Unlike northern Manitoba’s other federal election candidates, Zachary Linnick isn’t pledging to fix government.
He’s promising a whole lot less of it.
“We’re challenging the idea that someone far away from you, making decisions on your life, [is] in your best interests,” says Linnick, 27, the Libertarian Party candidate for Churchill-Keewatinook Aski, referring to himself and his party.
“I don’t know what’s best for anyone else, and someone in Ottawa shouldn’t be telling me how or where I should live my life or who and what I can see or what I can put in my body.”
Linnick, a Flin Flon native who now lives in Winnipeg, is a strong supporter of more freedom in health care.
Once an aspiring doctor, he wishes his grandmother, who had colon cancer, could have accessed medicinal marijuana to ease her severe pain.
“It’s an option for some, but only if…someone gave you permission to put something in your body,” Linnick says, referring to rules that require a doctor’s note for patients to use medicinal marijuana.
He also believes patients with terminal illnesses should be able to access treatments that may be beneficial but which have not been approved by Health Canada.
“If the person very well knows they’re going to die, why would it matter to them?” says Linnick. “If they’re prepared to take that risk, why should the government tell them, ‘No, you can’t.’”
Asked whether he shares Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s call to legalize marijuana, Linnick says that’s part of his own belief system but not necessarily Trudeau’s.
“He says stuff like that, I think, because he wants to get votes,” Linnick says. “I say stuff like that because I believe the philosophy. Right now in Canada, when people think they’re free, how many different substances are controlled where Ottawa says, ‘If we find you in possession of that, we will put you in jail,’ basically? Pharmaceuticals like OxyContin, I would say, are much more dangerous than certain street drugs.”
With the economy a central focus this election, Linnick believes his party offers the best prescription for success.
“The idea of having more freedom means more responsibility, but I would say currently in the world, countries that are more economically free are more prosperous,” he says.
Linnick, a border services officer for Canada Border Services Agency, is northern Manitoba’s first Libertarian candidate since 1984, when the party mustered just one per cent of the vote. The party has never held a seat in parliament.
He says the party’s goal is not to form government, but to challenge mainstream policies. If the party can take three per cent of the national vote, he says, that may encourage other parties to consider Libertarian ideas.
As for his own campaign, Linnick says he’s “not thinking about Ottawa” but adds “anything’s possible” in light of surprise NDP successes in Quebec in the last federal election and Alberta in that province’s most recent election.
But many Canadians fail to identify with Libertarians, viewing them as radicals.
Linnick, who holds a BA in political studies, says the party realizes that the fundamentals of many members are “too extreme” for most people, but he adds the party is “very incremental.”
“Ideally if I were to win I would let people make their own decisions, which comes with risks but it also comes with greater rewards,” he says.
