The Candidates Speak!

After a busy couple of weeks covering some anonymous film festival in Toronto, I finally got down to the real process of politicking by interviewing the candidates running for Member of Provincial Parliament of Guelph. Of our riding’s seven declared candidates, here are some words from three who are looking for your vote on October 6th.

You Don’t Know Dyck

Green Party candidate Steve Dyck faces a similar dilemma as he campaigns for Guelph MPP that his Federal counterpart John Lawson did in this past spring’s election. Like Lawson, Dyck follows a candidate with two elections under their belt and a wave of popular support. But unlike Lawson, Dyck hopes to break though and build on Ben Polley’s third place finish in 2007, and he hopes to do that by tackling his party’s core issue, and doing so more thoroughly than the other parties.

“I’m so passionate about the issues,” says Dyck who officially kicked off his political career as the Green Party of Ontario’s energy critic on The Agenda with Steve Paikin. “I feel like the Liberals, the Conservatives and the NDP really have abandoned the environment.”

The environment doesn’t get a lot of air in these difficult economic times when jobs and budgets are more worrisome, so how does the Green Party candidate reach voters? “I often don’t speak about the environment, what I mostly talk about is the economy and building an economy that makes sense, and works for people,” explains Dyck. “The Liberals have imported the Green Energy Act from Germany, and when they did that I wanted to applaud. But they imported the technology and left the community out. Renewable energy in Germany is overwhelmingly community-financed, community-based, which allows rate-payers the ability to gain the benefit.”

Fourth Time Around for Garvie

By running again for the Communist Party of Canada in Guelph, Drew Garvie holds up a proud Royal City tradition as the Canadian face of the revolution began here in 1921. Garvie is running for the fourth time for political office in Guelph, his second attempt at the MPP seat after two Federal runs.

Amongst his campaign promises, Garvie, and the Communists, are pledging to do something that, surprisingly, no other party has said that they’ll do: completely eliminate the HST from Ontario’s bookkeeping. “I think what the HST basically is, and the voters of B.C. obviously understood it, the majority of voters see it as placing the burden on them rather than the people who actually have the ability to pay,” explains Garvie.

Garvie also wants to bring attention to another issue that’s not being discussed a lot in the campaign: the demand for an inquiry into police action during the G20 protests in the summer of 2010. “It was the largest crackdown, the largest mass arrest in Canadian history, and it was facilitated by the McGuinty Liberals and the Federal Tories,” Garvie says emphatically. “[They] gave police sweeping powers that they need to go in bust heads, arrest 1,100 people and ended up not charging a lot of them. People were in terrible conditions in ‘Guantanamo North,’ as they called it, and André Marin, the Ontario Ombudsman, has said that this was the biggest compromise of civil rights in Canadian history.”

Schirk is Lovin’ the Campaign Trail

Greg Schirk talks about missing his morning coffee, but he doesn’t seem like it. The Progressive Conservative candidate was the last of the major party candidates to be acclaimed by his riding association, but Schirk says it’s been an easy transition to full-on campaign mode, and he’s ready to help PC leader Tim Hudak form the next government of the Province of Ontario. But first things first: the issues.

For one thing, Schirk maybe campaigning on eliminating Smart Meters and undoing some of the McGuinty government’s deals to create Green energy, but Schirk doesn’t want you to think he’s not environmentally friendly. “Guelph has a reputation for being a green community, and that happened long before the Green Energy Act,” he explains. “It was grassroots driven, it wasn’t top down. You look at this community and I just can’t see us shutting that desire to be a community and contribute to a better environment. When you look at this push from the community, I think it’s going to continue regardless of what legislation is in place.”

Schirk has been busy campaigning and attending events and debates, and says that he wouldn’t mind campaigning full-time. “I’ve got to tell you how much I love doing this,” Schirk says with obvious joy. “This is so much fun. I get to meet so many people, I’ve always liked talking politics, and I’m learning so much, that’s the great thing. And I’m not only learning fro the PC caucus, but from the average person that answers the door.”

To listen to the complete candidate interviews, go to my blog at http://guelphpolitico.blogspot.com where you can listen the complete podcast of my candidate interviews, as well as get all the latest election scoop.

Ward 6: A Hub of Activity

After an inadvertently long hiatus, Better Know a Ward returns. For those of you who’ve forgotten, this six-part, award-eligible series profiles a different ward in Guelph and the councillors that represent it. Today, it’s Ward 6, the southern most ward in the city that covers everything below Kortright Road. Containing many of the newer parts of Guelph, Ward 6 is a hub of activity with a near constant level of development. The two councillors representing this Ward are Christine Billings and Karl Wettstein, and I recently got a chance to sit down with them in Guelph City Hall.

So in the mind of these councillors, what makes Ward 6 unique? Two words: growth and development. “We’ve got the age-old dilemma about services,” adds Wettstein. “I think we’re really well serviced now, but we went through a lot of years, as a ward, where there has been a service gap for the last decade.”

It’s a matter of some confusion for constituents as Billings points out, because many pay higher taxes as compared to the rest of the city. “Karl and I can have the same size lot,” Billings explains. “We can have the same size home, and I can live in the south and Karl in the northeast, for example, and his taxes are much lower. And why is that? Market Value Assessment.”

In other words, taxes rates times market value assessment equals how much you pay in taxes. “Where that gets complicated in the minds of the taxpayer,” says Wettstein, “is when you’re in a new area, with high growth, quick development, slow to be serviced by the city and commercial services, the public says ‘Hold it. We have the highest taxes and the lowest services.’ There’s a mismatch.”

Another issue that’s becoming more prominent on the Ward 6 plate is student housing. With the south Gordon corridor intensifying and the availability of transit, this ward is attracting more and more student tenants. “There are some streets where there’s clearly a disproportional number of [student] houses in the minds of the residents,” Wettstein says. He and Billings have been looking at how other communities including London are dealing with the issue. “We said we’re going to do something significant so when the students come to school on September the first they’re going to notice a difference.”

The issues aside, and the occasional tedium of the debate there of, the councillors find their jobs rewarding. “What will happen is that you have a constituent and their frustrated. Maybe they’ve already gone through the system and what they do is phone you and e-mail you and go ‘Help!’” explains Billings. “When there’s resolution and the constituent’s happy, the staff’s happy, and we’re happy, what a good feeling of accomplishment when you’ve actually helped.”

But this is an election year, and soon the discussion will look to the next four years and the next term in council. Wettstein has already declared saying that he likes to make his intentions known early. His goal, if re-elected, will be to continue looking at the business side of the city. “I have a lot of interest in the financial strength of the city. I have a tonne of interest in good corporate governance and try not to step in each other’s backyard too much. But I also recognize that we are one team, we’re not two teams, and we’ve made progress in that area.”

Billings says she hasn’t made up her mind if she will run for re-election, and will take the summer to decide whether she’ll try for her third consecutive term. “For me it’s very serious, it is a commitment,” she notes saying that in 2003 she made up her mind on the last day nominations were open. “Because I have a family, things change. If you win it is your term, it’s a four year term, so it’s not something you want to do halfway.”

Still, Billings sounds like she’s already in re-election mode saying, “At election time, a lot of people say they are fiscally responsible, but I will have a different definition of ‘fiscally responsible’ because I do not find that to be the case, for me anyway.”

Wanna hear the whole interview? Beam over to Guelph Politico at http://guelphpolitico.blogspot.com

Elizabeth May Interview

On Monday May 26th, Elizabeth May became the third federal leader in as many months to pop in on party faithful to get them ready for a potential by-election in the near future. Stumping for local Green candidate Mike Nagy, May played to a packed house at the Guelph Youth Music Centre making speeches, helping to recruit eager campaigners and taking audience questions.

It didn’t take too long into my interview with May following her Q&A before she launched into her disappointment in Jack Layton’s sudden disproval of carbon taxes. “It boggles the mind that he’s against the carbon tax. It’s got to give him some pause when David Suzuki attacks the NDP and says that they’ve made a huge mistake.”

Layton was quoted in The Globe and Mail the week before saying “With energy costs soaring in Canada, we've got to ensure that the solutions to climate change don't aggravate an already dire situation for those who struggle to make ends meet.” Adding, “We shouldn't punish people, and that's what a carbon tax does.”

One of the goals of the evening was to rally support to help get May into the nationally televised leaders’ debates. Her inclusion, however, does not have the support of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, or the aforementioned NDP leader Layton. But more than not being allowed to debate as of yet, May senses something else afoot in both Layton’s refusal to allow her to participate and in his repudiation of the carbon tax.

“The strategy is ‘the enemy of my enemy,’” said May, “that when the Liberal Party is crushed and eliminated, than the NDP can replace them as the natural alternative to the Conservatives. It’s politically inspired and it doesn’t make sense ideologically. It doesn’t make sense in terms of climate crisis and it panders to the idea that gas prices will go up if you have a carbon tax.”

Carbon taxes have become a staple in many Europeans countries as a way to help battle global climate change. In a time of increased gas prices, May says that a carbon tax is even more attractive because the bulk of the revenue will come from oil sands and oil production, creating nearly $40 billion in new revenue. This new money could make the government able to provide tax cuts in other areas, rather than offering what May calls “superficial” trims to the GST, which was done pure in the interest of “political capital.”

“The bottom line from anyone who’s a resource geologist and who’s looking at the International Energy Agency Report, is that we’re running out of cheap oil. So with supply and demand, basic economics, the price is going to go up. How do you have a public policy response that protects people from high gas prices?”

As for the leader’s debates, May already has a vote of support from Stéphane Dion, while Gilles Duceppe’s people have also voiced support for her getting a podium in the next election. “Only Stephen Harper and Jack Layton don’t want me there,” she explains. “It’s a very interesting dynamic. It’s a two tier cause where the Greens want to see a Liberal minority government and the NDP want to demolish the Liberal Party even if it means locking in the Conservatives.”

Aside from being the leader of only the fourth federal party to ever have candidates run in every riding in Canada, May also desires to be a part of the debate in order to return some sense of civility to national politics. “Parliament right now is dreadful. It’s toxic. The hostility from Question Period filters in to parliamentary committee. When there are five committees under Conservative MP lead filibusters it’s really distressing.”

The question remains though: when is the Conservative minority government going to fall? May thinks Harper’s too clever to allow that to happen before he’s ready, but she also supports Dion’s method of “strategic patience,” a term coined by Liberal MP Bob Rae in describing his leader’s pacifist stand on challenging Harper’s power. “I don’t know how refusing to succumb to a bully makes a person look weak, I think that’s actually fairly resolute,” May says.

May also doesn’t want to rush the inevitable and thinks that we should all use this time to seriously think about where Canada is going and where we’d like it to go. “I think that this next election will be the single most important election in Canadian history in terms of the choices to be made. We can’t afford to go into the next election with people feeling disaffected, people have to be wide awake and paying attention.”

As for post-election results, May feels very certain of a Green future with at least a couple of seats in the Commons held by her party. “I know we’ll be in the House, I feel very confident about that. The critical thing for me, other than where we are is to make sure Harper isn’t Prime Minister.”