Businessman Peyman Askari has devoted himself entirely to politics for about the last four years.
Askari, who grew up in West Vancouver and now splits his time between Whistler and West Van, is running for the People's Party of Canada (PPC) to be a Member of Parliament for West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country.
The PPC was formed by its current leader, Maxime Bernier in September of 2018, after he resigned from the Conservative Party of Canada.
The party has not yet had any elected MPs.
Askari says he turned to politics full-time after becoming alarmed in 2020 at the size of government and what he sees as its interference in citizens' private lives.
The Squamish Chief sat down with Askari at its office on Second Ave on Monday, before he caught a ferry for an all-candidates debate on the Sunshine Coast, for a wide-ranging interview about his candidacy and platform.
What follows is a version of that conversation edited for length and clarity.
Q: In your bio, it mentions you're an immigrant, right? You came to Canada at six years old, from Iran. How does that fit with the PPC policy on immigration, which is to impose a moratorium on new permanent residents?
A: It's a good question because we are the staunchest—most opposed to immigration.
I was very nervous when I had to approach immigrants. I was worried that they'd run me out of town, but if you get an immigrant alone and you talk to them one-on-one, they say the same thing that I'm saying. There's too much immigration.
We almost assume that immigrants are stupid, and they're not. When I talk to an immigrant, he'll say a logical thing, like, we haven't built a hospital or a school in the last 20 years, but we're bringing all these people in. Or, my kids are packed into the school. What I'm trying to say is whatever affects the country negatively affects them and their children negatively as well.
Q: But then, by your own party's policies, you and your family wouldn't have gotten into Canada under what you want to create?
A: There are two answers to that. First of all, the weaker answer is, it was a lot harder when we came. The vetting process, the checks and balances, you had to prove that you had money to support yourself. You had to first get housing. My stronger answer is, that's good for me, but is it good for Canada? That's what we should be thinking. If it came down to it, Canada should have said, 'You know what? We don't want Peyman Askari or his family.'
Leadership has to do what's in the best interest of their citizens, their voters, the stakeholders of the country.
Q: Barring some major shake-up, your party isn't going to lead the country. So, what could you do as the only, or with a few, MPs?
A: I guess this is another way of asking why should you split the vote.
All the other parties, they see the problems—housing, immigration, health care—but they don't want to solve the problems, because their goal is to win, to get into power. It's not to solve the problem.
And the reason that they can do that is because they can turn to the PPC and say, "Don't split the vote."
When you do that, you allow them to change it from the will of the people to reach the outcome that you need, that's best for the country, to this sort of game. So the PPC, even if we don't get a seat, the important thing is for us to be a voice for the people. To say, listen, the country is sick. It needs to heal. (When I say sick or certain things are broken, I'm talking about the debt.) We need to have the ability to influence the leadership to do that.
Q: What would you want to see change with housing?
A: If you fix the debt, you fix the inflation. If you fix inflation, you fix the housing problem. But this is a 20-year venture. It's going to cross multiple election cycles. So that's why I'm running for the PPC and not for the Conservative Party, because I want to make actual, meaningful change. I want to make inroads with the youth and say these are the issues. You get an economist in the room and you say to the youth, listen, it's not that complicated. This is what's happened. Here's how we fix it. Put your faith in my party and we won't fix the problem in four years, five years, 10 years, but it'll be a more sustainable solution than what the BC NDP is doing right now, which is nationalizing land, giving subsidies for renting. We want people to be owners, but to do that, you have to get the debt crisis under control.
Q: We have the only Green Party MLA on the mainland. The environment is very important to Squamish residents. What would be your attitude towards the environment if you're representing the Sea to Sky with the PPC?
A: I mean, I came here in 1989 and I quickly assimilated. Canada has a culture—we are all tied to the land. We have snow-capped mountains, salmon, creeks, trees, hikes, camping, and fishing. So it's not that we're against environmentalism. I don't like being told what I have to do with my property. Now, if I'm dumping heavy metal ions into the food or water supply, that's different. But this [current] environmental movement has been hijacked to create this concept of a catastrophe, and then whenever there's a catastrophe, whether it's a pandemic, whether it's a war—war on terror, war on poverty, then the government can come in and it can throw its weight around. I just wish that we would deal with environmentalism at a community level. Take Whistler. Its appeal is that it's a resort. They want to keep it pristine. You want to have trees, you don't want to have littering. There's nothing wrong with that. But for the government to come in and say we're going to charge a carbon tax—my problem is that that's not the role of government.
Q: What else would you like voters to know?
A: Let's tackle the culture. This tariff war, the pandemic, the Russian special operation—the invasion of Ukraine— it's forced us to ask a really tough question: What does it mean to be Canadian? And with the tariff war, unfortunately, it seems like on the surface, that to be Canadian means not American. You can't build a nation around that. I think Canadians need to ask themselves what it is that we all value.
I'm about limited government, property rights, and the rule of law. We need to say, as Canadians, this is the most important thing—limited government, responsible government, and the sovereignty of the individual. I want to live in a country where people are self-reliant. It doesn't matter if the guy has a granite company [and] he's making a billion dollars in sales a year, or if he's got a lawn mower and he's going mowing people's lawns. I want people to be able to work for themselves, to be independent. This is the Canada I remember when my father came here. He was developing homes with limited government intervention.
Now it's not that simple. We had a local fellow mowing our lawns, an older gentleman. He could do that back then. Now, with all of these regulations and building employment codes and taxes and the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), it's just easier to go work for somebody else. And I don't like that culture where everything becomes top-heavy and you have got three "cartels" running every industry.
What I'd leave the people with is that we don't live in a free society in Canada anymore. It's been bogged down by bureaucracy, and either we have to wake up and take back control and fix it, or it's just going to get worse.
Find out more about Askari and his platform on his website or the PPC site.
Other candidates for West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country include the incumbent Liberal MP Patrick Weiler, the Conservative Party's Keith Roy, Lauren Greenlaw of the Green Party of Canada, NDP candidate Jäger Rosenberg, and Gordon Jeffrey of the Parti Rhinocéros Party.
