Vancouver Centre: Kennedy Stewart (NDP)

Stewart, 38, is a likable SFU political scientist who has written extensively on municipal-government accountability and electoral reform. He played a big role in the campaign for wards in Vancouver.

As an academic expert on proportional-representation systems, Stewart would elevate the level of debate in Parliament concerning this important issue.

At one point during the campaign, Liberal Public Works Minister Stephen Owen claimed there are "significant Constitutional barriers" to introducing proportional representation. Stewart later explained to the Georgia Straight why he felt Owen was wrong. Stewart's intellect and common sense would serve him well on parliamentary committees.

Incumbent Liberal MP Hedy Fry, 62, has earned an A+ rating from Egale Canada. However, Stewart's campaign has gotten a boost from prominent members of the gay community, including Jim Deva, of Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium, and Vancouver Coun. Tim Stevenson.

In the past, Fry has helped the local film industry obtain tax breaks, and recently she has tried to get the provinces to recognize the credentials of immigrants educated overseas.

The Straight is not endorsing Fry for two major reasons. During the federal Liberals' 11 years in office, there has been a proliferation of for-profit private medical clinics and a wave of privatization of hospital services. Empirical research has repeatedly demonstrated that health outcomes decline whenever the profit motive is brought into the hospital sector.

Now the B.C. Liberal government is building a hospital in Abbotsford through a public-private partnership. The federal Liberal government did not stop this.

Yet at a June 10 candidates debate at UBC's Robson Street complex, Fry had the audacity to declare: "We are absolutely opposed to private, for-profit health care."

Fry also went along with then탔ší‚ ­finance minister Paul Martin's decision in 1995 to gut national welfare standards. Several years later, this gave Premier Gordon Campbell sufficient flexibility to hammer the poor.

The Green party's Robbie Mattu, a 32-year-old Vancouver public-library employee, told the Straight there has been a lot of talk about health care during the campaign but very little about prevention. He said that if he gets elected, he wants to get more drug-treatment centres in Vancouver.

Mattu, one of his party's stronger candidates, claimed that the NDP is now raising the issue of proportional representation to marginalize the Greens.

Conservative candidate Gary Mitchell has made grand promises to fight for gays and lesbians, even though he is running for a party not known for having a liberal stance on these issues. The Conservative party platform offers very little to cities, which is a good reason not to vote for Mitchell.