With an eagerness to help out in politics, Grade 9 math and science teacher at Notre Dame School in Red Deer Conner Borlé offered to volunteer with the Green Party for the federal election but was instead asked to be their candidate for Red Deer-Mountain View, an opportunity he couldn't pass up.

The teacher and small business owner was born and raised in Central Alberta, with his father’s oil and gas job relocating their family to the States as well as the east coast for a short time throughout his life, eventually ending up back in Red Deer, teaching at the same school he graduated from.

Borlé hopes to unseat incumbent Conservative Earl Dreeshen who won in 2015 with 74% of the vote.

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

“One of the economic policies for the Green Party is that it’s a more of a trickle up economics, so our policies believe that the more money that’s in the hands of Canadian citizens, that’s going to be more money overall for everybody. That’s going to be income tax coming to the government, that’s going to be sales tax coming to the government, but it’s just money in the hands of Canadians as opposed to more money in the hands of corporations through corporate tax breaks. That’s the way we want to invest, so as far as how we will get that money into the hands of Canadians, the Green Party is looking at getting a GLI, so a Guaranteed Livable Income.

We know that that’s not going to be able to happen immediately, but already in our budget right now, which we are the only budget that’s submitted our budget for approval already. Already, that budget has plans for transitioning, and that would mean that we would kind of save money on some of the administrative features… disability payments, seniors payments, things like that, we just go to a blanket payment of guaranteed livable income, and it would wrap up all the services in one so you save money on all of those administrative fees. I think part of it is just getting fair compensation for our natural resources. Canada historically, we have an abundance of natural resources, but we kind of just mine them, send them out, and we don’t really charge companies a whole heck of a lot to do that. We have some of the lowest corporate tax rates, so I think just getting a fair value for that and we’ll see that we have quite a bit of money to deal with to put towards the citizens of Canada.

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?

“I think that really the biggest issue impacting is lack of action. We have all of the technology we need to transition into a more sustainable environmentally friendly economy, society, everything like that, but we just don’t really have the government buy in and backing for it. I think it’s more about changing perceptions on the environment. I think right now, and as a teacher, I experience this; people view going green as kind of a fanciful idea and it’s something we can’t do. But we actually have all the technology and ability; it’s just about investing in it and creating a demand for it. As soon as there is a demand for it where there is money, you know it’ll follow, it’s just about getting it out there and making people more aware of just how feasible it actually is to do. Photos taken by Felicity Greener, courtesy of Conner Borlé's Facebook page.

What do you say to those people who see going green as an attack on the oil and gas sector?

I look at it more as an investment. For me, I was raised on oil and gas money, that’s what my dad did for a living and I have nothing against oil and gas, absolutely nothing against oil and gas workers and everything like that, but what I think we need to realize is our economy is based on more or less one commodity, and commodities go up and down that’s why we have such a tumultuous boom and bust past in Alberta. Going green, I think, what we need to see it as more of a diversification of our economy, that’s just finding jobs in other fields rather than just relying on one field providing the vast majority of our employment.

The energy industry is the fastest growing industry in the world right now, so if we are looking for jobs, let’s go to the fastest growing industry, let’s go to an industry that we see is bringing in jobs. The oil and gas industry has slowed down, that’s just a fact. Jobs aren’t as abundant mostly due to automation. We’re producing a lot more than we are at our peak in 2014 but the jobs aren’t there because we have automation. So just by branching off into a green economy it doesn’t mean that we’re cutting out oil and gas workers and saying that their jobs aren’t important because they are, and I think we all realize that we need oil and gas right now, but moving into a green economy is just finding other sources of revenue for our citizens and investing in other outlets.

Part of it for me too is that, right now we have the technology and ability to replace oil and gas as our energy source, but we don’t have the technology or ability to replace oil and gas in the manufacturing of like plastics and things like that. We have oil and gas and we know we’re going to need plastics going to the future, why do we want to get rid of it all right now? Rather than saying, it might be worth while saving some reserves, because who knows when we’ll figure out how to replace oil and gas and the plastics industry.

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

“I do think education is really important. There are a lot of studies out there that show that for every dollar invested in education, it’s one of the biggest financial returns to governments. The more citizens that you have working and knowledgeable in how to finance and take care of themselves, that's more people paying taxes to you. So as a government I think education should be of the highest priority, and of having a high quality education. There’s a lot of studies out there that show the way education shifting and growing, I think that staying on that path is a better investment in our future than going back to the ‘same old same old’. My curriculum is pretty old right now the one I teach, and it doesn't have anything about financing and money planning. So, I’d like to teach my students more about that but I also have tests that prevent me from doing that.

One of the Green parties policies is to eventually make all post-secondary free, because studies show that the more post-secondary educated people in your society, the better it is for your economy growth overall. More people that are looking to make a change and be the next idea guy or idea girl, that’s not a bad thing. The first target would be trades programs. The trades industry is one of the industries that we know isn’t going to be replaced by automation anytime soon. We need people, we need plumbers, we need electricians, we need builders, and the Green party really wants to invest in that, and that would be one of the places for those that have lost their jobs in the oil and gas industry, the Green Party would want to supplement their education costs to hopefully 0, so that they can go back to school and get a trade and then go and work in the trades industry, because also part of the Green Parties plan is to retrofit all existing buildings, which would be a massive undertaking and provide literally thousands of jobs.

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 Green Party’s healthcare platform, we’d like to expand healthcare and expand access to healthcare. So that does incorporate a lot of different things. One of the first things would be to make universal pharma care accessible and to work towards universal dental. Universal dental is very very pricey, and at this point we don’t have a way of fitting it into the budget but it is something that we would be working towards. We do have a way of fitting universal pharma care into the budget. We also want to increase access to medical assistance, and that might mean that we have more online access for people that might not be able to go in to a hospital.

We want every single family in Canada to be able to have a family doctor, so we’ll lure in doctors in internationally as well as encouraging doctors here in Canada to stay. Expanding the single paramedic care model so that includes all those other things. And starting to incorporate more mental health. That’s a big issue that we are seeing nowadays, especially starting at younger ages so we want to make sure that mental health coverage is in there along with just your regular physical health. If you go in with a broken arm you get seen right away, if you go in with depression or another mental illness you should also be seen right away.

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

“One of the big things the Green Party is a proponent of is housing first. We believe that if somebody has a home, someplace to go to at night, a place to keep them warm particularly here in Alberta, that we can then better address mental illness, opioid or drug abuse and things like that, but its housing first. So we have a lot of plans to get houses that are affordable and bring them on the market. Our plan would be to get, I believe, about 25,000 new builds every year, and 15,000 more rebuilds every single year for the next 10 years to try and get every single Canadian citizens and permanent residents in a house. Because really, once they are in a house, everything else kind of falls into place, and we’ve seen that in studies, and it’s worth doing so that’s what the Green Party wants to do. Cause it’s tough to get a job if you don’t have a place to shower in the morning or if you are not warm at night. All of that stuff is way harder and more compounded when you don’t have someplace to sleep, so finding a place to sleep for everybody is honestly the goal.

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

“For oil and gas I think it’s important to stop importing and oil and gas. Over the last 10 years we’ve spent over $20 billion on international oil. That’s ridiculous. Canada has more than enough oil and gas here, so building refineries and upgraders here in Canada, investing in Canadian jobs and keeping all of our oil and gas in house I think is very important. It seems kind of crazy to me that we take bitumen out of the earth and we send it down to the States and then we buy it back once it refined. We can build refineries here, provide Canadians with jobs and use our own oil and gas to run our vehicles.

As far as the ag industry, one of the biggest things there is that a lot of our food sources right now are coming from large conglomerate multinational corporations, but the Green party really wants us to have a return of our food sourcing from local, small farms. So we would invest in local, small, organic farms creating more of a market for those produce and giving them more of a boost against their competition.

Basically, how the system works right now is the farmers get support from the government based on the amount of production. So like the multinational and big conglomerate farms get more funding from the government just because they clearly have a higher yield, whereas a smaller farm has a smaller yield, and what the Green Parties policies is hoping to introduce is that the funding from the government would be more related to the number of farms. So that means a large farm would get just as much funding and return as a small farm so that small farms are getting a larger piece, rather than the larger farms getting the vast majority simply because their yields are higher. And just encouraging the farmers that we have and also giving subsidies to young farmers that want to get in, because it’s an incredibly difficult industry to get into as a young, new farmer, and the Green Party wants to encourage and help young people with training for free, as well as with financial support.

It’s too expensive for anybody to just join the ag industry if they are not already in it, but the Green Party, we really want local farmers. Local farmers are way more valuable to us. Local farmers are the first scientists: they care about soil quality, air quality, and water quality. We want them, so we want to encourage new local farmers to join as well as keeping strong our current local farmers, so that’s a big deal for the Green Party.

What major infrastructure projects do you see as a high priority for our area? Photos taken by Felicity Greener, courtesy of Conner Borlé's Facebook page.

“For Alberta and Central Alberta, I think some major infrastructure project the Green Party would have in mind, would be around transportation and around energy grids. So transportation, the fact that we should have more rail transport, more public transport, either by rail or by electric busses that go to small towns. We’ve lost Greyhound. Right now, the only way for people in small towns to get into any of big cities is to drive their own cars. If we want to help with the environment, providing more options, more environmentally friendly options would be one of the ways. So that’s a big infrastructure project. Another one would be the retrofitting of all existing buildings, that would require thousands of trades jobs working over a long period of time. And then the third one would be the upgrading of our national grid. Right now, our grids have mostly been under provincial jurisdiction, so it makes it difficult if we got like Quebec hydro producing more energy than they need at that moment, it’s not so easy for them to then send the energy out here. But if we upgrade our national grid, it would be easy for renewable resources across the country to be providing energy to other place that have higher demand at whatever time of day if they’re local green sources can’t produce it themselves. So transportation, retrofitting of existing housing, and creating the grid, would be three big ones.

Anything else you would like to add?

“For me, I’m not a career politician. I am not here as a stepping stone in my political career. I got here because I just wanted to make a difference, and honestly that’s what my main hope is. So far in the campaign, one of the things that I've done is I’ve tried to run a listening campaign.

I’ve gone and sat down with councils and said, ‘What’s most important to you?’ So that’s been my goal so far, and I hope that whatever happens that example of just, ‘hey for democracy we should be listening and talking to the people who live in our riding’. And if that’s all that kind of comes out of this, is that people are like ‘you know what? Even though it was the Green party, he at least reached out to our council and asked what we wanted’, because that has been something I've heard from some of the council members is that I’m the first person with the provincial election earlier this year and now the federal election, to reach out and say I want to listen to you. So that’s kind of my goal right now.

I realize we are in a pretty blue area, but if I can set an example of what I think democracy should be, is that us representing constituents rather than representing what our party wants, that’s what I’m going to keep going for, and keep at it, so we’ll see how it goes. “