By Roy L Hales<\/p>\n
As many of you are probably already aware,\u00a0Michele Babchuk<\/a> has set currently aside her role as Chair of the Strathcona Regional District board<\/a>\u00a0to become the NDP candidate for\u00a0North Island.<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I caught up to her, for a few minutes between meetings, and asked, \u201cwhy should we vote for you, in particular?<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n Michele Babchuk \u2013 \u201cI really do believe that I have been doing this since 2005. With\u00a0<\/em>School District 72<\/em><\/a>, then the city [of\u00a0<\/em>Campbell River<\/em><\/a>] and Chair of the Strathcona District \u2026 I bring a breadth of knowledge to the riding and have quite a good understanding of all of the issues that are very complex in this riding \u2013 from urban, to rural and remote and First Nations issues through-out the whole North Island riding.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Q\/ Didn\u2019t you have connection with Ottawa at one point?<\/strong><\/p>\n Michele Babchuk \u2013 \u201cYes \u2026 I was [NDP] caucus staff for a few years. So I did work in the constituency and occasionally in Ottawa.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Q\/ What is the most important issue of this election?<\/strong><\/p>\n Michele Babchuk \u2013 \u201cI think if you asked ten different people, you\u2019d get ten different answers \u2026 I do believe that public health and safety through COVID pandemic is going to continue to be top of mind for most British Columbians and I am extremely happy with Premier Horgan and the way his government have handled that.I know that we are going to be looking at economic stability for some of our rural and remote communities that are going to be looking to make sure there are jobs for their people. We\u2019ve had some people hurting in our areas \u2026 As we move forward through this pandemic, we need to look at how we are going to ameliorate some of those because I don\u2019t believe [COVID] is going to go away that quickly \u2026 We have some environmental issues that we still have to challenge.I also believe some of those rural, remote and First Nations communities have connectivity issues they are going to be dealing with. I know that through my dealing with rural directors, that connectivity is a huge issue for some of the islands.All in all, I think economic diversity though all of our areas is going to be key in this election.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI have been around this area for quite a long time, Roy, and really do consider it quite an honour to work with all levels of government here. I am excited to take on the challenge. I\u2019m excited to \u2026 earn every vote I canon the North Island, from rural to urban. I\u2019m just getting my team going now, and they\u2019re all excited, so hopefully we can make a big difference moving forward.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Roy L Hales As many of you are probably already aware,\u00a0Michele Babchuk has set currently aside her role as Chair of the Strathcona Regional District board\u00a0to become the NDP candidate for\u00a0North Island.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":11800,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[225],"tags":[1445,1630],"radio":[252],"origine":[280,266,231],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11798"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11798"},{"taxonomy":"radio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/radio?post=11798"},{"taxonomy":"origine","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/origine?post=11798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}