Gordon Francey, Veterans Coalition Party of Canada candidate for the riding of Yellowhead.

By Sheldon Spackman

Yellowhead

Meet the candidate: Gordon Francey, Veterans Coalition Party of Canada

Oct 18, 2019 | 4:31 PM

The Veterans Coalition Party of Canada candidate for the riding of Yellowhead, says no one willing to step-up and do what’s right for Canadians has led him to run in this year’s federal election.

Gordon Francey, a veteran with 14 years of service in both the regular and reserve forces, says his Party is ‘for the people’.

“We are not career politicians, we do not want to be career politicians and we would actually like to put terms into terms of service for politicians, a maximum of two terms,” he explains. “That would eliminate a lot of potential corruption if that was done. I just want the people to know that we actually have a policy in place that if I don’t do what constituents tell me to do, I’m actually removed from office.”

Francey says the Veterans Party of Canada (VCP) grassroots values are what drew him to run for them.

“It’s getting rid of the corruption, the red tape and dealing directly with the public,” says Francey. “What we want to do is, we don’t have a Party whip, so I’m free to vote as my constituents dictate. So they will basically tell us how they want us to vote and that is how I will present myself in the House.”

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According to Francey, ‘key’ platform highlights for the VCP include eliminating the GST over the next four years, reducing income tax – starting with the lower income levels and working their way up, and reduce spending in government.

“We will freeze all hiring of civil servants, we want to limit departmental budgets to 95 per cent of the yearly budget,” adds Francey. “We want to reduce overall spending so extravagant purchases and unnecessary stuff will be cut out, we want to reduce the farm tax to help the farmers, reduce business tax for businesses. We want to encourage growth in the business community, so we will invest money where we see a need for it to be invested to build the communities back up.”

Healthcare and alternative energies are other areas Francey says would be targeted for improvements as well.

“We’re looking at a Pharmacare package,” says Francey. “Right now, the one that’s been brought out is $22 billion, which is way too much for Canadians to afford. We want to bring in something affordable.”

“We want to push alternative energies,” he continues. “There are many out there that have been suppressed, outright suppressed because there’s no profit in them for the big corporations.”

However, Francey points-out that campaigning throughout the riding has revealed many constituents are paying what he describes as ‘outrageous rents’.

“The cost of living is extreme,” says Francey. “The other one is jobs. There’s a lot of lost jobs.”

With many Canadians also talking about climate change and the environment during the campaign, Francey says the VCP does acknowledge that climate change exists.

“A lot of people don’t realize that Canada is actually carbon-neutral, or even carbon-negative,” says Francey. “We absorb more than we emit and we’re responsible for approximately one per cent of the world’s emissions. But the big thing about Canada and specifically Alberta, is all the cutting-edge technologies have been developed here, for carbon capture, for clean energy extraction from the oil sands – it’s some of the cleanest in the world, but there’s agendas out there to prevent us from getting our oil to market.”

Currently employed in the Information Technology (IT) field, Francey says if Alberta could get its oil to market, the government could use the resulting capital to invest in alternative energies.

“There are a great number out there that can further reduce our emissions,” says Francey. “I do admit that we have emissions that we can reduce and the technology is there, it just has to be employed properly.”

For undecided voters, Francey says it’s important for Canadians to know the VCP is a party of diversity.

“We’re not just veterans, we’ve got First Nations with us, we’ve got first responders with us, we’ve got ordinary citizens who have had enough,” he exclaims. “We’ve got all walks-of-life with us, so we’re not just a veteran’s coalition. That was just our initial focus because it was near and dear to us the way that vets are being treated, but we’ve expanded way beyond that now.”