VOTE 2022: Vaughan-Woodbridge candidates' views on lessons from COVID-19 pandemic

Thestar.com
May 18, 2022

We asked Vaughan-Woodbridge candidates running in the June 2 election five questions.

Here, they tackle their take-aways from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The candidates each had a maximum of 150 words to respond.

WHAT DID WE LEARN FROM THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC?

Liberals' Steven Del Duca: I learned a great deal about the resilience of Vaughan residents. Health-care heroes who stepped up for extra shifts, neighbours who helped their loved ones with essentials and small businesses that worked overtime to stay afloat. Everyone rolled up their sleeves.

When people step up, their governments are supposed to meet them in the middle, and do what we can’t do alone as individuals.

We will conduct an independent public inquiry to learn from the pandemic. We know that Ontarians need to heal and rebuild trust and will work with them to restore confidence in our health system.

Greens' Philip Piluris: We have learned that we absolutely cannot survive whilst divided. We as a community need to work together for a common good, be it a public health scare, protecting our environment or taking a stand against adversity.

New Blues' Luca Mele: We learned two things. 1. What not to do with pandemics, as far as better safety measures and lockdowns. 2. How easily both bodies of government and society can become corrupted and mislead. Thousands of families losing their businesses and homes, even suicide in kids was (at an) all-time high.

Progressive Conservatives' Michael Tibollo: We are ... providing Ontario nurses with a retention bonus and making the wage increase permanent for more than 158,000 personal support workers. We’re also: investing $40 billion to fund more than 50 hospital projects that will add 3,000 new beds over the next 10 years; 31,000 new and over 28,000 upgraded long-term-care beds in the works; investing nearly $5 billion to hire more than 27,000 long-term-care staff over four years.

NDP's Will McCarty: After over 8,500 deaths, 500,000 COVID-19 infections, near collapse of hospitals and total failure of our long-term-care system, the NDP called for a full inquiry into Doug Ford’s pandemic response. This must never happen again. We are committed to rebuilding and improving health care by: Investing, not cutting; repealing Bill 124; recruiting nurses back to our hospitals and hiring doctors for underserved communities; tackling the wait-list for surgeries and procedures.