Green Party candidate Peter Nygaard believes he and the party have a lot to contribute to the political discourse in the country and that is why he decided to throw his hat into the ring and run for public office.
That is what Nygaard told the Barrhead Leader a week after winning the Peace River-Westlock nomination for the Green Party.
Nygaard won the nomination defeating his opponent Jule Asterisk Aug. 3 in Slave Lake taking 67 per cent of the vote.
Nygaard, a member of the Onion Lake Cree Nation, is married with two young children, was born in Fort McMurray, but raised in the Hamlet of Joussard where he currently resides.
After graduating high school in High Level he attended Edmonton’s MacEwan University enrolling in accounting.
However, after one year, dropped out and enrolled in NAIT’s plumbing and gasfitting journeyman program.
“This is one of the events that helped shape me,” he said, adding although he might have wanted to pursue other post-secondary opportunities, he felt handcuffed by the amount of his student debt. “That is one of the things I would like to help remedy. People who are in pursuit of higher education shouldn’t have financial difficulties stop them. We are missing out on a lot of potential innovation and research and development that would make us world leaders in technology.”
Another one of Nygaard’s defining moments would happen when he and his wife Shahla decided to sell most of their worldly goods and embark on a 10-year (Sept. 16, 2004, to Sept. 16, 2014) 60,000-kilometre bicycling journey through Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South America.
“I saw so many ways of doing things, different standards of living and how towns, villages and cities deal with their environments in different ways,” he said. “Some of them worked better than others and I want to bring that experience and what I learned for the benefit of constituents.”
Economy and need for diversification
As for what the top issues or concerns are for the riding Nygaard said, for the most part, they are the same ones the rest of the province is facing, the most important being economic stability.
“Currently, we are all in with raw bitumen,” he said. “Which we know is a volatile industry prone to price fluctuations. We need to build a more diversified, stronger economy something they can work with to realize what is coming into their household.”
Nygaard said as the province moves away from its dependence on the oil and gas industry many more opportunities will present themselves.
Part of this diversification will come in part due to the need to reduce the people’s carbon footprint.
“We will need to retrofit old buildings and machinery to make them more efficient,” he said, noting new construction would have to meet more stringent guidelines.
To accomplish this, Nygaard sees the need to transition a large portion of the labour force, currently employed in the oil and gas industry to the trades.
That being said, he realizes the oil and gas sector will always play a prominent role in the health of the provincial economy.
On the issue of the Trans Mountain Pipeline, which would more than double the province’s capacity to move raw bitumen to the British Columbia coast where it then could be exported to other foreign markets via tanker, the Green Party is opposed.
“Shipping our raw bitumen across the ocean or the border is selling ourselves short,” Nygaard said. “If we refined our bitumen and set up manufacturing plants where we sell the world goods, we would get more money for our oil ... and not only provide more money for those who work in the industry but create a more stable economy.”
The Green Party would also ban importing foreign oil, relying on domestic production entirely.
Forestry
Nygaard noted in large portions of the constituency the forestry also plays a vital role in the region’s economy.
However, he noted the Green Party would like to see the industry move away from some of its more traditional practices.
“We need to make it more sustainable and create more and lasting employment, by putting in more regulations to encourage selective logging and move away from clear-cutting,” he said.
Agriculture
Nygaard said the Green Party believe the key to a strong agriculture industry is diversification, noting in recent years farmers have faced challenges beyond their control from weather to trade disputes.
“When I look around at farms, I see a lot of the same crops, such as canola, that farmers tend to stick too,” he said, noting it can be to their detriment. “We need to give them more options and incentives to diversify.”
He added the government need to look at programs to help people get into agriculture, noting the increasing size of farms limits who can get into the industry.
“By helping smaller farms compete, it will help us diversify even more,” Nygaard said.
Education and healthcare
Nygaard said the federal government needs to take more of an active roll in reducing health care wait times as well as ensuring Canadian youth receive a good education.
Environment
The Green Party also believes the federal government needs to be active in protecting the environment. The party platform supports putting a price on carbon, getting rid of a separate system for emitters and imposing one price for all.
However, Nygaard said it goes beyond just putting a price on emissions.
“For people to prosper they have to have an environment to prosper in and a lot of the policies I would like to see implemented have to do with cleaning up the environment and dealing with our finite resources and not treating them like they are going to be around forever,” he said.
Be that as it may, Nygaard reiterated should voters choose him to be their representative, his first duty is to bring his constituents’ concerns to the federal stage. To help him find out what they are, Nygaard plans to cycle to as many of the communities speaking to as many residents as he can.
