Friday 30 September 2011

Niagara This Week's questions for St. Catharines candidates

Niagara This Week asked all St. Catharines candidates to answer two question in 150 words or less each, here are the links to all the candidates' answers:

http://www.niagarathisweek.com/news/article/1136705--questions-for-st-catharines-riding-candidates-1

What election issue have you been hearing about in your riding that you plan to act on?



http://www.niagarathisweek.com/news/article/1136738--questions-for-st-catharines-riding-candidates-2

From a provincial standpoint, what do you think can be done to jumpstart Niagara’s struggling economy?



Here are my answers to both questions:

#1 (the election issue I've been hearing about and what I will do about it)

Health care: we’re dying needlessly from hospital infection outbreaks because staffing cuts don’t give enough time to clean; emergency rooms are moved over half-an-hour away in favor of a P3 (public-private partnership i.e. for profit) hospital that costs more in ambulances; and bed cuts are so bad that when a 21-year old St. Catharines man got sick abroad earlier this year he was blocked from getting treatment here because there wasn’t even one bed available.  He later died.  The solution: restore the beds, staffing, and services that were cut in favor of corporate tax-cuts which created only record profits and not jobs.  What little money was left is being siphoned off into private profits for outsourcing.  I am the only candidate who says we must hold elected officials accountable for these preventable deaths because the nurses and unions have been warning us this would happen. Voting communist says this loudest.


#2 (how to jump start Niagara's economy provincially)


Ontario has one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the industrialized world but companies sit on record profits instead of investing or creating jobs.  We must reverse these cuts so corporations pay their fair share. Use the money for public investment in re-building industry and the energy and public transportation infrastructure.  Corporations don’t invest when the economy is depressed, only the government will do this.  This is how our industry was built earlier and we can do it again.  Instead, the big business parties shift the tax burden from those who can pay to working people who cannot, and cut our public services too, which hasn’t worked.  Stop the job hemorrhage.  If companies want to close a plant, hold a public tribunal and if the plant is profitable (many closed plants here were!) we’ll run them as a crown corporation instead of layoffs and pulling machines out of Canada. 

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