Photo credit: Grande Prairie & District Chamber of Commerce/Facebook.

By Curtis Galbraith

Federal Election

Business confidence, pipelines, housing among the topics covered in Chamber federal forum

Apr 16, 2025 | 6:00 AM

All six federal election candidates in the Grande Prairie riding took part in an election forum hosted by the Grande Prairie & District Chamber of Commerce on Zoom Tuesday night.

All candidates went two or three at a time answering questions that had been submitted, before all candidates were asked to respond to questions later.

One of the questions was how government would invest in pipelines, railways, highways and ports.

Independent Elliot McDavid and New Democrat Jennifer Villebrun were asked to respond, starting with McDavid;

“We need to get rid of the red tape and start putting pipelines in this country east to west. I know it might be an issue sending pipelines east. There’s reasons for that I guess.”

“We need to look after our highways. The highways right now are in horrible shape.”

Jennifer Villebrun on the stance of the New Democratic Party;

“One of our commitments is that we would move immediately on what we call shovel-ready projects. Things that we know need to be done. Infrastructure that’s been put off being dealt with.”

“That’s partly a way of forestalling some of the upset that’s been happening recently with our trading partners to the south.”

Another question was what specific regulations they would cut or amend to improve business confidence.

Rhinoceros Party Candidate Donovan Eckstrom and incumbent Conservative Chris Warkentin were asked to respond, starting with Eckstrom;

“Technology and innovation is the Number 1 priority of the Rhinoceroses Party and as a strong man myself, we’re going to utilize AI and upload Canadian consciousness into a giant super computer named Doug.”

Warkentin mentioned Bill C-69;

“This is the ‘No New Pipelines bill.’ It’s been put forward by the Liberals and it’s done effectively exactly what the title would suggest it would do and that’s disallow the approval of any new, major infrastructure project in this country.”

Another question was what measures candidates would like to see brought in to address high voter apathy and low turnouts for elections.

People’s Party of Canada Candidate Shawn McLean and Liberal Maureen McLeod were asked to respond, starting with McLean;

“Lot of people are disenfranchised with the electoral system and a lot of that comes down to the fact that they don’t feel they have an impact or a voice and that really does come from a lot of the corruption that we have, that we’ve seen in the Liberal government specifically and in government in general.”

McLeod offered the following response to the question;

“Actually, in the policy discussions of the Liberal party, we’ve been talking about lowering the age of voting and that would get it into the high schools (and get) younger people interested earlier.”

Other questions included attracting skilled workers to make up for an aging population, support for small and medium-size businesses, how slow project approvals could be reformed, how to remove interprovincial barriers to things other than pipelines and plans to address housing affordability for buyers and renters.

The Chamber says anyone who wants to watch the forum can look for it on YouTube.

Election Day is April 28. Advance polls will open on Friday.