NDP Peace River Candidate Hates Capitalism And Endorses “Owning Fewer Things”

Alberta NDP candidate for Peace River, Liana Paiva, is yet another NDP candidate that has a deeply sour relationship with capitalism as well as Alberta’s oil and gas industry.

The National Telegraph has previously run a story on Paiva being in favour of Portugal decriminalizing small amounts of hard drugs, which she falsely assumes is the reason Portugal’s heroine addiction problem decreased.

Outside of the drug/addiction stuff, there were a lot more odd social media posts from Paiva, including one post that seems to endorse commune-style living while condemning capitalism as a negative force. 

In an posting above an article about “Going Zero Waste,” Paiva said “I agree with this 100%” before the following:

In fact, zero-waste living connects people in an increasingly disconnected world.

We rely on community when we previously relied on capitalism. We borrow books from the library, clothing from our friends, and tools from our neighbors. We create community solutions that encourage borrowing over buying.

We become more generous.

Borrowing from others encourages me to lend out my own things. When I’m shopping less and owning fewer things, I have more money to donate and share generously.

It’s all fine and dandy for Liana Paiva to want to live a zero-waste lifestyle by herself and whoever else wants to start a green commune/community with her, but to have NDP MLAs in government like her would be concerning. I would have strong doubts she cares much about people’s economic prosperity when she thinks “owning fewer things” is a good thing. 

It kind of sounds like the Ida Auken quote “You’ll own nothing and be happy” from a World Economic Forum video back in 2016. 

This isn’t the only anti-capitalist statement Paiva has made. In August 2022 Paiva made a post going after federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre where she said:

…Calling it bottom up capitalism doesn’t make it work. Capitalism puts control of production and ultimately wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people.

Thats precisely how capitalism works. Supply and demand fulfilled with the intention of generating profit, not supplying the citizenry so that their basic needs are fulfilled, but with the intention of generating as much profit as possible…

Also in 2022, Paiva in a post where she said “Alberta’s current situation summed up in three tweets,” one of the tweets she included was from Kim Sievers, a militant Alberta socialist, which started with the statement “Capitalism is anti-family.” 

In 2020, Paiva took issue with UCP politicians condemning socialism and said in response that:

Conservative capitalism ideology has always wanted to privatize all that for profit. They believe in unsupported capitalism for citizens, and endless bailouts and subsidies for the wealthy(socialism).

She also tries to claim that any publicly provided good is “socialism” not seeming to realize that the high-quality services that government proves in the Western capitalistic country are only possible off the backs of activity generated by the free market. In actual socialist countries, the government controls everything and resource shortages are common. 

Of course, Paiva doesn’t understand this as she wanted corporate taxes greatly increased and she also dislikes Alberta’s oil and gas industry and has posted in favour of the carbon tax and endorsed a “clean energy transition” for the 2019 provincial election.

Paiva also opposed fracking in the City of Tacoma, Washington,  which she refers to as a “climate-destroying fracked gas facility” in spite of fracking being one of the most efficient and least environmentally impacting forms of natural gas extraction. 

It should also be noted that Paiva has shared multiple articles in favour of the People’s Republic of China for its green energy initiatives. This is odd seeing as China is one of the world’s worst polluters and much of its green technology is stolen from the West. Maybe she just likes the big-government aspects of China’s green policy the same way Justin Trudeau appreciates their “basic dictatorship.”

I think it would be fair to add Paiva to the current list of communist-friendly NDP candidates. Although she has never said anything publicly about communism in favour or against it, her obvious hated of capitalism and love of socialism makes it obvious that she would be friendly to the communist ideology.

At the end of the day Liana Paiva, and many other Alberta NDP candidates just hate the oil and gas industry and have a deep dislike for capitalism. Even though Paiva is extremely unlikely to be elected in the riding of Peace River, it is telling that individuals like herself are embraced as candidates by the Alberta NDP.