by
CONNIE TABBERT
Editor
There’s a choice for who will be the Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke candidate of the Conservative Party of Canada for next year’s federal election, which is scheduled for Monday, October 21, 2019.
The current MP, Cheryl Gallant, was first elected to office in 2000. She was the first woman elected in the federal riding of Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke.
“My record demonstrates that I am effective, not only when our party forms government but in opposition as well,” Ms. Gallant said.
She is not ready to step down.
“I still have more to do,” Ms. Gallant said said. “So long as the people want me doing the job, and I’m able to serve, I’m pleased to serve. It’s an honour and a privilege.
“People of the Ottawa Valley they make it all worth while. Their honesty, their integrity, their generosity to one another in the community as a whole.”
Michael Coates
Michael Coates, a retired businessman and political analyst, has jumped into the political foray, hoping to win the nod to represent the constituents of Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke.
He began his political career on Parliament Hill under MP Perrin Beattie and then Senator Lowell Murray. He was the Progressive Conservative’s party director of voter research prior to joining a private sector company specializing in public policy analysis and poling.
That company was eventually sold to Hill + Knowlton, a public relations company, in the early 1990s. In 2014, Mr. Coates becams president of the Americas division (South America, Latin America) and Australia.
However, late last spring, Mr. Coates decided to retire.
Not only had he accomplished what he set out to in the business world, but he now had two grandchildren to keep him busy.
While he grew up in Nova Scotia, eventually living in various cities, Mr. Coates and wife Maureen built a home on Centennial Lake 12 years ago, which is just on the edge of the federal riding.
“It was our home away from home,” he said. “I did a lot of travel.
“It’s nice to settle in an area that feels just like where I grew up in the Maritimes,” he added. “People are very similar, the place is similar.”
Cheryl Gallant
Ms. Gallant has been a federal politician since elected in 2000. Prior to that she was an insurance executive and office manager. She has served as the chair of the City of Pembroke Downtown Development Commission and as a member of the city’s Economic Advisory Committee.
Michael
Mr. Coates believes there are two main issues – jobs and economic development. As he looked around the region, he found something he could bring to the riding.
“This riding is missing somebody who has got the network and experience working with large corporate business and investors and in government, who can tap into that and bring jobs and opportunity.”
Mr. Coates noted there are some very good politicians within the riding who know the issues and concerns of their residents, but what they need now is somebody to work with them who knows the business network outside of the riding and who can bring opportunities here.
Explaining bringing opportunities to the area, Mr. Coates worked with the Eganville and Area Community Development group to bring in better internet access.
“The ability to access the internet improved about three-fold,” he said. “It’s like Toronto-quality strength.
“That’s just one example of what I think tapping into my network can do for other communities.”
While he retired to spend more time with his grandchildren and to do what he wanted to do, Mr. Coates admitted that does get tiring.
“There’s only so much hunting and fishing and golf and family, I need my time occupied,” he said.
Mr. Coates wants to give back to his community, and with a lifelong ambition to become more involved in politics, this is the way to do it.
“This is a community that I think can particularly benefit by what I can bring to the table,” he said.
Mr. Coates said this will be the first time Ms. Gallant will be contested for the nomination.
“I think people in this riding are Conservatives and want to stay Conservative,” he said. “But, that doesn’t mean they don’t want a fair and open nomination.”
Research has shown that 86 percent of the riding wants a contested nomination, Mr. Coates said.
“While they are determined to vote Conservative, they are open to looking to a different choice,” he said.
While Mr. Coates has “great respect for Cheryl and her team,” , after 20 years, the riding is more depressed than it was 20 years ago.
The riding is ready to take a look at someone who has different skillsets, he said.
“To get this riding back on its feet, the MP has to do more than simply help somebody get their pension cheque, and make sure that somebody’s 100th birthday is recognized by the Queen,” he said.
While those are important, Mr. Coates believes it’s time to “shake things up and generate some opportunities” for the riding.
People will have an opportunity to choose, he said.
They can keep things the way they are or have a new voice under the Conservative banner that tries something different.
“It would be a disaster, I think, if this riding ever voted Liberal,” he said. “We need ridings like this if we’re ever going to form government.”
Mr. Coates aid one of the themes he has discovered while talking to people is that rural Canada feels like it is being left behind, that the Liberals have given up on rural Canada.
Timber and agriculture are no longer a priority, he said. As an example, he listens to CBC and on this particular day, there was a program on diversity and how Canada has to be open to different religious group. And, later in the day, there was to be a program on Indigenous Affairs.
“In rural Canada, there use to be a time when there was programming on farming, timber, fishing, hunting, you name it,” he said. “But, when they shut down all the regional stations, the CBC, it stopped covering our issues.
“Our Members of Parliament are very important in bringing those rural issues of concern to the attention of decision-makers,” he said.
Talking to area farmers, he heard how unfair it is that they have to pay for the carbon largely produced by urban Canada and don’t like the idea of carbon tax. Yet, the government is all over farmers to get them to become more sustainable in their agricultural practices and become more efficient, so can compete in exports.
If the government wants that, why is it not helping them by re-introducing something like capital cost deduction so farmers can invest in new machinery that will help them achieve their carbon objectives and help them with their production, he questioned.
“Sometimes the margin on agricultural businesses are very narrow,” he said. “It’s not easy to try to conform to what government wants you to do.
“How come we’re not helping them?”
Cheryl
Ms. Gallant believes the farmers, or the producers, have been helped.
“The biggest crisis we ever saw in the agricultural sector was when a single animal out west had BSE and the border was closed,” she said. “The real crisis was the closure at the border and they weren’t taking our beef in the States because of one case.”
She noted not one case of tainted meat got into the food system, but the power-base in the US was able to convince their politicians to close the border to Canadian beef. It had more to do with protectionism and than the safety of the food product, she recalled
That summer there was the largest gathering ever of people in the Cobden Agricultural Hall because people had been busy haying and cropping before they realized what was going on.
“The people were oblivious to what was going on out west with the problem of not being able to get rid of the cattle,” she said.
This area has the calves, not the finishing, so the border closure didn’t affect these farmers as soon as it affected those out west, she explained.
Ms. Gallant said to organize the meeting it was a lot of driving around the countryside stuffing mailboxes with notices.
“We worked through it, both in opposition and government, to get a program, not just for that crisis, but for whatever crisis it might be, we can adapt to the crisis,” Ms. Gallant said.
There are also many other agricultural programs that have been brought in, she added.
Recently, proposed tax changes were being brought in in the middle of summer. The farmers, again, were unaware of the changes because they were busy in their fields.
“The agricultural industry was the last sector that were able to rise, because the small business people, the professionals, knew right off the bat,” Ms. Gallant said.
Agricultural accountants were invited to review the proposed changes, and it was discovered that it would have been more financially beneficial for a farmer to sell to someone other than his family, she said.
“Farming is largely a family entity, father to daughter, father to son, and so on and so forth,” she said. “It’s not something ordinarily just picked up by someone from Toronto. It’s a culture and a way of life.”
When there was a drought, she went out in the fields with farmers to look at the crops. She noted driving along the roads, the crops looked good, but not when you saw the fields up close. Unfortunately, the drought was isolated and the recovery program at that time didn’t allow for relief, but Ms. Gallant went to work with the Minister of Agriculture, and financial relief was provided.
There are two upcoming battles in the agricultural industry, Ms. Gallant noted. The first is that the Canada Food Guide is discouraging people from eating dairy.
The second is that eating meat contributes to carbon in the atmosphere, and since the idea is to reduce carbon monoxide, “there’s a huge campaign emanating from the United Nations, to discourage people from eating meat,” she said.
The issue that propelled the great change in Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke from red to blue was getting rid of the long-gun registry, she said.
“That was a promise made and a promise kept,” she said.
This was an issue for various reasons, Ms. Gallant said.
“It is the right to own and use private property,” she said. “It’s also about our privacy.”
Also, in the Valley, people have various reasons for owning a gun, which includes hunting or heritage.
“It’s a way that a number of families use to have protein on their table,” she said. “If it weren’t for what they kill during hunting season, they wouldn’t have meat on the table.”
A task force was established to bring internet into the Valley, Ms. Gallant recalled. It was a novelty to have the Internet and while the larger companies were able to have their own trunk lines, and Whitewater Region was blessed because of NRTCO, other parts of the Valley were totally unserviced.
The task force started off with a pilot program to get internet to the schools and from there, schools had signals sent out so more people in the community could have access, she continued. Then it blossomed to attenaes being erected and more and more people were able to access internet.
“Even though we have the trunk lines, and wireless towers all over the place, but because of our topography of the land, there are still pockets here and there where we’re using unique forms of transmission to get signals to people who still don’t have it,” Ms. Gallant said.
She recalls when there was talk of closing down Garrison Petawawa due to major cuts to the budget. One of the first campaigns was to bring back the Airborne, and while that didn’t happen, the first new regiment to stand up in Canada in 50 years was Canada Special Operation Regiment.
“(Garrison Petawawa) is still growing and the government of the day is expanding that,” she said.
The Chinooks squadron is now at Garrison Petawawa and provided at least 500 jobs, she said.
Another major employer who hadn’t had a budget in seven years when she was elected was AECL.
“When we formed government, there had been quite a bit of discussion … of closing it,” Ms. Gallant said.
There were other problems as well, but all things were fixed.
“We were a major supplier of medical isotopes to the world,” she said. “The way the business model worked for the isotopes, is really that Canadian tax payers were subsidizing the rest of the world because getting isotopes at a cost to the Canadian taxpayers as opposed to having to pay for them if sourced them somewhere else.”
A new model had to be explored and Ms. Gallant struck a committee of different department people at AECL, following the split of CANDU from the rest of the AECL, it needed to be made more viable.
The committee came up with the idea of a government-owned company-operated model, she said.
It was proven feasible with workable solutions and the government adopted the proposal, put out tenders, and now it’s a company-operated government-owned facility.
It’s expected up to 800 new people will be hired at the recently rejuvenated facility that now looks like a university campus, Ms. Gallant said.
“There are young people from all over the world and they are doing leading-edge research and they’re also problem solvers for industries around the world, including the automotive industry,” she said.
Reaching out for support
Looking to the next few months, Mr. Coates said with a majority government, the democratic process is opened for nominations in both incumbent-held ridings and ridings not held.
In November 2017, the nomination process opened and by the deadline of Dec. 15, 2017 Mr. Coates and Ms. Gallant had entered their names. They each met with the local candidate nomination committee and are both official candidates.
By Feb. 1, both candidates have to sell new memberships. A membership is $15/year. Then, for the next three to four weeks, the two candidates will have to persuade the existing members to support them.
It’s expected a candidate will be elected sometime in March.
Mr. Coates said a lot of new people signed up in the party last year, especially during the leadership process. He will be kept busy getting out to meet as many people as possible one-on-one. He also needs to get a core team who can also talk to people on his behalf.
There will also be a series of meet and greet events; flyers and letters that can be mailed and emailed; press coverage; and social media.
“If you want change, buy a membership,” Mr. Coates stressed.
Mr. Coates said this is not the only incumbent-riding to be challenged.
He believes the Conservative Party will be voted in again in this riding in October 2019.
“The Liberals have become such an urban-based party,” Mr. Coates said. “If you look at the issues, they supported the gun registration and there is a general lack of attention to people in the producing sector.”
The Conservatives think of people in rural Canada.
“People may not have thought it through like that, but intuitively, they think there is only one party on their side,” he said.
Mr. Coates and wife Maureen will celebrate their 37th wedding anniversary this year. They have three daughters — Michelle lives in Ottawa and has two children, Jaxon and Ainsley and Lianne and Danielle live in Victoria, B.C.
Ms. Gallant and husband Jamie have been married since 1985 and they have four daughters, Chantal, Lauren, Amelia and Ellyse.
