GREEN - Ron Peters
On the campaign trail, Ron Peters is learning to do a lot with a little, a characteristic he said will benefit him should he be elected in Coquitlam-Burke Mountain next week.
The Green candidate for the riding may not have the money for expensive advertising and lawn signs but has focused his effort on talking to anyone who will listen about his party's platform.
"If you pick me up and shake me, everything rattling in my pockets is my campaign budget," he said. "It is not a big party. It isn't a party with a lot of resources."
But he said it is a party with a lot of ideas, and some of the planks in the platform are resonating with voters.
He is disappointed with the BC Liberals, whom he says have been draining resources away from public transit and putting them toward expensive highway mega-projects.
"The new Massey Tunnel is another one of those things," he said. "It is going to cost something like $3 billion. When I think about the people from here who can't get a bus going up the hill a bit in Burke Mountain, I wonder if we really want a super flashy new tunnel."
He also believes that with a bit of planning and some new ways of thinking about public policy, the government could be more effective and efficient.
For example, when it comes to health policy, most parties are talking about a need for new hospitals and more doctors, he said.
Peters agrees with those sentiments but said more can be done in terms of prevention and education that could keep people out of the emergency room in the first place.
"I don't think we should be making cuts in those areas but we should be pushing the resources up the stream where people don't need to go to the hospital," he said. "We want to keep people out of the hospital, which ought to be the last resort but tends to be the first resort."
For more information go to www.greenparty.bc.ca/ron_peters.
