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Former RCMP officer running for Greens in Cariboo-P.G.

A former RCMP officer is throwing his hat into the federal race for Cariboo-Prince George. Richard Jaques was named as the Green Party candidate for the riding, bringing the total of declared candidates in the Oct. 19 contest to five.
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Richard Jaques

A former RCMP officer is throwing his hat into the federal race for Cariboo-Prince George.

Richard Jaques was named as the Green Party candidate for the riding, bringing the total of declared candidates in the Oct. 19 contest to five. Jaques joins Liberal Tracy Calogheros, Independent Sheldon Clare, the Christian Heritage Party's Adam De Kroon and Conservative Todd Doherty.

Jaques doesn't currently live in the riding - right now he calls Vancouver home where he and his wife Sherri live with the youngest two of their six children in student housing at UBC - but said a move to the Interior is in the cards.

"My wife and the rest of our family are from Williams Lake. So Cariboo is kind of home - we're always there visiting relatives," Jaques said. "We're actually leaving next week to go on our family pilgrimage up to McLeese Lake and Quesnel and Prince George."

Jaques is in his fourth year of the Native Indian Teachers' Education Program while Sherri is completing her last year at the university's Sauder School of Business through the Ch'Nook Scholars program for Aboriginal business students.

Jaques returned to school after retiring from a 14-year career with the RCMP, in which he was assigned to First Nations community policing. Born in Manitoba and a member of the Poplar River Indian Band, Jaques comes from a Scottish/Cree background on his mother's side and English/Algonquin background on his father's side.

"I spent a lot of time negotiating the tripartite police agreements where we get the province and the feds and the Indian bands to meet at a table and decide 'okay you build it, we will come, and we'll staff it,' so that's where the Tache detachment came from," he said, adding that he was also the first officer posted full time at the Takla Lake detachment.

That First Nations background is one of the reasons Jaques said he became interested in running in this riding - to visit First Nations communities and register people to vote.

Natural resource issues, particularly his opposition to exporting raw goods overseas, also play a major role in Jaques's decision to step into the political fray.

"A lot of friends of mine have lost their jobs in the mill industries in Williams Lake, in Fort St. James, in Prince George, in Quesnel because the lumber supply is being sent overseas in a raw state and I believe it should be kept in Canada and kept on Canadian soil - harvested sustainably, but also manufactured and processed here. Get those jobs back and then send it overseas," he said.

Jaques said he's also opposed to new pipelines to transport raw bitumen, instead preferring to see refineries built in Alberta to process the material.

Those issues, in addition to others such as the recently passed anti-terrorism legislation Bill C-51, helped put Jaques over the edge in terms of wanting to step into the political fray.

Bill C-51 was also one of the final straws that prompted Jaques to change his allegiance from the Liberal Party to the Green Party.

"I know it's already on Twitter that I used to be a Liberal. Yes I was and C-51 and a lot of the other decisions the party has made has driven us away. C-51 where you're ripping our Charter rights to heck, that's just not good at all," said Jaques.

A batch of Green Party candidates for the Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies riding is expected to be unveiled next week.