a woman

Election 2021: Democratic renewal, Indigenous affairs are the important issues, says Neale

CKTZ News, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The two key issues in this election are the need for the people to make Canada’s important decisions and Indigenous affairs, said Carla Neale, the Marxist Leninist Party candidate for North Island-Powell River.

“The most important issue is democratic renewal,” she said. “The leaders don’t listen to the people. For example, they called the election. Trudeau knew we were in a fourth wave when he called it. It was unnecessary. Everyone agrees it was unnecessary, even the people who wanted it.”

Neale went on to explain that, at the moment, MPs represent their parties and all the communications go one way: from the parties to the general population. The way to give the people a voice is to fund the process, rather than individual parties. Everybody should have an opportunity to participate in the process; parties should no longer be allowed to come to power.

Photo credit: I just did by Dennis Sylvester Hurd via Flickr (Public Domain)

Neale added that this was the third interview she has given and no one has asked her about Indigenous issues.

All of the recommendations of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples need to be implemented.

“It’s not that hard. Some don’t even cost any money,” she said. “The boiled water advisory is an issue. Residential schools are an issue. The intergenerational destruction that continues by survivors and their offspring from Residential schools — to me, that’s utterly horrifying.”

Neale is a retired lawyer and said many of her clients were parents whose children were being taken away from them. In Prince Rupert, they were often Indigenous and themselves the offspring of residential school survivors.

“It is the same as with the children of holocaust survivors. There is an acknowledged problem they all have, when an entire generation has been so traumatized that the next generation is still going to experience that trauma,” she said.

In the podcast, she talks about the prejudice against Indigenous people and the false perception that “they get all this extra stuff.”

“Well they don’t and even if they did, they deserve every penny of it!” said Neale.

So what have you done, personally, to address these issues?

“I show up,” said Neale, who added that she finds elections are fun, but the real work is done between them.

She proceeded to list her volunteer activities. As a member of the Comox Valley Peace Group, Neale is against the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the Israeli treatment of Palestinians. Together with Barbara Biley, who is now running as the Marxists Leninist candidate in Courtenay-Alberni, Neale successfully campaigned to keep two hospitals in North Vancouver Island. They are still trying to prevent Island Health from transferring pathology services from local labs to Victoria. Neale is also one of the Courtenay residents who demonstrate in favour of saving the old growth forest at Fairy Creek.

Neale described a vote for her as a message to the mainstream parties.

“It is the only chance we get to tell the cartel parties what ideas you want them to listen to. It is not a very good way to tell them, but it is the only one we have,” she said.

Top photo credit: Carla Neale, Marxist Leninist Party candidate for North Island-Powell River.