Langley 2011

Candidate's Application
Name: Craig Nobbs

Province: British Columbia

Riding: Langley

Party Involvement:

I regularly attend the local PPoC meetings and am very active within the PPoC forums. I am currently a part of the ACTA watch group for the PPoC. I certainly wish to be more active in the PPoC as a whole although my day job and family keep me busy. If I ran for and won a seat for the PPoC, I would certainly make it the full time job that would be required.

Political Experience:

My actual political experience only consists of the one term that I unsuccessfully ran for a councilor seat for the Township of Langley municipality. I certainly enjoyed the experience and learned a lot as to what was involved in running. On a humorous note, I used to be good neighbours to the current Mayor of the City of Langley.

Conflicts of Interest:

I do not believe that I am in conflict of interest in any area. I am not part of any other organizations.

Community Involvement:

I am not involved in my local community by way of volunteering or active in any sort of public forum. However, several years back I did unsuccessfully run for a council seat in my municipal election. I cannot say that I know a lot of people that are available to help, although I am certain that I would have at least a few people that would help if I needed it.

My background is what I would consider mostly typical as a person growing up in Langley. I have been able to see both sides of the "corporate vs. worker" debate. I would say that I have several people who I surround myself with that helps me see both sides of that debate which means that I sit near the middle of many topics of interest to the community. I believe that my ability to talk openly, honestly, and logically would make me of particular interest to many people.

I also stay abridged of a lot of local news, mostly related to the Langley's and the current news that affects them. I do keep tabs on the neighbouring municipalities, however, not nearly as much as I do for the Langley's.

Platform:

I'm going to summarize most of these as there are a lot of "hot button" issues. Feel free to ask for clarification.

Copyright Reform: I believe copyright should be limited in its length. Personally, I'm of the sound mind that it should be 25-35 years from date of initial publishing/release for audio, written, photographic, and painted works. The copyright protection would cover reproduction for commercial gain prohibitions, however, copies for educational and backup purposes, etc. would be allowed with little restriction and in certain cases, no restriction.

Trademark Reform: Clearly trademarks are out of hand when a company can trademark a colour, a letter, single common and quasi-common words, common used phrases, etc. The existing system is broken and needs to be changed.

Patent Reform: Computer software, natural occurring plants/vitamins/etc., anything related to human genome/DNA, all derivatives of the aforementioned, and everything that is within a relaxed reason to improve upon an existing patent should not be able to be patented.

Health care: I believe that allowing a very limited amount of privatized day surgery and diagnostic clinics would allow the health care system be able to offload a minor amount of patient care to those willing to pay for the costs. I do not believe that it should be subsidized in any fashion nor be given any public money for operations. I do believe that in cases where having a patient wait could cause further harm or elevated risk of death, then a doctor could, (accompanied with a second opinion) have a patient referred to a private clinic, paid for by medicare and being transparent to the patient. It would be predetermined that the fee paid to the private clinic be inline with the costs of doing the same procedure in the public facility.

I also believe that there is so much wanton waste in the medical system, that there needs to be more accountability from the staffing in hospitals along with (more) random audits of doctors practices to ensure that billing fraud is kept to a minimum.

Marijuana: I will emphatically state that I have never, not even once smoked a joint, taken a hit, etc. In spite of this, I am an avid supporter of removing all Marijuana from the law books. Not only do I think that it should be legal for anyone to consume it, I don't believe that the government has any right to tax it either. There is one exception to this; it should be illegal to operate machinery while under the influence, in which case, I believe that this would be added to the Motor Vehicle Act, in a similar manner to that of alcohol. Of course, there would have to be a noninvasive (as in not drawing blood) way to test drivers for this.

In consideration of the non-smoking population, I would support applying the same nonsmoking laws as cigarettes currently have, both in area restriction and age limitation. If a tax were to be pushed through against my position, then I would fight for all taxes coming from marijuana to be split 90/10 for health care and education. The education would be to inform people that there were some side effects of marijuana and that starting before the age of 18 has shown to stunt brain development.

Privacy: I am a strong proponent of privacy of individuals. I do not support that same level of privacy for corporations although, corporations should have a right to privacy so long as health, safety, and security are not affected greatly by that companies right to privacy. I believe that all aspects of the government should be open, except in RARE case where certain information would hurt the sovereignty or safety of Canada and/or its Citizens. I believe that everything related to the government should be open and freely available and not just by request or FOIs, but having the most prevalent information proactively published and available.

Government Systems: This is certainly not a hot topic for the vast majority of Canadians, however it is something that I believe that is important. I believe that all branches of the government should use an open source operating system such as Linux. Also and equally important is that as a way to thank those who have brought said open source software, that several full time position programmers should be hired to contribute to the open source community.

Gay and Lesbian Rights: I personally do not agree with a persons choice to be homosexual, however, I see that when two people feel for each other the way that a traditional couple feel ( as in "in love" ), then I find myself thinking that they have the right to seek their happiness in the manner that they choose. While I would probably slit hairs over the term used, essentially, a civil union or marriage shouldn't be denied.

More to that, when I hear of stories where a homosexual partner is denied access to a dieing loved one, or being denied access to children, it sickens me that the government would rather take the kids away from the surviving parent solely based upon the gender of the parent.

Even though my personal beliefs are at odds with the homosexual lifestyle, I find that I am at odds with my beliefs as I take into consideration compassion for my fellow human being.

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Director's Evaluation
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Official Agent Information
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Official Auditor Information
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Event Dates & Information
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Collateral and Advertising Materials
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Volunteer List
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Voting Results
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Post-Election Reports
I found that allowing myself to relax and speak truthfully and say a few jokes from time to time seemed to give the people attending the debate a break from the Liberals, NDP, and Conservatives going at each others throats. Seeing as how the jokes were almost all in fun and about related materials, I didn't see an issue with being different from the others.

As a direct result of the way that I portrayed myself, I had people come up to me after every event to tell me how they enjoyed hearing me talk; that they enjoyed that I was honest, sounded like I truly believed what I spoke, and they found the joke(s) to be a very nice change from the scripted answers and jabs between the other party candidates.

The debates were the easiest part of the whole campaign. It had people coming to us to listen and ask questions of the candidates which gave me an audience. Being an underdog in this election, it really helped to get out both my name and the Pirate Party's name, and as no one had heard of either, it was what got us free publicity. Additionally, answering as many emails and newspaper questions also got the names out there, but I had only a few people that mentioned anything about them directly. In all, I think that it was the debates that got me the votes in the Langley riding.

In terms of paid advertising, or the whole campaign in truth, I did not spend one cent. I had several people help get me signatures for the nomination, but afterwards, I ran everything on my own. I found that I spent a lot of time working after I got home from work. The days were long but well worth the effort and in the end, even though so many people blindly voted for the Conservative candidate, I feel that I helped a few people to hear the truth.

All of the candidates were cordial, at the least, and everyone except the Conservative candidate blended well and agreed on many points. In fact, the Green party candidate, Liberal candidate, and the NDP candidate were all able to talk frankly and openly discuss points with the utmost respect for each other, even when standing on opposite sides of a topic. To be fair to the Conservative candidate, I believe that he felt on the outside of the group as he was the one defending his party at every debate. If I were in his position, I suppose that I probably wouldn't want to talk much to the others, so I cannot really hold it against him.

I certainly will put myself forth for the next election under the PPCA flag and, assuming that my nomination is accepted, will continue to fight for what I believe in.

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