Chouhan carries NDP banner

Backrooms column by Dan Hilborn
Published May 11, 2005


When Raj Chouhan first arrived in Canada 30 years ago, he intended to go the university, earn his master's degree and then find himself a decent job.

But when he answered a help-wanted ad to drive people to work at a variety of Fraser Valley farms, he found himself aghast at the working conditions being forced upon many of the newly arrived immigrants who toiled in the fields.

"I was quite shocked," Chouhan said. "Out in the fields they had no running water and no toilets, and when I started asking questions, I got fired. That aroused my curiosity and I was fired five times in five days from different farms."

Chouhan went on to become a founder of the Canadian Farmworkers Union and a lifetime of labour organizing that has seen him serve as a member of the labour Relations Board since 1992 and on the arbitration bureau of B.C.

"All my life I have been working hard to help people who didn't have a voice and were fighting against injustice," said the NDP candidate, who has worked with the Hospital Employees Union for the past 19 years. "When I see somebody being wronged, I can't sit back and accept it."

And having knocked on hundreds of doors in the riding since February, Chouhan believe he's the only candidate onside with the majority of voters in the number one issue in his riding - health care.

Chouhan said voters in his riding are well aware of the closing of Saint Mary's Hospital in New Westminster, and the impact of Bill 29 which resulted in layoffs and the loss of good-paying jobs for thousands of health care workers, most of whom were women. He also disagrees with an assertion made by local Liberals that the HEU leadership gave their tacit approval to the controversial deal.

"I was there when Campbell called and said we had absolutely no choice. They were imposing that contract," Chouhan told a small but boisterous crowd at an all candidates meeting sponsored by the Burnaby Association for Community Inclusion.

The NDP candidate in Burnaby-Edmonds has represented his party at a variety of Punjabi-language all-candidate debates throughout the region and he is often been seen walking directly beside NDP leader Carole James during her frequent visits to the Lower Mainland.

Chouhan, 56, is married with two daughters and volunteers is vice-president of the parent advisory council at Cariboo Hill Secondary.

HOPEFULS IN THE RACE

New candidates have stepped into the arena in the Burnaby- Willingdon riding since we began profiling the hopefuls on April 30.

The new candidates are Green Party hopeful Pauline Farrell and B.C. Marijuana Party standard-bearer John Warrens.

Attempts to contact Warrens through the party's main phone number were unsuccessful, and he was one of the few candidates who did not have a biography on the party website.

Overall, there are 18 candidates vying for five parties, one independent and an unofficial Rhinoceros Party candidate running in the city.

SHE'S SEEING GREEN

When Pauline Farrell was just a teenager, she walked through the front doors of the original Greenpeace office on West Fourth Avenue in Vancouver and volunteered her time to protest against the nuclear tests taking place in the Kamchatka peninsula of Alaska.

Farrell was also one of the first official Green Party members in the province. But, over the years, her membership lapsed and Farrell, who now works as an adult basic education instructor, admits that she has sometimes voted for other political parties.

But this year, Farrell believes the environmental issues are too important to ignore and that's why she's running in Willingdon.

"When I looked around my community and the environment of greater B.C., I guess I saw that there needs to be changes in the way we do things," Farrell said. "We need more cooperative, visionary thinking about the future - a future that takes the environment into account.

"It's not that I believe the other parties have done everything incorrectly. That's not the way I think. The parties that have governed B.C. have done good things, I just believe the Green Party could do better."

Farrell has lived in the Suncrest neighbourhood of the riding with her husband and two children for the past two years.