The Ridge interviews Peter Buddle, Rhino party candidate for Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge

The Ridge interviewed Peter Buddle, who is re-running as a candidate for the Rhino party.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

The Ridge: How are you involved with the Pitt Meadows, Maple Ridge community?

Peter Buddle: I’ve worked here as a teacher for 23 years.

The Ridge: And why did you decide to run for the Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge riding?

Peter Buddle: It’s a way to get connected to the community better. In order to become a candidate, you have to collect signatures from residents, voters, and just going out and speaking with people, just random strangers,it’s a terrific way to learn about the people in the community.

The Ridge: What did you learn while you were out there doing that?

Peter Buddle: Well, I think the first thing that people tended to say–I didn’t really prompt people to tell me anything. They just sort of volunteered information. And people have a grand, thick distrust of politicians. That was the first thing that really became noticeable was they don’t like politicians. People don’t trust them. They don’t respect them. They find them unaccountable, out of touch, and overpaid..

The Ridge: And would you consider yourself a politician?

Peter Buddle: No. Politicians are the people that actually get elected. 

The Ridge: Okay. And why are you running for the Rhino Party?

Peter Buddle: It’s the only party I can really get behind. It’s a parody of Canadian politics, and there’s no strict agenda. There’s no strict policy. The individual candidates can make up whatever they want, and we all know we’re never going to get elected. So we can say whatever we feel like. And frankly, the political system so desperately lacks a sense of humor or anything involving levity let’s just say it’s a lack of comedy, a lack of entertainment.

The Ridge: What would happen if you did get elected, though? What would you focus on?  

Peter Buddle: What if, eh? What if? I would multiply my pension by several fold. I would be able to represent the people of this community in a political way, if I were elected. You see, I would be the only Rhinoceros Party candidate in history, that is, since 1963 when the party formed, that had ever been elected. So I would essentially be an independent in Parliament, and I would be free to put my support behind any motion or bill that really seemed to benefit the community and the country.

The Ridge: And what are some of the main policies that you think are important in today’s climate?

Peter Buddle: Housing, so the availability and affordability of housing is very important to people and to me. Having wages match the cost of living increases is very important to me, having politicians being held accountable for the terrible decisions that they tend to make is very important to me and to the public. Let’s start with those three.

The Ridge: I’m wondering what you’re representing by running for the Rhino Party. How does it represent your community by running for this party? Because it does take time and resources and things like that.

Peter Buddle: Well, it doesn’t take that much time. When I was collecting signatures, which was pretty much the most time consuming part, I went out on pleasant days. I went when it was warm or sunny, and just walked around more or less my neighborhood.

And as far as resources go, the Rhinoceros Party, it’s not a policy, but their recommendation is to run a $0 campaign. Again, I was speaking to people while I was out on walks on a pleasant day. The beauty of doing it that way as well is you get people when their guard is down a little bit, they’re out of the house

It was very, very rewarding, very rewarding to connect with people on that plane. Because usually, once that, once all was said and done, people would, in an unsolicited way, just tell me their political views. They would often tell me, ‘Oh, I’m voting for this party or that party.’ No one said they were all not gonna—well, I’m not going to say no one, but very few people said they were voting for me. But I don’t really want the job. I don’t want, I don’t want to lower myself to the level of politician

The Ridge: You said I don’t really want the job. So if you don’t want it, then why, I guess, why run? Or is it just to, as you were saying earlier, to kind of for the sense of humor in the election process.

Peter Buddle: Sense of humour. And because I’m not worried about stepping on other people’s toes. I can use the position of sharing a podium with the other candidates to hold some of them accountable for the policies of their parties, and I’m trying to express some tact when I do that. I’m trying to not point fingers and name names or slam tables, but just to bring some of the hypocrisy and the double standards and the very sculpted language that politicians actually use–bringing that to the surface, especially in light of the obvious abilities we have today to fact check these people.

The Ridge: What are some of the things you want to hold other candidates to account for?

Peter Buddle: There was a debate last night at the Seniors Activity Center, and it took a while—we were given questions by the moderator, and I don’t remember what the original subject was, but I brought up  the subject of what’s been happening in Gaza, which had not been addressed. Not one word had been spoken about it for the debate, which is funny because the next question on the moderators list was about Canada’s Gaza policy, which is fine,  it sort of opened the door. But hearing the two main corporatist parties discuss their party stance on Gaza, knowing that the audience was fully aware of what’s been happening there, not just in the last year and a half, but for the last 70 plus years. There was also a contingent of people looking for justice for Palestinians in the group in the crowd there, they had a table set up with the politicians’ propaganda wagons in the back. That’s the type of issue that I think is important to a lot of Canadians, and it needs to be discussed openly. 

So I am not–let me put this this way, my daughter and her mother are Jewish, and I love them, and I understand not everything about it, but I understand some of the cultural things that come with that, the things culturally that come with identifying as Jewish. And I have plenty of Jewish friends, so I’m not against Jewish people in any way. But what’s odd that one of the candidates last night referred to the Palestinian people as Muslim whereas many of them are Christians, many of them are atheists. I’m sure they belong to other faiths as well. It was sort of an odd moment. I have to say.

The Ridge: Are there any other other areas where you,  areas you want to bring other, the other politicians to account, or other areas you kind of see your role in bringing awareness to

Peter Buddle: Certainly, certainly, I think we started with this when you started asking, but affordability and availability of a combination of places to live, very important. International trade for many, many years, my entire life, it goes back much further than that. Canada’s ties to the United States economy have been pretty lockstep, and when you only have one customer, they really have the ability to give you a hard time. They really give you the opportunity to make your life difficult, and  we’re long overdue for broadening our customer base in terms of Canada’s natural resources. Those natural resources really should be profiting the Canadian people and not private industry,

The Ridge: And so in your view, the current parties aren’t doing a good job with those things?

Peter Buddle: Not just now, but historically they’ve done a pretty bad job. People seem to think that when the politicians themselves seem to think that we don’t have any sort of sense of memory that we can’t remember what things were like 10 years ago, 40 years ago, I can certainly remember. It  was not ideal. It’s never been ideal in Canada. The priorities of the people in power have shifted further and further to the interests of the corporations and the rich, as opposed to the people that are doing the heavy lifting every day.

The Ridge: Why do you think it’s important to have your name on the ballot? Given you told me you’re not expecting many votes.

Peter Buddle: I think, I hope that it’s an example for many other people in this community to do the same thing, that if they have views that they feel need to be brought to the fore politically, they should run as well. It doesn’t cost anything. It’s very little time. It gets people out face to face with other members of the community, and it would really bring about a diverse bunch of different priorities that people sense and feel is required in our society that is not being met by the principal parties that we have in the country.

I’m hoping I’m setting something of an example. Another  reason for me to do this as well is to show my former students that there is life beyond school. Not just for them, but for teachers as well. They know, many of my students–remember I was teaching adults most of my career. I was working for adult education here in Maple Ridge, and then part of that was teaching in the jails here, and near the end of my career when there wasn’t the same kind of enrollment in adult education, I’ve worked as a substitute teacher in the district and met people from kindergarten through grade 12, and I’d love to believe that there was an impact there. I would love to believe that they enjoyed the experience of having somebody with a somewhat different viewpoint on the world, then they’re generally exposed to come into their classroom and be their teacher for the day.

The Ridge: And what change do you want in politics? 

Peter Buddle: There are a few things. I loved the idea of proportional representation, in terms of voting reform. I loved that idea, and I voted for it each time it became available, but it was never implemented. And I think that would be a wonderful thing to have other changes in politics. Oh, I would love to see every monster of Parliament take a 10 per cent pay cut.  If I was going to propose one thing on my first day in Parliament. It would be that each monster of Parliament immediately take a 10 per cent pay cut  just to see what it’s like for the rest of us, because I think that they lose touch with what it’s like to be a regular, working Canadian. Of course, Parliament wouldn’t go for it. They vote themselves, raises, right and left. But I think it would be good to see for the Canadian public to see that parliamentarian would would step forward and say all of us should take a ten per cent pay cut right now.

The Ridge: Those are all my questions, Peter, but Is there anything that you wanted to add?

Peter Buddle: The only thing that I’ve really encouraged people to think about or do while I’ve been—let’s call it campaigning—is just to get them out to vote. Didn’t really want them to vote for me, and they can if they want to, but I think it’s very important that we get the numbers of eligible voters  to the ballot, because it’s been historically low. And that if more people went, we would have something closer to a representational government.

Read the rest of the candidates interviews.

The Ridge interviews Marc Dalton, Conservative candidate and incumbent for Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge

The Ridge interviews Angie Rowell, Liberal candidate for Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge

The Ridge interviews Daniel Heydenrych, NDP candidate for Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge

The Ridge interviews Chris Lehner, PPC candidate for Pitt-Meadows- Maple Ridge