Redmans out in full force

Election Notebook by Dan Hilborn
Published May 26, 2004



One of the most successful political families from North Burnaby will be splitting up, sort of, for the duration of the federal election.

Mondee Redman, chair of the Burnaby school board and daughter of Burnaby city councillor Celeste Redman, will be leaving her family's longtime stomping grounds around Hastings Street to work in the neighbouring riding of Burnaby-New Westminster.

And no, it's not because Mondee is unhappy with the quality of NDP candidates in her own riding. In fact, she is supporting Pietro Calendino's nomination.

Instead, she's going to try and help one of her best friends get elected.

Mondee will spend her time during this upcoming campaign serving as official agent to Peter Julian, a former executive director of the Council of Canadians and a longtime family friend of the Redmans.

"I'm very good friends with Peter and we've known each other since our late teens," Redman said on Wednesday. "I agreed to to this last January, when Svend Robinson was still the candidate."

As with all official agents for all candidates, Redman will be taking on the unenviable task of making sure her candidate and his helpers stay within the guidelines of the new and complicated Canada Election Act.

Redman is already on the hustings with her man. This week, they appeared on an ethnic TV news program television together and Julian, who is fluent in French and has taken courses in Cantonese, tried his hand at speaking a few words in Punjabi.

WATSON ENTERS RACE

One of Burnaby's best known political agitators will be throwing his hat into the ring as an independent candidate in the Burnaby- New Westminster riding.

Gordon Watson, a longtime city resident and anti-abortion crusader, wants to run on a platform of changing Canada's monetary system.

"What I've learned through my abortion work is that your morals degrade when your money degrades," Watson said last week. "We need constitutional money. Sound money is honest money."

Watson believes the problem lies in the fact that Canada's financial system is in the hands of bankers instead of the people.

"One of the central tenets of communism has always been a central bank," Watson said. "Once you have a central bank that creates credit and dictates credit, then the control of the economy is in the hands of the bankers instead of the people. That's what happened in Canada in 1935 and in the United States in 1913 with the federal reserve system.

"What needs to happen is that the issuance of money has to be taken back into the control of parliament," he said.

When asked if that sudden change might not collapse the economy, Watson replied: "It's inevitable. We're so far gone the only thing that can happen is that this bubble of phony money will burst. People like me, who have solutions, are saying this is how we'll pick up the pieces."

For those who may not remember, Watson ran in Burnaby-Edmonds during the last provincial election as the sole candidate for the Party of Citizens Who Think for Themselves.