CALEB NICKERSON
clarendon
Sept. 12, 2019
The Little Red Wagon Winery in Clarendon was filled with Conservative supporters on Thursday night, to hear from their party’s . . .
Pontiac candidate Dave Blackburn.
A former military psychologist, Blackburn is currently on leave from his job as a professor at the University of Quebec in the Outaouais, where he conducts research on mental health for service members, veterans and their families.
“I was with the health services group in the Canadian Armed forces and it’s an opportunity to continue to work with guys with PTSD and operational stress injury,” he said.
This is his first foray in politics since volunteering with the provincial Liberals in Quebec City when he was a youth in university. He explained that his work for the military, as well as the Parole Board of Canada precluded any partisan involvement, prior to his nomination last August.
He said that he was prompted to run in order to take action on some of the issues he has seen in his time working with soldiers.
“That’s often the problem. The reports stay on the desk,” he said, referring to his academic study. “So I decided to go where it’s possible to change things for veterans. Mainly, that’s my goal. Try to help to change different policy objectives at Veteran’s Affairs Canada. I know a lot of guys are suffering right now. I don’t like what I see, it’s a lot of inaction and it’s been like that [for] years.”
He said he aims to visit every municipality in the enormous riding, and noted that he’d even visited the isolated hamlet of Rapides des Joachims.
“I want to really take time to listen about the local issues and national issues in each community,” he said, noting that his current regional priorities are increasing cell phone and internet service, boosting the local economy and supporting the Pontiac Pool project. He said he was especially appalled by the state of connectivity in rural regions like MRC Pontiac or Vallée de la Gatineau.
“I have a hard time to believe that we are so close to the capital of our country and, you are in Chapeau, the centre of town in Allumettes, and you don’t have access to your cell phone because you don’t have coverage?” he said. “In 2006, when I was in the Afghanistan, we had internet in the middle of the desert in Khandahar, and here we don’t have that?”
He greeted the supporters that attended and spoke for a half hour, mainly in French, about his background and goals for the election. He decried the decisions made by the governing Liberal party on issues like the carbon tax and the legalization of cannabis, and vowed to take action on veteran’s issues.
