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The Cambridge Chamber of Commerce held its second “Chamber Chat” with local candidates Wednesday morning, this time focusing on candidates in the Kitchener South-Hespeler riding and covering questions that touched on affordability, the environment, immigration and economic recovery.
The meeting welcomed Liberal candidate Valerie Bradford, People’s Party of Canada candidate Melissa Baumgaertner, and NDP candidate Suresh Arangath.
With only three of eight candidates showing up for the Zoom meeting, the most visible absence from Conservative candidate Tyler Calver, Chamber president Greg Durocher expressed disappointment some chose not to participate. In his admonishment, he reiterated the influence chamber members have in the community.
Kicking off the questions, chamber member Prakash Venkataraman asked about economic recovery and what the candidates plan to do about the labour shortages that are threatening to stall the country’s economic recovery.
PPC candidate Melissa Baumgaertner said her party would start by phasing out all pandemic spending programs, end foreign development aid, cut taxes and end supports to social programs that are municipal responsibilities.
Instead the PPC would provide incentives to get people working again and help businesses that are struggling to fill jobs.
“It’s time for us to be looking at things from a realistic perspective,” she said.
Arangath said he sees the problem of labour shortages as a symptom of rising inaffordability in Waterloo region and the idea that a pandemic pause in much of the workforce led people to discover different priorities and career paths.
By tackling the housing crisis and rising inflation, the NDP plan would keep people in the region that would otherwise have moved to more affordable parts of the country, he said.
Bradford said she knows Canadians want to work but understands COVID made many people rethink their priorities. “It’s not just about the money anymore,” she said. “It’s about work life balances.”
The Liberal plan would bolster the local workforce by investing in retraining initiatives and make childcare more accessible by creating a national childcare plan at $10 a day. Bradford said it’s been determined this region is a “daycare desert” because of the lack of affordable childcare spaces making it difficult for parents to reenter the workforce. The Liberals would also extend the Canadian recovery hiring program until March 31, 2022.
A question about what each party plans to do about the “number one concern” of healthcare from chamber member Kristen Danson, elicited several ideas from candidates.
Arangath said the NDP would integrate pharmacare plan into the healthcare system, lowering the price government and businesses are paying to pharmaceutical companies by negotiating better prices with “huge buying power.”
Those savings could then be invested into better healthcare services with taxes on the “ultra rich” adding to those supports.
Bradford said Canada’s healthcare system is the best in the world and has made Canadian businesses extremely competitive because of it, but admitted it isn’t without its problems, many of which were exacerbated by the pandemic.
She said the Liberals would provide support to hire 7,500 doctors and nurses to deal with the backlog in surgeries and procedures created by COVID and tackle staffing shortages at long term care facilities by creating a national standard with help from the provinces.
The Liberals also plan to hire 50,000 personal support workers and increase their wages to $25 an hour, fund publicly accessible mental healthcare, and implement 10 paid sick days for all federally regulated workers.
Baumgaertner said the PPC wants the provinces to take responsibility for healthcare and would increase accountability of spending decisions to ensure the best choices are made in terms of healthcare funding.
“I don’t think throwing money at the problem is a solution that’s been working,” she said.
Chamber member Peter Voss wanted to know what each party’s plan is to help keep people from losing value in their homes while helping more people be able to afford a home.
Bradford reiterated what fellow Liberal candidate Bryan May said last week about the rumoured capital gains tax, saying it’s nothing more than “fear mongering” by the Conservatives.
The Liberals plan to cool the housing market by getting rid of blind bidding wars and implementing a “rent to own” program to make first-time home purchases easier for the average Canadian.
The Liberals also plan to build and retrofit 1.4 million new homes to increase supply and reduce homelessness while offering support for veterans housing.
Banning foreign investment ownership for two years would bring stability to the market, Bradford said.
The PPC, on the other hand, would aim for fiscal responsibility by modifying to the Bank of Canada’s inflation target to less than two per cent and putting a moratorium on new social programs.
“We are headed toward $1.2 trillion worth of debt,” she said. “That saddles each of us with well over $30,000 worth of debt and a rough go of it in the future.
“We need to be focused on making things affordable to live here.”
Arangath said putting a 20 per cent tax on non-Canadian homeowners would cool the housing market and stop the money laundering.
“Housing is a human issue, not an investment opportunity like the stock market anymore,” he said, adding the NDP wants to exempt developers of affordable housing projects from paying GST/HST.
On the topic of immigration helping to solve Canada’s labour shortage, Baugaertner said the PPC would prioritize Canada’s economic interests. The party plans to reform the immigration point system and lower the number of immigrants the country accepts on an annual basis to 150,000. The system would prioritize skilled workers and entrepreneurs, accept fewer refugees and abolish the program that allows settled immigrants to bring parents and grandparents into the country.
The PPC would also ensure foreign workers are not competing with Canadians.
“Canada is not asking people to immigrate just for fun,” Arangath responded, explaining how the country is currently short 1.6 million people in the workforce.
“We need people to work here and immigrants should be given the opportunities so more people will come,” he said.
The NDP would focus on validating credentials and ensuring doctors and other highly qualified people are coming to Canada and not seeing their talents wasted.
“A mix of cultures have always helped any nation,” Arangath said.
Bradford agreed. “Canada is a country built on immigration and we have a lot of catching up to do,” she admitted, the country’s immigration system is the envy of the world because of the point system.
“And once we get them here, we want them to be successful as quickly as possible,” she said.
“We need to do everything we can to link immigrants to companies looking for their skill sets.”
On the issue of the pandemic, Baumgaertner called the federal response “a complete failure” that put Canada into debt and “crushed small and medium sized businesses.”
She called lockdowns “nonsensical” and said she’d fight with everything she has to keep businesses open.
“The amount of people I know that have lost everything is simply unacceptable.”
Vaccine mandates, she said, are forcing businesses to police their patrons and clients to their own detriment.
“It’s a very un-Canadian thing to do to divide our society like this,” she said.
