Local MPP candidates came together to speak about housing, healthcare and climate ahead of the upcoming provincial election on Feb. 27.
The Faithful Election Conversations: Waterloo Region was hosted by Centre for Public Ethics at Martin Luther University College on Thursday Feb. 13 at Mount Zion Church.
Candidates on the panel were Clayton Moore, Liberal MPP candidate in Waterloo; Catherine Fife, current NDP MPP in Waterloo; and Aislinn Clancy, current Green party MPP in Kitchener-Centre. A candidate from the Conservative Party was invited to the event but was not in attendance.
Moderating the panel was Craig Norris, host of The Morning Edition on CBC K-W.
The event featured three local experts who presented information on three respective areas of interest: housing, healthcare and the climate crisis in Ontario.
“These are issues that absolutely need to be addressed in Ontario because, quite frankly, we spent way too long putting them off. We have spent years, if not decades, ignoring these challenges…so we finally need to elect a government that’s actually going to take real, decisive action,” Moore said.
Following each presentation, local candidates were able to respond with reactions, thoughts and answer questions posed by the subject matter expert.
Presenting about poverty, homelessness and housing in Ontario was Tony D’Amato Stortz, principal and founder of BetterStreet and former site superintendent for A Better Tent City of Waterloo Region.
D’Amato Stortz asked the candidates to speak to how they would work to make the province a more affordable place to live and their plan to help people experiencing chronic housing instability.
“I think poverty and housing is the roof and food, right?” Clancy said. “I’m worried about another Ford majority. Four more years of a Ford majority just means a lot of harm to our planet, a lot of harm to people and more affordability crisis.”
Kai Reimer Watts, a local climate scholar and community organizer, discussed the current climate crisis landscape.
Reimer Watts asked each candidate what they would do in office, if elected, to help address the climate crisis and push the governing parties into greater action.
He asked the candidates’ plan to follow the science for emissions reduction requiring a 50 per cent reduction by 2030 and alignment with Canada’s climate commitments.
From a local lens, Reimer Watts inquired how the candidates would engage residents in Waterloo region about potential policy directions for climate change
“If we don’t have a livable planet, what do we have? Unfortunately, climate continues to be an overlooked priority,” Clancy said.
Michael Lawrie, a retired Cambridge family doctor and former chief of staff at Cambridge Memorial Hospital, presented about the healthcare landscape in Ontario.
As a life-long advocate of healthcare, Lawrie discussed the current state of healthcare in Ontario.
Lawrie shared that, currently, 2.5 million people in Ontario do not have a primary care provider. He asked the candidates to share their plan to solve this health-care crisis.
As well, Lawrie said that Ontario currently ranks last in per-person funding for emergency care in comparison to the Canadian provincial average, coming in last amongst all other provinces and territories.
“Accessibility and information is incredibly important in politics,” Moore said
“These [panels] are great in terms of teaching people: ‘what does another four years of Doug Ford actually mean?’ because to me, it means worse health care system, it means worse environment and it means less freedom,” Moore said.
To end the event, Norris asked the candidates questions from the audience.
The final question Norris posed to candidates from the audience was about the closure of Consumption and Treatment sites (CTS) across Ontario—a topic of recent controversy locally and provincially.
In response, all three candidates said their stance was in favour of keeping CTS sites open should their party win the upcoming election.
“I think that when the Ford government decided that [closing CTS sites] was a hot-button issue at Queen’s Park, you would not believe the negative, derisive, disdainful language that [was] used to talk about people who suffer from mental health issues and addiction issues,” Fife said during the panel discussion.
“There is this philosophy at the legislature that people can just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but they can’t if they don’t have boots, right?”
With the provincial election quickly approaching, local individuals in the Waterloo Region are looking for opportunities such as this panel to hear from local candidates on issues that matter to them before heading to the polls.
“I think of most political parties, it’s the leader of the party that you hear. You don’t hear the voice of your local candidate. And for a lot of people, that matters more…looking more to that genuine, authentic interaction with a candidate who hopefully is from their community and can speak to the needs of their community,” Clancy said.
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