Up until election day September 20, CKDR News will be asking Kenora riding candidates the important questions you want answered.
Today we ask what is you and/or your party’s plan for economic recovery.
Conservative Eric Melillo says “this election truly is about who Canadians trust with their economic recovery as we move on from the pandemic”.
“We’ve brought forward five priorities, a five point plan to get our economy back on track. Part of that is supporting jobs, recovery of jobs in all sectors, in all regions of the country. In Northwestern Ontario we need to be giving support for tourism and small businesses to resume operations or continue to operate and get them back on their feet again, after they’ve had such a difficult year. As well as supporting mining and forestry and the natural resources that are so important to our local economy.”
Melillo notes, “Phasing out some of the COVID stimulus spending and ensuring that we get back to a balanced budget over a ten year period because we know with each dollar of debt and interest that we have to pay, those are dollars not going towards the critical services that we need.”
NDP’s Janine Seymour spoke about the party’s plan of taxing the ultra-rich.
“Jagmeet Singh is advocating strongly for proportionate taxes which means targeting those who earn ten million annual. So I’m not sure what number of people that affects in the Kenora Riding who earned ten million dollars last year. Those and up, ten million plus, ensuring that they pay the appropriate portion of taxes to ensure that priorities such as clean drinking water is available for Indigenous Peoples.”
David Bruno, representing the Liberals says economic recovery starts with COVID-19 vaccination.
“We have to get our population to 85% double vaccinated so that have trust in our population that they’ll be able to go to different businesses and reopen without the fear that the Delta variant is going to take us off guard and put us right back into where we don’t want to be. So quite clearly the government is on the right track.”
Bruno continues, “Mandatory vaccinations for example on aircrafts where everyone is crowded together I don’t want to put my own mother at risk, you don’t wan to put your mother at risk and that’s the right thing to do. It’s clearly the right thing to do.”
“Once we get that moving, the economy is going to come back into full gear. I’m more than sure of it. We’re going to open our borders, our tourism is going to go through the roof and I can’t wait for that,” Bruno concludes.
Craig Martin of the People’s Party of Canada says, “We’re going to start with eliminating corporate welfare. Eliminating overseas donations to charities run by billionaires and bring that money home to Canada to help rebuild our economy.”
Martin adds, “We’re going to open up the oil sector and create an economy for the whole country beginning in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland, the areas that produce most in that industry.”
Remi Rheault of the Green Party says, “Re-training is good. You’re talking to a person who has been re-trained in 28 different trades. I’m not a young man. Re-training is always good. There’s always the opportunity to learn. People today are very informed, very educated and have a multitude, I call them transferable skills.”
Rheault notes, “We can build the economy in a green fashion. We can start moving and transitioning away from a lot of the damage being done to climate, and to the ground, and to mother earth, and to people. We need to start putting humanity first.”
He adds, “We need to actually start working with people, as a group, as a country, as a nation. Side by side with our traditional, tribal and clan governance systems”
(With Files From Mike Ebbeling)
