2022 Ontario election special coverage presented by Pete’s Auto Body
To help you understand how the candidates on the ballot in Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound in the 2022 Ontario election feel about some key issues, Bayshore Broadcasting News provided several questions to the nine candidates running in the riding.
Housing affordability, inflation, climate change and labour shortages in key industries, were among the issues the candidates shared their thoughts on.
Independent candidate Reima Kaikkonen did not provide responses prior to the deadline for publication.
Over the next couple of days in the lead up to Thursday’s vote, candidate answers will be featured on bayshorebroadcasting.ca.
Some of these issues, and others, were addressed during the Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound All Candidates Discussion on 560 CFOS Monday morning as well. You can listen to the podcast here.
Below, you can view the candidate responses provided to a question about inflation. Candidate responses to a question about housing affordability can also be viewed in a separate post. Tomorrow, answers to questions about labour shortages in the region, and the opioid crisis will be published.
Question: Inflation is soaring, putting pressure on individuals and families to pay the basic costs of living, like gas, shelter and groceries. What role can provincial government policy play in easing the burden decades-high inflation is creating for people across Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound and Ontario?
Answers:
Rick Byers, Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario
This is an issue I have been hearing a lot about at the doors as I meet voters in our Grey Bruce community. Whether it’s the price at the gas pumps, buying a home, a car,
groceries, or basic necessities, inflation is hitting us hard right now. That is why the PC Government has been taking a number of steps to put more money in your pocket to help with the inflation battle, including:
-Lowering the gas tax by 5.7 cents per litre in July, in addition to the 4.3 cent reduction earlier
-Scrapping license plates stickers for 8 million people, a savings of $240 for the average family.
-Introducing $10 a day child care by 2025
-Increasing the general minimum wage to $15 starting January 1, 2022, and to $15.50 in October
-Extending the 10% tuition cut into the 2022-23 school year
-We also have a comprehensive employment training agenda which will help people find jobs and upgrade to better jobs to help manage though this period of price pressure.
Karen Gventer, New Democratic Party of Ontario
Single parent families and people with disabilities are inordinately affected by inflationary pressures. So many in our area fall into this demographic. We would increase the minimum wage to $20 per hour over 4 years while providing supports to small businesses to make the transition. We would also increase ODSP by 20% immediately and double it in the second year.
We would create a Provincial Food Strategy that puts healthy, locally sourced food onto Ontario tables, creates jobs in agriculture, and supports young farm families and first-time farmers.
Implementing pharmacare, dental care, and $10 per day child care will help lower people’s costs.
One of the biggest increases people have felt recently is the skyrocketing price at the gas pump. An NDP government would mandate the Ontario Energy Board to regulate the retail price and wholesale mark-up of petroleum products in Ontario. We would also facilitate a transition to electric vehicles.
Housing prices have also been soaring. We would build 250,000 affordable homes including 60,000 supportive housing units, and extend the life of 260,000 more. By bringing back rent control and ending the practice of hiking prices between tenants, we would further limit the costs of housing.
Selwyn Hicks, Ontario Liberal Party
Our 19-point Liberal Affordability Pledge will:
1. Slash transit fares to $1.
2. Increase Old Age Security by $1,000/yr.
3. Remove the 8% HST on meals under $20.
4. Bring back rent control.
5. Increase the minimum wage to $16/hr and introduce a regional living wage.
6. Refund families $2,750/child through retroactive child care fees.
7. Implement $10/day before- and after-school care.
8. Give new parents 18 mts. parental leave.
9. Help families buy electric cars and energy-efficient renovations.
10. Help seniors renovate their homes and provide caregivers.
11. Provide every worker: prescription drug /dental/vision/mental health benefits and retirement savings.
12. Make minimum wage for PSWs $25/hr.
13. Eliminate interest on OSAP loans.
14. Build and sell affordable new homes to first-time home buyers.
15. Eliminate incorporation fees for new businesses.
16. Give tax refunds for winter tires.
17. Continue to eliminate licence plate renewal fees.
18. Reduce gas taxes by 5.7 cents/litre and the fuel tax by 5.3 cents/ litre.
19. Increase the eligibility for the Low-Income tax credit from $38,000 to $50,000.
We’ll help pay for all this with a 1% surtax on corporations earning profits over $1 Billion/year and increased taxes on individuals earning over $500,000/year.
Danielle Valiquette, Green Party of Ontario
The cost of groceries is soaring. The Greens will introduce a Grocery Code of Conduct to clamp down on predatory pricing by grocery chains and protect local farmers and consumers.
Our Local Food & Farming Strategy for a more affordable and climate-ready province will:
-Cancel all plans for Highway 413 which will pave over 2,000 acres of prime farmland.
-Permanently protect prime farmland, including a freeze on urban boundaries.
-Support local farmers, value-added on farm production, food hubs, wholesale markets, farmers markets, local processing facilities and local food supply chains.
-Provide financial support for sustainable farmers to help local producers, including $1 billion for regenerative agriculture and environmental services, and $250 million to increase the Risk Management Program to improve financial security for farmers.
Ontario Greens will support small businesses and entrepreneurs as we embrace the green transition. We will:
-Launch a transformative green retrofit program and create thousands of jobs.
-Create a sustainable, made-in-Ontario mining-to-manufacturing EV strategy.
-Support Ontario entrepreneurs to build world-leading clean businesses in energy storage, electric transportation, smart transit and low-carbon biomaterials.
-Train a new green workforce, especially those in the trades, needed for us to succeed.
Suzanne Coles, Ontario Party
The rising cost of fuel increases the cost of shipping which is a significant reason for the rising costs of goods.
An Ontario Party Government Will:
-Partner with western provinces to push for an energy corridor between Ontario and Alberta.
-Eliminate the PST on gasoline and diesel while the price is at elevated levels – saving 16 cents per liter at today’s gas prices.
-Eliminate the provincial carbon tax and the industrial carbon tax, and seek to challenge the federal carbon tax.
-Develop a strategic oil reserve to cushion consumers during supply shocks and bolster demand in times of crisis.
Vince Grimaldi, New Blue Party
The root of the problem being, climate crisis, going green agenda, mandates, forced vaccinations, shutting pipelines down. To ease the burden of inflation, our platform states dropping HST from 13% to 10%.
Joel Loughead, None of the Above Direct Democracy Party
Inflation is soaring, but wages remain stagnant. The richest in our society are getting richer faster than ever. Corporations are capitalizing on supply chain disruptions and social and economic uncertainties to manufacture never before seen profits for their executives and shareholders. Enough is enough.
Only 40% of Ontarians voted for the PCs, yet they hold a strong majority at Queen’s Park, rewarding their deep-pocketed friends while not enacting any policies that will help the working people of this province. This is deeply unfair, and every Ontarian should be mad about it.
A Liberal government is no better. It simply results in a similar but different batch of corporate donors who need to be appeased, while ordinary Ontarians see their savings and ambitions disappear.
Tell the powers that be that their powers are waning. Tell them that this time, you are voting None Of The Above.
Joseph Westover, Populist Party of Ontario
We would advocate for the Bank of Canada to pay off our national debt and we would pay The Bank of Canada back at a lower interest rate lowering the cost of living and returning Canada to making its own choices over its nation.
We would immediately reduce the gas tax that Ontario charges its citizens. We would push back against the Federal government’s Carbon Tax plan.
We would focus on creating more abattoirs or slaughterhouses across Ontario to be able to provide more local fresh meat into the community.
We would make farmland and classify it as critical infrastructure and put into the protected class and work towards growing more local vegetables and fruit to provide our communities.
Our focus would be to provide more local food production to create more food security and should reduce supply chain issues of importing food from other countries.
We would ease regulations to allow for more “on farm” processing of fruits and vegetables as well as the packaging and slaughtering of meat livestock.
We would encourage more community gardening and more fallow land use for gardening and we would work towards creating local initiatives to help people offset the food cost by…
*Editor’s note: Any incomplete answers were cut to meet the 200-word count limit on responses candidates were informed of.