CALEB NICKERSON
PONTIAC Jan. 23, 2019
The Federal Green Party’s candidate for the 2019 election is a retired pilot, veteran and engineer who is calling for more concrete action to combat climate change.
Claude Bertrand currently resides near Lac Bernard, north of Wakefield, but his multiple careers have taken him all over the country.
After graduating in agricultural engineering from MacDonald College, he went to work designing feed mills and grain elevators for several years before making the jump to the federal government in what was then known as Consumer and Corporate Affairs Canada. There he ran a laboratory testing different measurement devices to be approved for commercial use.

After a change in his life circumstances, he joined the military in the mid-1990s to follow his childhood dream of becoming a pilot. He earned his wings in 1997 at the age of 40, alongside other recruits half his age. He worked as a flight instructor for many years and was deployed to Afghanistan in 2009, flying Griffon helicopters with 438 Squadron. After a brief stint working a desk job for NATO in Germany, he retired in 2016.
Though he’s only recently moved into his property on Lac Bernard full-time, he’s owned it since 2004.
He said one of the factors that motivated him to run was Justin Trudeau’s since-abandoned pledge that 2015 be the last election using the first-past-the-post system.
“I thought, what an opportunistic move that is,” Bertrand said. “You’re now elected so now it no longer interests you to go with a much more equitable system … first-past-the-post has got to be the worst.”
“Any system that has first-past-the-post will eventually become a system with two parties, you saw this in the last election,” he continued. “People were massively voting against Harper, and the way to take Harper out of the loop was by voting for the Liberals. But by doing so, you were not voting for other parties that may actually have been closer to your convictions.”
He said that both the government and the official opposition aren’t taking a strong enough stand on environmental issues.
“I joined the Greens because I like what they’re doing,” he said. “I think the main parties, the Liberals and Conservatives, to some extent much more the Conservatives than the Liberals, they’re ignoring … the importance of what’s happening with our climate.”
“The timelines that are given to us are not arbitrary,” he continued. “The trend is not good. It’s not alarmist, it’s just a scientific fact that we’re making the situation much worse. I have a grand-daughter, I have daughters, I certainly don’t want to leave them with a world that’s much worse than what we have.”
He voiced similar disappointment with local Liberal MP Will Amos.
“I have nothing bad to say about the person, other than that he attached his wagon behind the wrong horse,” Bertrand said. “He’s an environmental lawyer but I can see it almost, he’s sort of grinding his teeth when he has to defend the environmental policies of the Liberals.”
He said that he is in favour of a price on carbon and says current efforts don’t go far enough.
“I’m totally in agreement with the carbon tax, I think it’s a very effective way to reduce greenhouse effects,” he said. “In Europe, they’ve been paying several dollars per litre way before we have, and their cars are smaller.”
He added that a transition away from fossil fuels would take many years and would require the scaling back of oil production around the world as well as in regions like Alberta.
“We’re not going to stop cold-turkey, but we have to transition fairly rapidly away from it,” he said, questioning the federal government’s purchase of the Trans Mountain Pipeline. “There’s something incoherent [in purchasing the pipeline], with the message that we have to reduce greenhouse effects.”
Bertrand also voiced opposition to the proposed disposal facility for low-level nuclear waste at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories in Chalk River, Ont, just upriver from the Pontiac. He said that the location of the site, one kilometre from the Ottawa River, was chosen for expediency and low cost rather than public safety.
“It’s an idea that should not have gotten out of the board room,” he said. “I do not give it much credence and I’m against it.”
Though he doesn’t have an official website or social media page set up at the moment, Bertrand said that they would be up shortly and he would also be touring the region in the coming months to discuss issues with local officials and stake holders.