An interview with Macleod riding hopeful Scott Wagner

Scott Wagner with Town of Pincher Creek Mayor Don Anderberg
T. Lucas photo

Chris Davis, Pincher Creek Voice

Background

On November 6 of this year Macleod electoral district Member of Parliament Ted Menzies announced he was immediately retiring from public office. Since that announcement four people have declared themselves as candidates for the Conservative Party of Canada nomination to replace Menzies prior to the upcoming byelection, which must be held within six months of his resignation.  Scott Wagner is one of those nomination candidates.  He was in Pincher Creek on November 12 and sat down with me for the following interview.

"I am down here actually to speak with the town council tonight," Wagner explained.  "I want to see how it operates and find out what the local issues are. My intent is to be in town on a fairly regular basis. I was in Okotoks just before this for the council meeting and High River has the same council meeting on the same day, as well as Pincher Creek. They all have the same council day so that's challenging."  Wagner also expressed his intention to meet with rural municipal councils.

Small government guy

"I hope to gain knowledge from the councils. The way I operate is you have to listen before you speak. I think that is an important aspect. If you don't know the local issues, how are you going to translate those to management? Because you overlap at some point. For example, when I was out in Crowsnest one of the councillors was challenging the administration around why things were not getting done in a timely fashion. Administration's underlying response was 'We have reams of paperwork' and the council comes back with 'It takes longer to do the paperwork than the actual work?'. Those are things that burn in my brain. They speak to me because I am a small government guy and I believe that less regulation is better than more."

"The more regulation you have the more you handcuff people."

Jurisdiction issues

"The biggest issues in this riding to this point has been confusion between jurisdictions, between provincial and federal. I view that as a thing that is going to get corrected in the next two years because we are potentially going to be going through two nominations between January and February - a byelection in May or June, or something like that. Another nomination meeting will be held probably next fall, and then there will be an election in two years. So I think that is going to drive an unbelievable awareness of what the federal issues are in this whole riding because that is a lot of talk in a very little amount of time."

"I think that's going to be good for federal politics in this particular region. With any luck I will have a cabinet post and that's what I am working towards. I have to prove myself, not just on one level but there are multiple layers of government for people that I have to prove myself to.  I think that's in a year's stint."

Senate reform

I asked Wagner what his thoughts were about senate reform, particularly given the scandals arising around certain senators over the course of the last year. "I have door knocked on about a thousand doors at this point," he said. "A common response is confusion between federal and provincial (conservatives) and the next one after that is the senate. About half of the people are concerned about the senate."

"There is a lot of nervousness about integrity around the senate. It's not just about the senate, it's integrity in politics. I kind of view them the same. It's another one of those situations where it took time to address it and I think the conservatives have now addressed it but it's not totally gone. They're not out of the senate (suspended senators Brazeau, Duffy, and Wallin). They are just suspended and so it's going to come back again."

"There is only four ways that I can figure that you can get (removed from) the senate. It's resign, die, turn 75, or be convicted of a crime. So these people don't have to leave until something happens. They can't be forced to leave. I believe a Triple E senate would be ideal and I don't know necessarily if that's where it's going to head. I think now there are senate hearings that are starting to develop and I am very excited about that. A Triple E senate would be elected, ideally. I am a fiscal conservative so I would like to see a much, much smaller senate. I am rather a modest guy and it's very difficult to be that concise and I know people want you to be that concise."

"I would like to take the senate expenditure of 96 millions bucks and take it down to something more reasonable, say 25 millions and have 23 senators, not 105. Say two per province and one per territory."

"I know that may not fly in the final count but I do believe a check on parliament and the sober second thought of the way that the senate was designed is a valuable part of the commonwealth and the parliamentary system. It's not that often that the senate kicks something back. It hasn't happened in my lifetime. If you have a very large majority in government there might be situations where, say, legislation gets forced through because of party politics. If you're going to change the constitution that significantly, I think that's where the public should get a vote."

Education and youth issues

"One of the issues that is dear to my heart is youth unemployment. It's not as significant in Alberta but it is a significant problem in Canada."

"We need to start looking at our education system and what we are trying out, because we are not matching it up with what the demand is. I don't think the students are being properly informed about the options available to them. For example, my daughter just graduated from high school and she wanted to take biology. So, biology is a fabulous, fabulous course but the question is 'What are the jobs at the end of the day?'. She was under the expectation that there were lot of jobs because her friends and councillor were saying 'Do what you love' and all those sort of things. What you love is a risky path, and it's great as long as you know what you're getting into. She had an expectation that there were a lot of jobs out there, well there isn't. So she didn't have the knowledge. There is a whole lot of things that happen in high school that doesn't necessarily jive with what I would call promoting that knowledge level."

"So you get into university and spend 4 years in university. You come out typically in Canada with $30,000.00 of debt, according to statistics. A third of our college and university graduates are coming out without a job in their field. I do believe that jades them as they didn't have the correct information and their expectations were that they were going to have a great job at the end of university but they have a great debt instead. So now you have to cover it off and so you're not necessarily doing what you love. I think it's a hard lesson but I think we could bring that lesson in a little earlier. I think that universities and colleges need a lot more accountability."

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