Q & A with Logan candidates

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This article was published 11/04/2016 (3704 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Metro contacted candidates in the April 19 provincial election to answer questions for voters. Below are responses from Logan candidates Jitendradas Loves-Life (Green), Flor Marcelino (NDP), Peter Koroma (Lib), Allie Szarkiewicz (PC) and  Cheryl-Anne Carr (Com).

Jitendradas Loves-Life (Green)
Age: 28
Occupation: Spiritual teacher

What are the top two issues facing your riding and how will you address them?

The top issue in my riding is the lack of effort to help people stop destroying each other and their own neighbourhood.

People need mental health resources and lifelong education programs. There are way too many drunk people and drug addicts roaming around this riding.

A lack of spirituality is a tragedy that this government and this world is facing. Not only the riding, but the entire province needs subsidies for individuals and organizations who want to create and offer accessible programs that are spiritually orientated. I want to spearhead this initiative in conjunction with programs and opportunities to celebrate and enhance the diversity of the Logan riding.

How do you feel your party can improve the lives of the constituency’s residents?

I sometimes look around me and wonder if the world is choosing not to see, or simply cannot see just how little time we have to find a “Green” way to live. The Green Party’s time has come.

Critical change is necessary and we need politicians who are ready to say, “The economy. The economy! The economy? The economy does not exist if we don’t have food to eat.”

Stop talking about the economy immediately and let’s focus our entire experience of living on our absolute and total interdependency on the environment.

What do you feel you can personally offer the constituency as its elected representative?

I can offer a spiritual perspective that is absolutely neutral. I have everything I’ve ever wanted financially, socially and spiritually. No amount of bureaucracy, fame or power can influence me to tell lies about my intuitive perceptions of the state of the earth and the constant crimes and mismanagement practices of the current government.

I’d do this job for free if I got elected to office for the Green Party. Selfless service is really all I can offer to this world. I look at the fancy suits and haircuts of all of the other politicians I see in this race and I think to myself, “Are you dressing to look pretty so people will love you, or are you dressing for God?”

I’m here in service to truth, in service to love and in service to God. Let’s start telling the truth about this world and its current state. I have but one child and she is also my mother. Her name is Earth. My obeisances for the grace that is this life are ever directed towards this Earth that sustains me.

Green is the future. I pray for peace. May there be peace, peace, peace and more peace, love and joy.

Flor Marcelino (NDP)
Age: 64
Occupation: Incumbent MLA, Minister for Multiculturalism and Literacy

What are the top two issues facing your riding and how will you address them?

The top two issues facing Logan are social housing and peace and order.

There is a great need for more social housing in the area and we will keep building more.

We support community programs that prevent crimes like Ka Ni Kanichihk Inc. and Rossbrook House that provides a range of culturally-based education, training and employment, leadership, community development, and healing and wellness programs that are rooted in the restoration and reclamation of cultures and citizens.

We also support Citizen on Patrol Program (COPP) that aims to build safer communities by involving individuals and groups in community-based crime prevention in co-operation with local law enforcement agencies.

How do you feel your party can improve the lives of the constituency’s residents?

Our party continues to make steady progress in health care, education and jobs. We’re protecting and improving the key front-line services we all rely on and we’re making sure people are working.

We’re building the roads, highways, flood protection, schools, hospitals and recreation centres people need. We’re putting middle-class and working families first and acting on your priorities.

What do you feel you can personally offer the constituency as its elected representative?

I am passionate of what I do for my community in Logan. I grew up knowing poverty. I have an abiding faith in a Supreme Creator.

As a full-time mother of five children while holding a full-time job I am used to hard work for long hours. I have not slowed down. I still work long hours. I am tenacious. Having survived a major surgery, each day is precious, so I am determined to do the best I can each and every day for my constituent.

Peter Koroma (Lib)
Age: 65
Occupation: Constituency assistant for River Heights MLA Dr. Jon Gerrard

What are the top two issues facing your riding and how will you address them?

Most of the issues facing Logan fall under what I call the poverty umbrella. Two of the biggest issues facing the constituents of Logan are crime and immigration settlement issues. Here’s how I plan to address them:

Fighting crime: while I believe that the Logan community is safer than many people give it credit for, there is no denying that crime is a problem. It is a problem that is rooted in poverty and neglect. I believe that a community-oriented approach is needed to reduce gang violence and crime in the inner city.

For example, our schools and recreation centres need to be more accessible and engaging for young people, to keep them off the street. 

It’s important to acknowledge that we also have 1,700 homeless people in Winnipeg and many of them are in Logan.

Immigration settlement: Logan is home to many newcomers from around the world. It is one of the most multicultural communities in Canada, and while we have done a good job welcoming immigrants and refugees, there is still much to improve when it comes to settling these new Canadians into successful lives.

How do you feel your party can improve the lives of the constituency’s residents?

In Manitoba, we see this ideological pendulum that swings from left to right. And we are a progressive province, but we deserve a better progressive option than what we have had for nearly two decades—and the Manitoba Liberal Party is the only party offering meaningful change.

The current government has simply failed to meet the needs of the middle class, poor people, Indigenous people, and immigrants in this province.

A Liberal government will improve the lives of Manitobans and people in Logan by implementing policies based on input from everyday people. For example, we heard from many residents concerned about rental rates becoming more and more unaffordable so we have proposed a two-year freeze to address rent controls.

We also heard from students that their loans are a huge burden that makes searching for a job that much more stressful, so we are proposing converting student loans to grants.

What do you feel you can personally offer the constituency as its elected representative?

I am running for Logan MLA because I am passionate about advancing social justice, and I can offer constituents an MLA who is transparent and actively working to solve the problems they face.

Issues like the Child and Family Services situation in Manitoba must change for the better. As a province, we cannot continue to fail future generations by putting them into a dysfunctional foster care system.

I also believe that our homeless population must be given shelter. Crime in Winnipeg’s inner-city cannot be reduced without addressing the underlying poverty.

 As a community advocate, I am running to work with the political leaders, the business community and the non-profit organizations to find new approaches to effect real change.

With decades of experience working in Winnipeg’s core communities, helping inner city families, I believe I have what it takes to challenge the status quo.

Allie Szarkiewicz (PC)
Age: Not provided
Occupation: Retired teacher

What are the top two issues facing your riding and how will you address them?

There are more than only two issues in Logan. That being said, I see the two main issues in Logan are education and affordable housing/poverty.

I taught school for over 30 years at both the elementary and middle school levels. I know how important a high quality education is for our children and for the community as a whole. When our children grow up, they’ll need the knowledge and skills to continue to build upon our work and bring this community forward.

Under the NDP government, our children rank last in math. Last in reading. Last in science. As a retired teacher and hard working mother, I find this shameful, disgusting and wrong. The community of Logan, and the province as a whole, are facing so many issues created, and then ignored, by the NDP.

The new PC government will make sure children in this community get the education they deserve.

How do you feel your party can improve the lives of the constituency’s residents?

The Progressive Conservatives are the only party that has a great vision for our province and the experienced people to achieve that vision. 

It is totally unacceptable that under the NDP government, we are last in the country in math, science and reading.  We want to empower teachers to improve outcomes for our students. We will invest in early reading skills and literacy and we will ensure that parents have more information about their children’s education from schools.

The NDP broke our health care system.  The new PC government will fix it. The NDP broke our educational system. The new PC government will fix it. The NDP broke their promise and raised taxes.

The new PC government will fix it and lower taxes for the hard working people of Logan and the entire province starting April 19.

What do you feel you can personally offer the constituency as its elected representative?

Now, more than ever, we need a new government based on Manitoba values. A government that reflects those values in everything it does. I decided to run because as a retired teacher and mother, I am concerned for the future of our most vulnerable citizens, our children.

Education opens the door to great possibilities. My commitment to the people of Logan is to review all program spending, so that money is spent where it should be and is achieving the intended outcomes.

As Logan’s MLA, I pledge that those in need of services, such as quality and accessible housing options, will receive those services. There will no longer be people making over $100,000 living in Manitoba housing with more than 2,700 hard-working people still on the waiting list.

I will work with key stakeholders like the Downtown Watch, West End BIZ, The Forks, and the Winnipeg Police Services to increase safety and ensure recreational opportunities and community development continues in the area.

Cheryl-Anne Carr (Com)
Age: Not provided
Occupation: Not provided

What are the top two issues facing your riding and how will you address them?

Walking door to door in the riding I have asked people what their biggest concern was and every single person answered “poverty” often followed up by “lack of good jobs.”

Discussing the possible solutions with them we see our platform as a perfect fit: free post-secondary education, a guaranteed annual income, universal free childcare, comprehensive healthcare, a shorter work week, a significantly higher minimum wage and resulting job creation. 

People need full time well-paid jobs to end poverty not charity or programs that leave them wanting.

How do you feel your party can improve the lives of the constituency’s residents?

The thing that we can offer even if there is only one of us elected is the constant working for and being vocal about the above needs. Someone has to insist that people matter, not private corporate profit. We are fighting for the equality and integrity of every person in the province, not narrow interests. 

Manitoba has vast resources and I know that there are real short and long-term solutions to these problems, including socialism.  We don’t need studies we need action. 

We don’t need temporary programs and big business partnerships, we need immediate comprehensive measures that value people and their happiness.

What do you feel you can personally offer the constituency as its elected representative?

I have years of experience in the inner city and the Logan Riding and an education that was tailored to helping and seeing what needs to be done. 

I have a varied background that has helped me develop programs and educational models for people from all walks of life. My work has been extensively inter-cultural, I know and understand people from many communities, and have a thorough grounding in my own community, the Red River Métis. 

My own family was involved in the political and business life of this community long before there was a Winnipeg. As a child of poverty that worked my way out and raised my six children on my own; paying for my education, daycare and buying my house and going through everything others do I identify with the people I would be working for.