Kevin Nichols, Green Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia-Headingley

Why do you want this job?

It's just a way to give back to the community. I'm running in my riding. I've lived here all my life. I lived in St. James, lived in Crestview, and I live in Charleswood. I volunteer all the time in Charleswood and this is just one way of giving back. I want to help the people in the riding and try to restore democracy back to Canada.

What's the biggest issue for the country and in your riding?

There are a few huge ones that are right up there the environment, taxes, climate changeand obviously the lack of democracy. That's really going downhill. The democratic process is utterly failing.

For my riding, it's the environment. We've had brown water. That's going to be an issue.

I want to make sure people have a good education, clean water, clean air, clean foodand places to live. We don't need more poverty. In my riding, there are people literally being taxed out of their houses. We've got enough homelessness. We don't need to make homeless people.

What would you do with the Senate?

It's my understanding that it's hard to abolish, but I certainly would like to change it and make them more accountable. Obviouslythere is no clearcut set of rules, it seems, and they can do whatever they want. I think that needs to be overhauled. I think there is a certain degree of necessity to the Senate, but by all means doing whatever they want, whenever they want, and however they want and spending our tax dollars and not being held accountable is totally wrong and that needs to be changed.

Winnipeg was described as the most racist city in Canada. What would you do to combat racism?

I think people need to understand from the other side. I'm white. There's no two ways about it. It's what you see on TV and what you hear from the media that influences how you look at things and what causes stereotypes.

I work with a lot of native people and actually just had a chat with one who is one of our foremen and he's a great guy. He's educated me on some of the things that need to be changed and backgrounds on things. I think that's a start understanding. Understanding for everybody, let's say native and non-native.

I recently heard on the news, and I've seen the application forms, where they ask for your race. One lady asked "why?" Realistically, why? You don't need to know. It's not a big deal. You're hiring people, not a race. I was never for hiring people because you need numbers. "We need visible minorities in government, we need visible minorities in the workforce." Hire people for what they know and what they can do. I remember a show years ago, there was a black gentleman and he stood up and he was mad that he got a job strictly because he was black. The company needed X number of black employees. The guy was very well-educated, he had a PhD, but he was basically given nothing to do because they just needed a number, and to me that's wrong. Hire the person for what they're doing. I think that's part of getting rid of racism quit labelling.

What role should the federal government play in dealing with climate change?

I think we need to take a huge role. We need to step up and change things so companies can change.

Coming from an automotive background, we never made it profitable for car companies to change. We've always promoted gas. We've never promoted electric. You look around here and there are no charging stations. I was in B.C., and they have charging stations. The government has to take a firm stand on some of this stuff, and say, "You know what, we'll put the charging stations in, but get more cars produced."

Not everyone wants to drive a Priusand not everyone can afford a Tesla, but if we start making things more affordable, start making things accessible to people and make it more beneficial for companies to produce products that are more environmentally friendly, then we can start making big changes in the climate. The federal government has to step up and make it possible.

If there was one government policy you think is done better in another country, what is it?

One government policy that lacks in Canada is our energy policy.France has a policy now that states any new construction must either begreen roof or solar.Our policies for renewable, clean energy are falling behind, and we really need to update them to help reduce emissions. We also need proportional representation, but that is more a governmental change than a policy.Twenty-seven out of 34 OECD[Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development]countries have moved to proportional representation.

Under what circumstances is deficit spending a good choice?

I think just in emergency situations. If you had natural disasters where you'll need emergency relief, obviously you're going to have to do some kind of deficit spending. You're going to have to spend no matter what, whether you have the money or not.

Deficit spending is an antiquated way of thinking. We've got to stop spending willy-nilly. It's a waste. I see a lot of government waste, and that's what we've got to stop and then we won't have deficits anymore.

What do you believe is the single most effective way to fight crime?

Police visibility is probably the best. Crime prevention. Look for the root cause of what crime is. Part of the Green Party's platform is a guaranteed livable income. If people are not impoverished, there's a chance they may not steal. If they rise out of poverty, they may not be driven to steal or break laws. I think laws themselves need changing to prevent a lot of things. Just finding the root cause and more police presence. I know that was effective downtown. You had cops walking the beat, and you didn't have the crime. It's pretty simple. Why people cause the crimes is a whole sociological issue.

What should be done about homegrown terrorism?

Prosecution to the fullest extent of the law. I mean, we had a young gentleman in Charleswood and he was, I'll say, becoming radicalized. I don't know the ideology behind it because I don't understand it fully. I can understand they want to force their views on everybody. Homegrown? Just punish them to the fullest extent of the law. I don't think Bill C-51 is going to do anything different than what we had before, other than it now makes you and I criminals. You have a gathering of a whole bunch of people and all of a sudden we become a threat. We're not a threat. I would like to see the police go after actual threats for homegrown terrorists.

If there were a gay pride parade in your riding, would you go? Why or why not?

I don't necessarily understand the whole gay pride thing. They want to be treated equaland yet have their own parade. I don't understand homosexuality, but by the same token if they are in love, they're in love. There's enough war in the world. I don't think I would attend because I don't really believe they should have their own party or parade, but if they want to, I'm not going to stop them. I'm not going to stand between them. It's fun. If you want to have it, go ahead, but I choose not to participate.

Have either you or your family had a frustrating experience with the health-care system, and what would you do to fix the problem?

I have Crohn's disease. When I was first diagnosed, it took about six weeks because they had no idea what it was. So I keep going back to my doctor, and they'd say you have the stomach flu. I finally got diagnosed with Crohn's. I went from 195 pounds to 115 pounds and being hospitalized. That was 30 years ago, and to my understanding, things got worse. I've seen emergency rooms. The six-hour wait for treatment or for paramedics to get back on the road is insane. Their job is to get out on the road and help people, not sit in emergency waiting to transfer a patient.

We need more funding for doctors so they can process the patients and get them in and look after people. The system can be very frustrating, but we do need more doctors.

Part of the Green policy is we want to fast-track more foreign doctors to make sure they're up to Canadian standards when it comes to medical practitioners, and then our shortage will hopefully be a lot less with people coming over.

What would you do to get more people to vote?

That's pretty much the Green mandate. We want people to vote. We don't want them to have the impression that their vote doesn't count. Every vote counts. People sometimes say, with me especially being with the Green Party, "You're not going to win." Unless the votes are counted right now, I have just as good a chance as everybody else. They say, "A vote for Green is a wasted vote." There are no wasted votes. A wasted vote is a vote that's not cast.

Then there's the myth of strategic voting, and I've gone over that with quite a few people. Unless you know how your neighbour's voting, you have no idea who's going to win, so you really can't vote for the person you think is going to win. That's where the democratic process is falling down.

Vote for who you want to represent you. That's what we're telling people. It could be anybody. We'd love to have everybody vote Green;however, we want people to vote. We don't want them to think it's a waste of time. It's not a waste of time; it's your democratic right.

There were, I think, 9.3 million people that didn't vote last time. If those 9.3 million had voted, we probably wouldn't be in the mess we're in right now.

What's a better use of federal dollars: fixing roads or building rapid transit infrastructure?

I'm not in favour of rapid transit, basically because of where it's going. We do need roads fixed. Infrastructure's huge. We have bridges crumbling. We just had Ness Avenue full on give way because a storm sewer was collapsed. The roads are in terrible shape. They've been neglected for years.

I'm helping to write policy for the Green Party of Manitoba. Part of that is having more buses on the road so you can haul more people. Having three buses on the road and having them move fast really doesn't do anything. Get more people riding the bus, more electric buses, and you've got it made. Then start looking at different systems of moving them faster.

I think that they'll find once people start moving on buses, the traffic will ease up and the buses can move faster. As far as rapid transit, fix the roads first, worry about rapid transit later. It's not a priority.

Would you support legalizing a small amount of marijuana? Have you ever tried it?

Legalize it. I think if you treat it exactly the same as alcohol, you shouldn't have any issues whatsoever.

I can't remember exactly who, but it was either a governor or a police chief that had said, "Nobody's ever got stoned and killed cops." You hear "fuelled by alcohol." It causes all kinds of problems, whereas it's been proven marijuana helps cure things. It eases a lot of pain in cancer patients. They wouldn't prescribe it for cancer patients if it didn't do anything.

Have I tried it? Quite a long time ago, when I was a kid. It would be about 35 years ago.

Honestly, having Crohn's and knowing it helps Crohn's patients, by all means I would in a heartbeat legalize it, especially if that's what it was used for. They legalize a lot of things that are very harmful to people. When they play commercials on TV where the side-effects are far more dangerous than what the actual illness is, it's time to start looking seriously at some of these things. There aren't that many side effects, if any. If the biggest side effect is getting the munchies then it's not a big deal.

As long as you treat it like alcohol, you don't drive intoxicated, you don't do it at work, I can't see what the problem is.