The Stratford and District Chamber of Commerce hosted a Perth-Wellington provincial candidates debate at the Arden Park Hotel in Stratford Wednesday night.
Perth-Wellington’s seven provincial candidates in the June 2 Ontario general election had the opportunity square off around issues of housing affordability and seniors’ care, among others, during a debate at the Arden Park Hotel in Stratford Wednesday night.
Hosted by the Stratford and District Chamber of Commerce and moderated by chamber general manager Eddie Matthews, the candidates – including Conservative Matthew Rae, Liberal Ashley Fox, NDP Jo-Dee Burbach, Laura Bisutti for the Green Party, Bob Hosken of the New Blue Party , Robby Smink of the Freedom Party and Sandy MacGregor of the Ontario Party – had the opportunity to answer questions submitted ahead of time and during the debate by members of the public either in attendance or watching from home.
While some questions were posed directly to specific candidates, Matthews ensured each candidate was given the chance to respond or not respond to every question.
The following is the candidates’ answers to two of those questions. Please note that while the answers are written verbatim, some may be edited for clarity.
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Strategies for long-term, sustainable housing affordability, particularly for young people priced out of the local market:
Smink (Freedom): “It doesn’t matter what my plan is because I’m not going to be elected anyway. I’m only going to get two per cent of the vote, as is everybody else here except the winner. So (why should we) be talking about plans we’re going to implement when we have no luck. Why don’t we talk about what’s really happening in our world? The price of gas. Vaccine mandates and passports. Why isn’t the government being held accountable for closing schools? Where’s the science (supporting) business closures and quarantines and face diapers and social distancing? Where’s the science (supporting) contact tracing and restricting public gatherings and keeping seniors in isolation in long term (care) homes. Those are the issues we should be dealing with here, not what government program are you going to spend (money on). And listen, every time you hear somebody talking about investment or rebate or a billion here, a billion there, they’re talking about increasing your taxes by that much.”
Rae (Conservative): “Our government committed in budget 2022 for the next four years of a four-year mandate (that) every year we would work with our municipal partners on a housing-supply strategy. So it’s great to see a provincial government working in tandem with municipal partners. … Municipalities know what’s best. What works in downtown Toronto will definitely not work in downtown Stratford, downtown Mitchell or downtown Listowel, so we need to work with our municipal partners moving forward and our government has committed to do that in budget 2022.”
Fox (Liberal): “Our focus would be on the first-time homebuyers. We know that it’s a very difficult time for them right now. So $1.5 million in 10 years and we would create an Ontario housing corporation which would finance and develop that.”
Hosken (New Blue): “Again, throwing money at the problem is not going to fix the affordability problem. It’s actually going to worsen it. I’m not really sure why they’re talking about throwing money at programs where young savers can save more money. Well how is that going to fix the house prices? It’s actually going to compound the problem and make house prices even more expensive. And when private corporations or private companies or private small businesses or home builders get involved with the government, is it actually going to lower the prices of housing? I would think that’s going to (have) the opposite effect.”
Burbach (NDP): We’re looking at a few different approaches. One is to give direct financial support to first-time homebuyers and renters, but that would come in the form of interest-free loans. The other important thing to do is to create a strategy, and we know that the PC government has actually gotten rid of the minister of housing, so we would bring back a minister of housing that is specifically looking at housing. We have a plan to create at least 250,000 affordable and non-market-rental homes over the next 10 years, but we do need a plan to coordinate that.”
Bisutti (Green): “(There’s a) scarcity of homes because a lot of the affordable homes (and rental buildings) that are around now were built pre-2000. So we have to start getting into that business again because private builders are not going to build affordable housing. We will have to throw money and build over 10 years at least 180,000 new, permanently affordable community housing rental homes including the 60,000 homes that have wraparound supports for people with needs.”
MacGregor (Ontario): “We obviously need sustainable housing. I visited many homes when I was going door to door and there’s people that are living two and three people in one apartment. We definitely need affordable housing but there’s no mistake made that governments are overspending. The reason we are in an inflation period is because governments keep overspending and overspending. We as the Ontario Party want to have fiscal responsibility. If you have excess budget money then you are overtaxing. We need to bring the taxes down so people can afford to live again.”
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Ensuring seniors are safe and being cared for:
Fox (Liberal): “Our priorities would be focusing on reinstating what was cut in homecare and long term care. What we would do is we would have a homecare guarantee, so increasing services for those that are in the community ensuring that 400,000 seniors will be getting the care that they can at home. For those in long term care who do require services, we would reinstate the inspections. We know under the Ford government that they were stopped in 2020. And we would be looking towards a not-for-profit long-term-care (system) — smaller hubs to really support our seniors.”
Rae (Conservative): “Our government is committed to — and it’s legislation, so it’s law — … providing four hours of direct care by 2025 for our individuals in long term care, and we’re committing $4.9 billion to meet that goal. We’re also building across Perth-Wellington 943 new or upgraded long-term-care beds. Under the previous government we built zero. … PeopleCare is a great example of that locally — 160 beds. Hillside Manor, which the community did a great job in 2017-2018 keeping those beds local; they’re going to be building (new) and upgrading (existing) beds as well.”
Bisutti (Green): “It’s a great idea building more beds. We also have to pay the personal support workers more money to make sure that they’re attracted to these jobs because there’s no sense in having extra beds without the people. And then let’s expand some options to age in place, make it easier for seniors to live together — example, co-housing and co-living developments — and then increase support for community centers and neighborhood coalitions which encourage connections and reduce isolation.”
Burbach (NDP): “The NDP would work to make all long-term care public and not for profit because we saw through the pandemic that those public and not-for-profit facilities did much better. The residents in them did much better, they were better cared for, and we need to get profit out of our seniors care. That’s the most important thing.”
Smink (Freedom): “One of the best things we can do to keep our seniors safe is to stop them wearing these ridiculous face diapers which do more harm than good because it makes you breathe in your exhale. You know, the government’s spending billions of dollars fighting CO2, right? When you’re breathing in your exhale, you’re inhaling seven times more CO2 than you would without a mask. Does that make any sense. Also, it restricts your oxygen by 25 per cent. But the thing I wanted to say about seniors is the thing we have to do to keep them safe and healthy is to stop isolating them in solitary confinement and let them have hugs from their friends. You know, solitary confinement’s one of the harshest penalties ever devised by man and yet we’re doing that to our seniors to try to keep them, quote, safe. I mean we’re losing our humanity.”
For a full recording of Wednesday’s Perth-Wellington provincial candidates debate, visit youtube.com/watch?v=wty8PME6ONA and skip forward to the 35:30 mark.