federal government, Cannings said that the NDP would raise the corporate tax rate to 17% from the current 15%. He said this would still be lower than the US rate and below the average of G7 countries.

He said $12 billion in tax breaks given to big business by the Conservatives has simply been “put in the bank” and not invested to create jobs.

As well, he said, an NDP government would decrease taxes for small business, which produces 80 per cent of “good, well-paying jobs.”

Denesiuk said the Liberals would “close the loopholes” that allow corporations to avoid taxes. As well, she said, her party’s infrastructure program will create jobs and spur the economy.

The plan, released by leader Justin Trudeau in August, would see infrastructure investment jump to nearly $125 billion over the next decade.

Troy said the Greens would increase the corporate tax rate to 19% and push up resource royalties.

The Conservatives, countered Neufeld, “don’t believe that higher taxes (are) the answer to everything.”

He said the corporate tax and “payroll tax” aspects of the NDP plan would result in 250,000 job losses across the country.

Neufeld said the Conservatives are committed to a “low-tax, balanced budget approach.”

The so-called “muzzling” of federal government scientists was another three-on-one affair, with opposition candidates promising to stop it and Neufeld denying that it exists.

Cannings, a biologist, said he has participated in on-line discussions in which he has had to defend papers to which he was a minor contributor because the main writers from the federal environment department were not allowed to speak.

An NDP government, he said, would return to “fact-based decision making, rather than decision-based fact making.”

Denesiuk said a Trudeau government would be “open by default.”

Cannings, Denesiuk and Troy all said their parties are committed to reinstituting the long-form census eliminated by the Tories in 2010.

Neufeld said that federal scientists publish about 4,000 papers each year and that federal employees are required to respond to media questions about their own work.

All three opposition party candidates pledged that a government of theirs would restore funding for the CBC that has been cut by the Conservative government.

Neufeld defended the cuts, pointing out that when the recession hit and reduced government revenues, the Tories committed not to cut transfers to the provinces. Rather, they instructed all departments to trim costs by 10 per cent.

The CBC’s federal support went from about $1 billion to $900 million a year.

The CBC, said Neufeld, has the same access to advertising revenue as private broadcasters, “who manage to turn a profit” and yet it needs the federal subsidy. “I think $900 million is more than enough.”

The opposition candidates all favour electoral reform including some sort of proportional representation.

Denesiuk said Trudeau has committed that “this will be the last first-past- the-post election” and that an all-party committee will come up with a proposed system to take to Parliament.

Canning said the NDP favours a “mixed member” proportional representation system that would see some MPs elected at large and some from individual ridings.

Neufeld said he prefers the current “Westminster system” that Canada chose in 1867. He added, however, that he would be open to a change in system provided Canadians were polled in a referendum.
All four candidates saw merit in the idea of a national park in the South Okanagan, provided accommodation can be found for current users of the grasslands in question.