Election battle joined in LFL&A

Jeff Green | Sep 22, 2011

There was no shortage of strong language at an all- candidates’ meeting that was presented by the Frontenac News at the Verona Lions Hall on Monday Sept. 19.

Randy Hillier, the Progressive Conservative incumbent, was the first to speak, and he wasted little time on pleasantries, characterizing the last eight years of Liberal Party rule under Dalton McGuinty as “atrocious”.

“Our provincial debt load has doubled to $130 billion and what do we have to show for it? We are now a have-not province. We need help from powerhouses such as Newfoundland and New Brunswick. Atrocious. We have 550,000 people unemployed, and what does McGuinty want to do, give a $10,000 tax credit for businesses to hire new Canadians, who haven't been here 5 years. What will that do for us here in Lanark, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington?” Hillier said.

“Wasn't that a good story?” said Liberal candidate Bill MacDonald in response. “If everything was so bad, where was our representative? This is a bad news story using numbers that have no basis whatsoever. In my opinion, especially in Frontenac and Lennox and Addington County, our representative has been non-existent, a no-show at meetings, someone who voted against every job creation measure ... In this riding alone, the McGuinty government has invested $36 million in infrastructure and Mr. Hillier has voted against every job creation measure that the Liberal government has proposed. And the Conservatives have no plan at all for job creation.”

Nancy Matte, the Green Party candidate, picked up on the tension between the other candidates.

“I don't want to hear what people haven't done or things that have gone wrong in the past,” she said, “I'm more interested in making good decisions for the long term health of the economy and the environment. We need to remember that things get magnified over time. The Green Party wants to talk about how food and farming and education are all related.”

For his part, Dave Parkhill from the NDP talked about his background as a social activist. He began as an advocate for his two autistic sons, which he said led him to work with school boards, agencies, care providers, and many others. “Eventually I found myself really getting engaged in how the system worked. I continued along that path, and have taken on a bigger role got on some boards along the way, and now I am entering politics for the first time. In this election I think that when people look at the NDP jobs policy they will see something that makes sense. What it says is that when someone creates a job, they get a tax break, and not a small tax break but a real tax break. That will work as well here as it does in Toronto.”

Members of the audience asked questions on topics as varied as rural cell phone and broadband service, public education, the candidates’ perceptions of theirs and their parties’ weaknesses, agriculture, and more.

In their responses to a question about public education, Hillier and MacDonald exemplified a stark difference of opinion that may be played out more comprehensively at a Public Education Night scheduled for Loughborough Public School next Monday night (September 26).

“Look at what's happening in our schools,” said Randy Hillier. “We have gotten rid of the fall report card, and we are now teaching sex ed in grade 1. We need to provide the teachers with the tools they need and let them decide what to do, and we need to get the bureaucrats out of the classroom.”

“After 8 years of Conservative rule, barely half of the students could write,” countered Bill MacDonald. “Since the Liberals took power eight years ago, 550 new schools have been built, including a high school in Smiths Falls, and a new school is coming to Sharbot Lake in a couple of years. Full-day kindergarten has been brought in to many schools and will be extended to the entire province soon. Today Ontario schools are ranked in the top ten in the world.”

Dave Parkhill did not paint as rosy a picture as Bill MacDonald. “There are problems in our schools, and more so in the rural areas, and it stems back to when Mike Harris ruined the funding formula. All these years later, the formula is still broken,” he said.

Although there have been a series of articles in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper about a tax dispute Randy Hillier's wife has had with the Canada Revenue Agency over capital gains taxes, which resulted in lien being placed on the Hillier family home before the dispute was resolved in recent weeks, there were no questions from the floor about that issue.

But it did come up nonetheless, leading to the most potentially explosive exchange of the evening.

The final question of the evening was about taxation, and Bill MacDonald was the last candidate to answer the question.

“I'll start by pointing out that I pay my taxes,” MacDonald said.

This prompted Randy Hillier to grab his microphone.

“Don't you start talking about that,” he said angrily, but the exchange was interrupted and MacDonald was told by the moderator (yours truly) to stay away from snide comments and answer the question as it had been posed.

There are two other opportunities for readers in the News' distribution area to attend all-candidates’ meeting. There is a meeting tomorrow night (Friday, September 23) at the Kaladar Community Centre as well as the aforementioned education forum in Sydenham on Monday night.

(We would like to thank the Verona Lions for the set up of the hall and Dale from Sound on Sound productions – Soundonsound.ca for the professional sound system.)