York-Simcoe candidates clash in final debate before election

YorkRegion.com
Oct. 14, 2015
By Simon Martin

There was a clear choice on display for York-Simcoe voters at the final federal all-candidates meeting hosted by the East Gwillimbury Chamber of Commerce Oct. 8.

It was one final chance for Liberal candidate Shaun Tanaka, NDP candidate Sylvia Gerl and Green Party candidate Mark Viitala to try to knock Conservative incumbent MP Peter Van Loan off his perch atop the riding.

The disagreements flowed for 2-1/2 hours like wine at Thanksgiving dinner.

Take the ever-popular political football: the middle class.

Van Loan argued the middle class in Canada was doing well.

“We have the most prosperous middle class in the world,” he said. “We are helping families get ahead with lower taxes.”

Tanaka did not agree.

“Middle class families are working harder than ever to make ends meet.”

She touted the Liberal platform that would see middle class families, earning between $44,000 and $90,000, receive a 7-per-cent tax cut and the $60 billion of infrastructure spending that would stimulate the economy.

That’s not exactly how the NDP would do things, Gerl said.

Her party believes running a balanced budget is important.

“Tommy Douglas paid off the debt before he brought in public health care.”

This was about the only issue on which Van Loan agreed with Gerl.

“Deficits are deferred taxes,” he said.

That didn’t go over well with Tanaka, who pointed out the Conservatives didn’t balance the budget until it was an election year.

Meanwhile, Gerl was worried that the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was agreed upon in principal recently, would put Canada’s supply management agriculture system at risk.

“We have to have protections for supply management because it works,” she said.

With free trade agreements in place with Europe and pacific nations such as Japan, Van Loan said the government has positioned the country to be in an ideal spot for businesses with unfettered access to the biggest markets in the world.

Another area where the candidates clearly differed was on electoral reform. While the NDP, Liberals and Green Party all support looking at change toward proportional representation, Van Loan said that decision shouldn’t be made without input from the people.

He cited the failed referendum on the question in Ontario in 2007 as an example that the public doesn’t support the initiative. Van Loan said he likes the current system because every MP has a piece of real estate to represent.

For Gerl, something’s wrong when 65 per cent of the people in the country who don’t vote Conservative essentially have little to no voice in Parliament. “We want better representation,” she said.

Things got a little more heated as the meeting rolled over into the second hour, when Tanaka said Van Loan spent $700,000 on mailouts to constituents during his time in office.

“Residents have literally dropped off stacks of mail at my campaign office,” she said. “You were the top sender of all MPs.”

The mailings are essential for communicating with constituents, Van Loan said.

He receives more response from the mailouts than phone calls, emails and letters combined.

When the subject of attack ads came up, Van Loan said it’s the way politics are done and isn’t just confined to the Conservative party. He also said Tanaka had run a dishonest ad in a recent flyer in regards to his pension plan.

The ad said Van Loan gets to receive his million-dollar pension at the age of 65, while Canadians have to wait until age 67.

“It’s dishonest and is blaming me for a Liberal policy,” he said.

There was nothing dishonest about the ad, they were facts, Tanaka said. “I’m not saying anything about your hair.”

In the low blow of the night, Viitala chimed in, “If they were really trying to attack (Van Loan), they would be attacking you about your weight, not your pension, “ he said.

Van Loan found himself isolated on the issue of marijuana legislation. While all the other candidates deemed the government should step in and legalize it or decriminalize it. Van Loan said it is an issue about what is right and what is wrong.