Starting his political career as a student leader and mentor at Red Deer College, 21-year-old Logan Garbanewski is a student, a recovering addict, and a night manager at the McDonalds in downtown Red Deer. He has also recently announced he is running in the Red Deer-Mountain View riding for the New Democratic Party in the upcoming federal election.

Born and raised in Whitecourt, which he sees as the southernmost point of northern Alberta, Garbanewski moved to Red Deer a few years ago for school, where his passions lie in political science, activism, and education.

He is hoping to unseat incumbent Conservative Earl Dreeshen, who won the riding back in 2015 with 74% of the votes. 

 

How do you plan on getting more money for Canadian families? 

“We just want to make life more affordable for Canadians. If we can do that, then there will be more money in Canadians pockets. First we want to expand Universal Healthcare, which would then cover vision, mental health, dental, and pharma care, because in all honesty, we are falling behind most industrialized nations who are covering these kinds of things for their citizens, and we’re just not. So pharma care for one, I just read a CBC article stating that a million Canadians are having to choose between heat, water, and their pharmaceuticals, which just isn’t right. Canadians should have access to this kind of thing. And dental, because without any kind of coverage dental is extremely expensive, and even with some coverage it’s still pretty expensive. I’ve had teeth pulled because I couldn't afford the root canal. These things would save Canadians thousands. In fact, studies have shown that it’s actually less costly in the long run to just make it public.

Canadians are saying they care a lot about the environment. What issues do you see as having the biggest impact on the environment, and how do you plan to address it? 

There’s 100 corporations that make up about 70% of carbon emissions across the world, and we would really like to continue with the carbon pricing, but increasing the rebates that most Canadian household will receive, and rolling back on the breaks the Liberal government has been giving to these huge corporations who are really the main polluters in our society. It’s not coming down to the average household. We will also, like pretty much every other party has the same plan to introduce tax rebates for upgrading your homes windows and furnace, just making your house more efficient. Most parties are planning to do something along those lines federally, and we’re just taking that a little bit further and offering more rebates, and more rebates also to businesses to upgrade and become more efficient and reduce their carbon footprint. Also, a ban of single-use plastics, which the Liberal government has been in talks about, but we’ll see how that goes with them.”

What issues do you see with our education system, and how do you plan on addressing it? 

“On the federal side we would actually like to expand post-secondary to make it more accessible, and actually publically fund it so “K to Career”, there is no barriers in between, making it more accessible for all Canadians. We would stop profiting from student loans, we would cut off the interest rates and stop making money off our citizens who are just trying to better their lives and better themselves. We’d actually move away from loans altogether and move more towards Canadian student grants, which you don’t pay back. Those are grants, they’re not loans, we’re not expecting those back kind of thing. Basically, your access to it shouldn't be tied to how much your parents make or taking on a massive debt, which actually turns people away from it a lot. And in my personal opinion, I think postsecondary is too tied to getting a career rather than doing what you want to do with your life and so many people choose career over what they want to do. So they go with the fiscally responsible thing and go pursue a career they don’t really want. By removing these barriers, people are more free to pursue what they want to in life.” 

How do you plan to manage the healthcare needs of our aging population?

“Well, that kind of goes back to expanding universal healthcare to cover all these different things including pharma care, which is something that an aging population really relies on more than the younger population, and it would make life more affordable for the aging population. They can live more comfortably and not have to worry about purchasing their pharmaceuticals.”

How do you plan to address any shortfalls in our healthcare system, such as a lack of services and facilities in Central and rural Alberta? 

“The plan is to identify the gaps within the system where people are falling through, and then develop a plan to recruit more and retain more nurses, doctors, and other healthcare professionals which Canadians need more access to, and if we keep losing them to other countries, you know, getting their education here and then taking off, they are not really helping out our system or helping out our citizens...we’re definitely open to people coming in and working in Canada, but, of course, it’s more about just training and the retention of doctors here.” 

What services do you think should be created or enhanced to address our major social issues, like homelessness and unemployment? 

“This keeps coming back to the expansion of universal healthcare because this benefits everybody, especially the most vulnerable members of our society, the homeless or the close to homeless. Not only would they not have to worry about getting their medications, but because this expansion would cover mental health, and it would also cover addiction counseling. So addicted persons who are living on the street would have better and quicker access to treatment and prescriptions that they need to sustain a stable mental health, which would help them get back to work and not slip up… we have a plan to end homelessness in Canada within a decade with the creation of social housing options and other affordable housing options across Canada. That’s a huge dream. It’s the old saying, “the chain is only as strong as its weakest link”, and Canada is only as good as the lowest members of society, and if we let them stay that low then it’s a reflection on ourselves. We actually have a lot of plans for fixing the housing market too actually. Reducing foreign investments, which drives up the housing market rates when foreign investors come in and buy up a lot of them, and just building affordable housing, like we have a plan for 500,000 units across Canada, and subsidies for affordable apartments and rent. Basically make it more affordable to live.”

How do you plan on supporting Alberta’s core industries, such as oil and gas, tourism, forestry, and agriculture?  

“For agriculture, we’d like to invest more in public agriculture research so that our farmers can have access to top of the line technology to help them with their harvesting and their growing. Payment protection to eliminate the risk of exporting, especially to the United States, there’s a huge risk in exporting our goods there and just not getting paid what we are expecting. Earl Dreesehen talks about this all the time, mental health for farmers. They work under very strenuous conditions, and just bringing farmers together from across the nation and developing a mental health strategy to get farmers the help they need when they need it.

For forestry, we would like to expand market access globally to keep Canada competitive in the lumber industry, and we would continue to support value added Canadian wood products. We’d also love to boost reforestation efforts, which is a huge Green (Party) initiate as well, just because the Boreal forest just isn’t the size that it used to be, and we could continue to reforest it and do a better job. 

For tourism, basically we plan to protect freshwater land and our oceans with funding and enforcement of new policies to protect at least 30% of it all….developing a system of Urban National parks, which sounds pretty cool to me. 

What major infrastructure projects do you see as a high priority for our area?

“I know a huge priority for the Red Deer and area is the Red Deer Hospital, which is just falling well behind. It has not expanded with the population of the area. Of course we (Federal) could supply the provincial government with the funds necessary to do expansions into these health care systems and hospitals, but it’s really out of our jurisdiction. Jagmeet (Singh) himself said he wouldn’t impose any projects on any province who doesn’t want to take them on, which Jason Kenney was not a fan of that. When Jagmeet said that, he was more talking about the pipeline. It was really funny though, I read a tweet from Jason Kenney and he was attacking Jagmeet for that, saying he was going against the Constitution for not imposing this (the Trans Mountain Pipeline) on to B.C, but then Jason Kenney tried to impose a ‘Turn off the Taps’ legislation, which is completely out of his jurisdiction, going against the Constitution. His arguments are really back and forth, it’s interesting to watch.”