Aeriol Alderking (PPC) - Abbotsford—South Langley candidate interview

The Conservative Party’s choice of a candidate in the riding of Abbotsford—South Langley is making the electoral district’s campaign one of the most unpredictable in recent memory.

To give voters a sense of the options available, we asked each of the Abbotsford—South Langley candidates to participate in a virtual interview on local issues. Independent Mike de Jong, Liberal Kevin Gillies, Green Melissa Snazell, and Aeriol Alderking of the People’s Party all took part. Conservative Sukhman Gill and the NDP’s Dharmasena Yakandawela did not participate.

Yakandawela and Gill also refused invitations to attend the Abbotsford Chamber of Commerce’s all-candidates meeting.

Below, you can watch our interview with Alderking or read a transcript.

You can find interviews with the other participating candidates here: de Jong (Independent) | Gillies (Liberal) | Snazell (Green)

You can check out our Abbotsford election hub for information on the candidates, the parties involved, where to vote, and other stories of interest.

Aeriol Alderking (PPC)

Transcripts have been lightly edited for concision and clarity. If you spot an error, email us.

FVC: Why are you running in the upcoming election?

Alderking: I'm running because there were some problems with the other candidates, and I was concerned that the people should have a candidate that has integrity and hasn't been involved with Chinese money laundering or some mystery votes that got them in as a nomination. I think that the people in Abbotsford deserve to have somebody who is competent and is not a part of any kind of corruption.

FVC: Many people are feel that this is one of the most important federal elections in their lives. Why should the voter cast a ballot for a PPC candidate given the perception that maybe the party doesn't have the best chance of electing an MP. I've asked the Green Party candidate the same thing. So what do you say to someone who worries about wasting their vote?

Alderking: The only way you waste your vote is by voting for something you don't want. So in this election, it's very important to vote for a conservative member who is going to actually bring about policies that will help Canada and not hurt Canada. Mark Carney is globalist, as is Pierre Poilievre. They both have similar policies, whereas the PPC is quite different. We believe in negotiating, not retaliating, for the tariffs that have been put on by the Americans and the Chinese, and we need to do it fairly quickly, because our farmers in Saskatchewan are really suffering. They need to know if they can put in their canola in the next week.

So these matters need to be addressed now, and the business uncertainty is causing the economy to shrink. People are not spending money. They're concerned about grocery prices. It's a big concern to people around, and the People's Party is quite different in their platform. We want to get rid of the supply management and bring in internal trade that will expand the market for farmers and allow them to sell their produce across Canada and also across the border, so that we're prosperous, they're prosperous, and our grocery prices go down.

Canada-US relations

FVC: You mentioned negotiating with the United States. Why does the PPC think negotiating with Donald Trump was is the route to go, given that the Canada signed a trade deal with him the last time he was in office, and now he wants to tear up that trade deal?

Alderking: Well, if he wants to tear up that trade deal, he has the power to do it. We can hold him accountable, and we have on previous free trade agreements with the softwood lumber, we've been in disputes, but those disputes take time, and it costs our Canadian market, so there is no point in arguing with him. The American economy is 10 times bigger than ours. We're not going to be in that war, so we need to get to the table and sit down and address concerns. Some of those concerns with the tariffs have nothing to do with product, but they have to do with security, and the border security and the security in the ports is very important. The container ships are not being searched. There's precursors coming in for fentanyl. There's concerns that we can address and we should address for our own sakes, let alone for the Americans.

FVC: It seems like the American position, though, is constantly shifting and one of the President's big issues with Canada is this trade surplus we have with the United States. How do you address a issue like that, given that our trade surplus is partly because we export so much energy to the United States?

Alderking: You have to sit down and and parse this out piece by piece, and show that it's really not a trade deficit in many respects and that there's a lot of business that we bring to the Americans. We export our oil, and then they, in turn, export back to us value-added product. The same thing with our produce. Farmers here, they take their produce, they send it across the line to have it processed into value-added product, and then we import back and and so there's trade going on, back and forth across. The same with the automobile industry trade going back and forth. So really, you know these deficits that that Donald Trump is referring to are not necessarily as cut and dried as he would like to make them.

FVC: How do you negotiate with that if they're being unreasonable? You spoke about supply management, and we can give a country some potential concessions, but what does Canada get back from making concessions beyond satisfying somebody who might be unsatisfied tomorrow or the next week?

Alderking: Well, we can't cross what tomorrow or the next week is going to bring, but we can deal with what is on the plate today. And Donald Trump has stated his positions how he is a somewhat material sort of personality, and there's nothing we can do about that, but we cannot afford to be offended or carry on in a tariff war, because it's hurting our economy. It's hurting our farmers, our businesses, and so regardless of how difficult it may be, it is our job to get to the table and hammer out a deal. And I know that Maxine Bernier is a man for that. He has held two cabinet positions, been in federal government for 13 years. He's been a banker, a lawyer and a businessman. And if anybody can hammer out a deal, it would be Maxime Bernier.

In fact, when you look at Maxime Bernier own policies, you will find that Donald Trump borrowed his policies in 2016 it was Maxime Bernier in 2011 who was saying that to bring in a regulation you should cut too. That's something that Donald Trump took in and put into his platform in 2016, so in many respects, I think that Donald Trump owes Maxime Bernier a debt of gratitude for showing the way on how to do things productively for the country that he's from.

FVC: Would you say Donald Trump and Maxime Bernier are similar political figures, or share common goals or perspectives?

Alderking: I think that we share common goals in the sense that we both want our countries to be successful and prosperous. But no, Maxime Bernier isn't at all like Donald Trump. For one thing, he's a statesman, very charming person. He's not bombastic. So he doesn't tweet off all kinds of silly things. So, you know, Donald Trump has had some issues with his communication that has, you know, erupted within the American society, let alone Canadians. But a lot of what he says is just to poke the bear to get things moving. So I don't think that we can take them too seriously. On some of the things, he says, it's a matter of getting down to the bargaining table and actually hammering out a deal.

Should Canadians boycott US goods

FVC: I've asked everybody this, so I’ll ask you: should Canadians boycott US goods and products?

Alderking: Well, I don't see how we're going to do that. For one thing, we're not food secure, and so part of our economy and food comes from the United States in order to make up the deficit in Canada. So I don't see how we're going to boycott all American goods. And you know, as far as as goods go, China is is bigger competitor when it comes to manufacturing. And if you go into the store and try and buy something that's not made in China, you will have, certainly, a serious challenge. And we have very serious tariffs going on with the Chinese: they put 100% tariffs on canola, and that has really put our Saskatchewan farmers in a squeeze. We need to resolve these issues. They need to know whether they're planting canola next week, and canola is their cash crop. So these are things that we need to do now to support not only our farmers and and our products that that go back and forth across the American border, but also they trade with the Chinese.

[Editor’s note: Alderking is referencing the 100% tariff put on canola oil, canola meal, and peas in September 2024 after a Chinese “anti-discrimination” investigation launched against Canada. That year, Canada exported $920 million in canola meal to China.]

Healthcare, immigration, and government spending

FVC: Let’s move on to some other things that are in the PPC platform. The platform talks about the need to immediately balance the budget. It also talks about that the federal government should eliminate all programs that duplicate provincial programs or intrude on provincial jurisdiction. Healthcare is a provincial is a matter of provincial jurisdiction. It eats up a large amount of Canada's federal budget, but that money goes towards supporting hospitals and all the rest. What would the PPC end or significantly reduce health care spending?

Alderking: No, absolutely not. In fact, what we would want to do is introduce private-public health care so that people have more options, because right now it's very limited, and the waiting times are just horrendous for people. There's people waiting for operations for more than a year, and these kind of controls on what's available in terms of health care is causing a lot of suffering in our our society, so we need to bring in more options. And one of the models that's very, very good and cost efficient is the Swedish model, which has private-public health care. There's still government controls as to the insurance and so on, but it has a much better delivery of service for the dollar costs.

FVC: So then, if you're not going to reduce healthcare spending and you want to immediately balance the budget, how does that work? I know the platform talks about reducing foreign aid and media subsidies, and there's a list of other ones that don't come to mind right away, but the largest chunks of the whole budget tend to be the social programs that basically no government wants to cut because they're they're valued by Canadians. How do you immediately balance the budget then?

Alderking: We're not talking about cutting things that are valued by Canadians or service to Canadians. We're talking about cutting aid to other countries to promote ideologies that do nothing for Canada. We want to cut anything that doesn't directly benefit Canada. And we also want to deal with the equalization payments, which have not been revised since 1957. I believe the algorithms on that are not correct, and so the transfer payments that Alberta is making to Quebec are far higher than they should be. So by cutting these different areas of spending, we can balance the budget.

[Editor’s note: The current equalization formula is based on recommendations from a 2006 report. The federal government is set to consult with provinces on the program’s renewal before 2029.]

That doesn't mean cutting things that are important to Canadians. It means cutting back on things that are not important to Canadians, and one of them, the biggest expense and a key party platform, is mass migration. It is costing us a fortune. We brought in 1.3 million people last year. That's the size of Saskatchewan, and that's putting pressure on the housing market. It's putting pressure on our budgets, because we're paying out $3,300 a month for these people, individually, that's twice what we give to seniors for their pension. So these are things that we need to look at. We need to stop the mass migration for a moratorium until we have absorbed all these people and help them to become employed and properly host and not taking up hotels like Niagara Falls right now, their hotels are full. They're a tourism town. They rely on tourism, and if they can't have tourists coming in, then they have that's going to affect the economy of the entire town. And yet, they they have no place for these tours because the hotels are full. So this is something that we need to address, and these will take the pressures off of the various areas of the budget that will, in turn, allow us to balance it.

[Editor’s note: In 2023, Canada’s total population increased by roughly 1.2 million people, which included immigrants, temporary foreign workers, international students, and babies born in Canada. The 2024 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration found that Canada welcomed around 472,000 permanent immigrants to the country in 2023, including 75,000 refugees. Refugees can receive financial support through the resettlement assistance program, which offers monthly funds based on the provincial social assistance rates where they settle.]

FVC: One of the rationales for increased migration is the fact that Canada's population is aging a very rapid rate. If you look at the numbers of over-75 seniors in a place like the Fraser Valley, it's going to triple in the next 10 to 20 years. And you need people to do the jobs that support the people who are no longer in their workforce and who are reaching the end of their their life, especially in healthcare. How do you get to that, and also limit migration so much?

Alderking: Well, the fact is that migration isn't helping that, because the age of the people coming in isn't that much younger. I know that you may take that consideration, but there's actually facts and figures on it, and they're not that much younger. It is not really helping that much. Ninety-seven percent of growth in this last year was migration. Three percent was people having children, and we need to have Canadians who have the housing and the economy, the ability to go ahead and have their families. We cannot put this kind of stress on the market. It is having a negative impact on our economy, and until we have that resolved with with proper housing and so on, and the housing market that we have now, they only build 250,000 houses a year, even if we add the 500,000 mobile homes that that Carney's talking about, that is a drop in the bucket. That doesn't even handle the people that came in last year, let alone the 1.5 million people they want to bring in over the next three years.

[Editor’s note: More than a third of immigrants were between the ages of 25 and 34 in 2023-2024. Close to 98% of Canada’s population growth in 2022-2023 was from international migration, with 2% coming from the difference between births and deaths. Most of the international migrants were non-permanent residents, including temporary foreign workers.]

Housing supply

FVC: So you speak speaking of housing, the PPC platform also talks about not intruding into municipal jurisdiction when it comes to zoning, and specifically about not forcing municipalities to zone for high density in cities. Is that correct?

Alderking: Correct.

FVC: Where do we get the housing supply? If cities are allowed to behave as they've behaved last 20 years, and essentially say ‘We like housing, but we like in these very specific small places and ideally in a neighboring community.’

Alderking: That's part of maintaining our Canadian identity is not having it eroded by having to build massive, basically ticky-tacky boxes for everybody to live in. We want to slow down the migration, stop it, have a moratorium for a year or two, pause until we can absorb the people that we have, properly house them, properly get them employed. The fact that you're overrunning the supply is putting way too much pressure on the system, and it's having a negative impact on the economy. It's having a negative impact on young people, being able to start families, be able to buy property. And also, you know, when you're talking about aging out, another demographic that's aging out is farmers. They're 60-plus years of age, and if we don't get young people into farming, we're going to have a real, serious problem, and the only way to do that is connect them with the land and connect them with opportunities that that are viable to them, that look interesting to them. And so that's another issue that we have to deal with, and we're not having land values go down when we have constant pressure for more land to be available for developments and so on is putting pressure on our agricultural land as well.

Sumas Prairie and the Nooksack River

FVC: One of the biggest issues in your riding, in Abbotsford—South Langley, and one of the biggest federal jurisdiction issues, is the matter of Sumas Prairie, the threat from the Nooksack River. Does your party support building dikes and a pump station to accommodate water from the Nooksack and to mitigate flooding if it happens? And then, second, your party also has takes issue with climate science that says the earth is warming and we can expect to see more severe weather events. How should any new flood mitigation efforts include and take into account climate change?

Alderking: Well, I think that one of the things you have to look at is weather modification. We have had a lot of interference with weather modification, with the sort of bio-engineering where they're seeding clouds. They started off back in the 1940s, 1950s seeding clouds with silver in order to mitigate any hail damaging crops. But that is not what's happening today. Today, they are putting in heavy metals. They're putting in aluminum, barium, strontium into the atmosphere, and it's actually pushing weather systems in different directions. That's how you have an atmospheric river coming through Abbotsford when it originally didn't used to come through that that avenues. So these are causing weather events as well, and we need to stop that sort of thing from happening.

We also need to deal with the the issues of the dikes and and the fact that we knew that dike in the flats was pretty much close to breaking and it wasn't fixed, you know? And these are things that that need to be addressed prior to, we need to be more preventative in our measures. But once it happened, there wasn't any support, proper support, for the farmers, and there wasn't people going in and doing soil testing to see what the contamination is, if any, from the Nooksack and from the amount of water that came in from surrounding industrial areas. These are all things that should have been supports, that should have been offered to the farmers.

[Editor’s note: Soil testing was done on Sumas Prairie. You can read our story about that process here.]

But unfortunately, some of this is more at a municipal or provincial level, but certainly at the federal level, we support research and development in these areas to come up with the very best of opportunities for climate mitigation. Like just recently, the French court has fined [a] windmill operation because it killed a golden eagle, and so they've been fined substantially, and they've been ordered to shut down for a year. And these are things that these green energy technologies are not necessarily having a positive effect on nature, so we have to put more into development research to come up with better ideas for how to handle these things. And we can also be again, negotiating with Washington, working with them to come up with plans that that together mitigate what's happening with the Nooksack River.

FVC: So you spoke of the need and the insufficiency of the dikes in 2021. It was known to be too low to deal with a flood of that nature. When we talk about building dikes properly for the future, though, that includes figuring out and taking in account what the weather is going to be like in the future. And we know that as the temperature warms, Mount Baker, where most of the water comes from the Nooksack, will get more rain, and that will increase the severity and the frequency of large scale floods. So the I guess I'm trying to get at, if your party doesn't recognize the fact that the earth will continue to warm because of emissions, then does it not also follow that it wouldn't take into account that warming nature when it funds dikes and other protective works to to protect Canadians from floods?

Alderking: No, that's not the case. In the People's Party of Canada, we believe in proper science-based research. And once you have researched something, and we have not seen necessarily any weather patterns that show that there are floods on a regular basis here, not like Manitoba, the Red River. There's floods there all the time. So there are, there are areas in in our in our country, where there are flooding issues that are annual issues, but in the Fraser Valley, that hasn't been the case, and we need to look at the actual research and what is happening.

[Editor’s note: Floods have been a presence in the Fraser Valley since time immemorial. You can read our stories on the subject here, here, here, and here.]

We haven't seen any major increase in the levels of the ocean. People that have waterfront property on White Rock aren't getting washed out to sea. So we have to take a better approach, a more factual approach to science, and that's where the PPC takes issue with some of this climate hysteria. We don't want to be hysterical about things. We want to actually be methodical in our approach to science, methodology that shows exactly what we need to do, and then be preventative and put that research into better green technology, not—the current green technology costs a lot, and it actually is not efficient. It doesn't accomplish what it needs to accomplish for the amount of money it costs. And you know, when it comes to windmills and things like that, they're not even recyclable. It's just causing a greater disturbance when you have to get rid of these things 25 years later. Where are you going to put them? So we need to do things in a way that's more forward approach, forward looking, so that we are not creating bigger problems down the road, but we actually take the time to do proper research and come up with proper answers, and they will, in the long term, work out much better.

FVC: I think there is a history of flooding in the Fraser Valley. It's one of the reasons why it's a very fertile area, because the historically, the rivers have flooded quite often. It's because of the dikes that we don't see floods quite as often as we once did. But we have seen the Nooksack flood over and over and over again, over its history. We're about at the point where—

Alderking: Well, I've been here 30 years. I haven't seen major floods. So, you know, other than this atmospheric river, that really caused a major issue, and that, as you said, was that we knew that that dike was failing and it wasn't looked to prior to the situation arising, which this is where we would rather be preventative. Look at the research and and really attack the issues before they become a crisis problem.

Can the PPC represent all residents

FVC: As an MP, what would you do? This will be our last question. What do you do to speak for residents of all stripes, including people who might disagree with your points of view as you stated them here. There's a lot of people who would take issue with some of the things the PPC stands for. How would you represent them and their voices in Parliament?

Alderking: Well, I think the way to represent people is to make the best decisions for all Canadians. So when you're balancing the budget, you're making the best decisions. Because right now, running a $60 billion deficit is ridiculous. We are actually at the face of bankruptcy. If we continue doing this, we can't continue to to be in the derivative markets and debt-ridden society. We have to start pulling this back our future generations, for people of any stripe, whatever they believe, are going to be saddled with amazing burden of debt if we don't start pulling up our socks and doing something about this. And as far as the farmers go and and encouraging them, putting in a in a system where they can have fresh markets, open markets, where they can make more money, is going to attract young people into farming. We have to think about our food security. That affects all Canadians. Housing affects all Canadians, so the PPC is more than capable of representing all Canadians, because the party platforms that we have are in the best interests of all Canadians.

The interview concluded.

You can find interviews with the other participating candidates here: de Jong (Independent) | Gillies (Liberal) | Snazell (Green)