At time of the video interviews, JODY CRAVEN we could not locate and Chak Au declined. While the Richmond Sentinel strives to ensure the accuracy of this information it is based on the candidates' views and not that of the Richmond Sentinel.

Richmond Centre – Marpole

Wilson Miao, Liberal Party

I'm the Liberal candidate running to be re-elected as the member of Parliament for Richmond Center-Marpole. It has been a great privilege in the last three plus years to serve the community that I grew up in and live in for over 28 years. It's important for me to continue this work because I feel there's much more to be done. At the same time, we need to strengthen our advocacy by prioritizing what my constituents and what my voters worry about, including some of the key issues that we are facing right now. When we are door knocking many constituents are concerned about the US Trade relationship. Over the past three years I've been working with the International Trade Committee to study and look into how we can remove the inter-provincial barrier and also enhance our trading relationship with other partners around the world. I'm happy to say that, right now we have over 50 countries around the world that we have a free trade agreement with so, it enhances our strength working with global partners led by Mark Carney as leader of the Liberal Party. I'm proud of the fact that the first thing we did was sit down with the city of Richmond to understand their priorities and the fact that, we were able to bring in over $500 million in federal investments into the City of Richmond, including housing, social infrastructure, and emergency preparedness not to mention the Canada Dental Care Plan, the National Pharmacare and the National School Food Program. We also invested $35.9 million for the city to expedite some of the permit application upgrading and, one of the projects I'm very proud to talk about is the project by Railway and Steveston which will be housing 25 units for women experiencing violence or women raising children.

Martin Li, NDP Party

My name is Martin Li and it is a privilege to be running as the NDP candidate. I grew up in Richmond for the last two decades and have deep roots here. I worked for City of Richmond for a very long time and then eventually moved on to start my own HR business after completing post-secondary education at UBC and Simon Fraser university. The reason I'm running is because I care about the people in Richmond and spent time talking to a lot of my friends and family. There's a lot of issues in Richmond when it comes to affordable housing, Medicare and also the current issue with the US Tariff. I think the top three issues are affordable housing, as most people are aware, housing in Richmond is very unaffordable for a lot of people. I have many friends who live in Richmond and grew up in Richmond and work very hard and yet they're not able to buy a home here. And I think NDP has a great policy in that we support non-market housing, where we try to do rental housing for young people so they can get into the market and then eventually they get to purchase their first home. However, I strongly stand with the NDP Party where we should crack down on speculation when it comes to housing. Another issue I think that is very major right now for people is healthcare. The NDP has a very pro-universal healthcare policy and I'm a strong supporter of that as well. I think people shouldn't be worrying about paying for groceries or paying for their medical bills, I've been talking to seniors and young families, they really care about their quality healthcare in Canada. And lastly is the economic development enrichment where the Trump Tariffs are making everybody's lives difficult, including myself. I think the NDP has a great policy on that, where we want to stand up for Canada. We want to encourage everything be made in Canada and support local business so people can enjoy the security of their jobs and their livelihoods.

Michael Sisler, Green Party

I've lived in Marpole for almost five years now and I have spent a lot of time in Richmond involved with recreational activities, dining out and getting to compare the contrast between Vancouver and Richmond. I really like the way Richmond handles things, especially keeping their streets clean. There are no drug shelters and things of that nature. I've never run for a public office before. My political experience comes from serving on condominium boards and being a treasurer. I’m employed at TransLink as a bus driver and prior to that I spent many years in the engineering field and spent many years in the US before moving back to Canada to pursue an acting career. Everything was going well in my career and then Covid hit. So I did a reassessment and when I came out of that mayhem, I ended up working as a bus driver as well as other things. What’s important to me is security and sovereignty of Canada. I think the biggest threat we've had probably throughout our history as a nation is what's happening with our neighbors to the south. I lived in the US for many decades and understand the mentality of what's happening, so that's also what's important to me and that is echoed from co-leader Jonathan Pendreau of the Green Party of Canada. Our resources need to be protected, our sovereignty needs to be protected, as the threat is stronger than most voters think. What's important to the voters, of course, is inflation, keeping the streets clean and keeping the crime down. The Green Party supports a guaranteed livable income and supports tax money going to Canadian citizens rather than Big Oil to the tune of $65 billion a year in subsidies.

David Wang, People's Party of Canada 

I've been involved in politics for, about a decade now with various political parties, including the Green Party, but with the PPC I found that it really resonated with me. It's a libertarian, free market, traditional Canadian values Party that got started in 2019 with Maxime Bernier as leader. As soon as I heard Maxime speak for the first time, I said, this is my guy, this is my Party. I know that might sound cliche, especially now, there's a real rise in patriotism that's taken place, which I think is a good thing, but I think it's reactionary to a single man in the United States. People now are finding their national fervor. The People's Party of Canada has championed traditional Canadian values since its inception. My father's Chinese, my mom's Spanish, they were welcomed into this country and made this their home. My mother a university professor and my father worked with foreign affairs, with the government, and they found the Canadian dream. Our concern has been since 2019 that the immigration numbers were too high. Maxime Bernier saw that back in 2019 when the Liberals were planning to bring in around 150,000 people a year and recently above 500,000 people I think, for the past two years and it's all contributing to a massive crisis for housing and health care and infrastructure. We can only build so many houses quickly and we only have so many doctors, so many nurses. It’s putting a lot of strain on the system. One of our major policy positions is we want to put a moratorium on immigration for a couple of years. Then we need to take time, build houses, build infrastructure, get more doctors, get more nurses, make sure everybody is taken care of and give a chance for people who have come here to integrate and accept Canadian values. When I'm knocking on doors, talking to people, one of the big concerns they have is the Tariff issue that's going on right now. Our party has a very unique approach. Our leader, Maxime Bernier, has proposed that Canada introduce zero Tariffs instead of engaging in a trade war with President Trump, which we cannot win because they are 10 times larger. We're saying we will bring zero tariffs for Canadian goods. Let's see if President Trump will decide to match us.

Richmond East – Steveston

Parm Bains, Liberal Party

I grew up in Richmond my whole life and I'm fully immersed in this community and in the sports community. That’s what really led me into, politics. I first worked in the provincial government as a Public Relations Officer, Media Relations Officer and a Community Outreach Liaison. With a Master of Arts degree in Professional Communications, I specialized in international-intercultural communications which led me to teach at Kwantlen University. I was approached by a couple of MP’s who advised that there was a seat opening for an MP in my Riding and suggested that it'd be a great opportunity for me to serve and that's what led me to go into that role for the Liberal Party. When I was elected my first order of business was to meet with our mayor and council and the MLA’s and said, whatever their priorities are, I will make them mine and let's work together to get things done. My focus was on housing as I saw a lot of people that I grew up with leave Richmond due to the affordability issue. Over the last three plus years, I was able to successfully advocate for $500+ million worth of local investments in Richmond covering everything from infrastructure, wastewater treatment, and all of the foundational things needed to build housing. With everything going on with US Tariffs, I actually went to D.C. right before our election was called and met with seven different House representatives, both from Democrats and Republicans. On the subject of Tariffs, I see it as a wake-up call. We've already made the changes right away to labour mobility, trucking regulations and port expansion. Mark Carney’s, first order of business was to travel to the UK and to France to solidify a European Union and in the last six years, we've already worked to get 15 new trade negotiations underway and we have 50 plus different nations that we are successfully working with. I think that with every challenge that we meet, we have an opportunity and we need the right people there to do it. I believe I am one of them and Mark Carney who's clearly the one to lead us doesn't have to introduce himself to the world, they already know him.

Zach Segal, Conservative Party

I was born and raised in Richmond and grew up in Steveston. I went to McKinney elementary in Steveston High School and worked at Starbucks in Richmond. Most importantly, I have very deep roots in Richmond and I care a lot about the community. My family has been in British Columbia and the Lower Mainland for several generations, going back to the early 1900s. I work in commercial real estate and see first-hand, affordability and housing go together and I think it is one of the most important issues facing Canadians and our country. And I think on that, a big part of it is wages and economic growth. In my opinion, in the last 10 years, there's been very negligible economic growth, negligible opportunity, and with that comes lower wages. And I think, one of the ways we could help with affordability in the housing crisis is if people had bigger paychecks and more opportunities. We're seeing more and more Canadians looking elsewhere for opportunities. We feel that opportunities are drying up here, we see investments are leaving, poor economic numbers on housing and I'm very pleased to see the Conservative Party has a very robust plan in terms of axing the sales tax on new homes, which will save new home buyers several thousand dollars. We want to really work with the cities to encourage them to build more. Permitting, regulations and red tape, add an inordinate amount of money into the purchase of a home. We want to get rid of that and help get homes built faster. This is a very important part of our platform and we want to see meaningful change on this. In talking with the people in my riding and in the city crime and the overdose crisis, which go together, I believe have gotten out of control in the last 10 years. I think we really need to see bail reform. We've seen in Richmond and Vancouver that there is a small group of people who are repeat offenders and chronic offenders and they go through the revolving door of the justice system. I think for the worst violent repeat offenders, we need jail and not bail and that's a core part of our platform to help deal with the crime wave we've seen in the country.

Steven Ji, Green Party

I came to Canada when I was eight years old and received all my schooling in Richmond and I’m running as a candidate for the Green Party in the Richmond East-Steveston Riding. I've seen the changes that have taken place across Canada and there's a lot of great things happening. We've seen a lot of development in Vancouver as well. To me, I feel like it's important to not just vote for one Party because you don't want the other Party to win. With regards to what is the most important issue to focus on is a tough question to answer. I think we're faced with a very complex set of issues that we’ve dug ourselves into over the past couple of decades, so there's no quick solution. And I want to make that clear that there is no quick single solution that's going to magically fix all of this stuff that we're seeing. With the high crime rates, with unaffordable housing, with youth unemployment, it's going to be a lot of pain for a long time. What I think we can do is start to address these issues. In terms of housing, I don't believe in more government spending on rental units. I think there should be alternative cities. Right now, we only have very few developed Canadian cities, but this is the most ridiculous thing because Canada by land mass is one of the largest countries on earth and we have one of the lowest populations on earth, yet we are faced with a housing crisis. It just does not make sense. I don't think it's the fault of the developers, it's that we just don't have the infrastructure that can support that kind of growth right now.

Keefer Pelech, NDP Party

I'm a Richmond resident, born and raised in Richmond and a graduate of Hugh Boyd Secondary School. Richmond is where I spent pretty much most of my life working and volunteering and now I have the honor of being able to raise my son here. This is the community that I love, and I'm looking forward to being able to keep giving back to my community. To talk about what vital issues I’m hearing from the constituents when I’m door knocking is the cost of affordability for all Canadians, it doesn’t matter what income spectrum you come from. Everyone is feeling it in their pocketbooks—housing, cost of groceries, everyday cost of living. There's a lot of things that we can do as a federal government to make sure that we're supporting people, to make sure that we're supporting local small businesses from the ground up and to keep our spending local and to really pull everybody together. In answer to what is my number one concern, it really is affordability and I can give you a really tangible example of this. As I said, I grew up here and the first job I ever had was working as a stock boy in a local produce market on No. One Road and Blundell and that store bought all its produce from local farmers in Richmond and from BC Farmers. They supported the local economy and they provided food for people in our city. The Liberal Party, when they were in power, one of the things that they did was provide subsidies to places like Loblaws and Walmart to help retrofit all of their freezers, which is great for the environment, but it doesn't lower the cost of produce for the people and it doesn't support the local businesses, the ones that are actually serving people in our community, employing people as well as supporting our local farmers. So, that's something that the NDP is promising to do to help those local businesses, to help support our food security and lower the cost. Another thing, we just had the GST freeze on essentials like diapers and children's clothing and food, but that only lasted until February. The NDP is promising to make that decision permanent especially the essential groceries that most Canadians need, that's one way that we can tangibly help people right away.