CollingwoodToday has worked with a journalism student from Algonquin College to prepare a series of questions and answers with Simcoe-Grey candidates for your information. The topics discussed have a particular focus on the issues impacting youth and young adults in Canada, and in the Simcoe-Grey riding.
This series will include seven different articles with one question per article posted over the next couple of days.
This Q and A has been edited down for length and clarity.
The following are each candidate's answers to the following question: Most of the youths in Collingwood are working minimum wage service jobs, but there’s still a significant labour shortage in the area. What do you intend to do to help the youth in your community get better access to successful careers, that will then allow them to consistently and comfortably live in the area?
Terry Dowdall, Conservative: We need a strong economic development program that aims to attract, retain and support the expansion of businesses here in Simcoe-Grey.
Supporting business in our riding is key, as well as, supporting youth with post-secondary training to be successful.
The Conservative government supports businesses by reducing taxes, making it easier to invest, and streamlining federal regulations. If businesses succeed, that means there will be jobs for our youth here at home. The Conservative government will help with tax cuts that will apply to youth, and will modify the mortgage stress-test to make it easier for first-time home buyers.
Ilona Matthews, NDP: One thing we'd like to do is strengthen the labour laws so that part-timers would be eligible for benefits. Contractors would be eligible for benefits.
And of course, raising the minimum wage.
The other thing for students is education. We eventually want within the next four years to make sure that tuition is free so people don't have to worry about deciding whether they can afford to get an education or afford to get a career.
We need to bring in light industry now that we're going to be transferring over to green energy; there are going to be a lot more green energy jobs.
And if training and education is free for students, they can take that training. And if we bring light industry into this area, not just service and precarious jobs, that they would be more likely to getting educated. They'd be more likely to stay in the area.
Sherri Jackson, Green: We're going to implement a $15 federal minimum wage across the board.
We're also going to eliminate tuition for post-secondary institutions, colleges, universities, as well as trade schools and training programs so that our youth have better access.
When we move away from the fossil fuel economy, and start building a sustainable economy, there are an estimated four-million skilled trade jobs that are going to be created within Canada. So there will be access to high paying good jobs that will be permanent careers as opposed to just gig work that we currently have in our region.
Lorne Kenney, Liberal: In economic terms, the South Georgian Bay Area is overly dependent on tourism and serving our growing retirement community. Thankfully, both are moving up the value chain and are consistently generating better jobs.
However, we need many more new businesses that are export-oriented, knowledge-based and inherently environmentally friendly in order to expand the range of potential opportunities.
I would like to see the local campus become a destination campus focused on some speciality area, such as ecotourism or hospitality or perhaps gerontology issues and to be a test market for new products and services to serve both our current and ageing demographic. There is a real opportunity for new business ideas for helping people with some form of disability or other.
To that end, I would like to see the area be a national or international leader as a barrier-free community. All of these developments would require both vision and collaboration between all levels of government and other sectors of the economy and civil society. I can provide the kind of leadership that will enable that to occur.
Tony D'Angelo, Veteran's Coalition Party: I believe a lot of young people are not exposed to the potential of becoming a tradesperson. Working in the trades can make a great deal of money regardless of whether it's a union or non-union job.
I think the problem with the young people is a lot of the school systems are pushing them into a direction of getting involved with more jobs where there's not a high demand anymore. The construction trades are falling into a crisis right now. We don't have enough people to meet the requirements as the baby boomers are starting to retire.
I mean on an average tradespeople a journeyman makes $100,000 a year. I know that a lot of the kids end up in retail, or restaurant jobs and stuff like that, and there's nothing wrong with that. But unfortunately, the new provincial government has kept it at $14 an hour minimum wage. I think student wage is even less than that. The bottom line comes down to what can the employer afford to pay these kids.
Richard Sommer, PPC: The PPC favours smaller government, less intervention, and lower taxes. So all three of those things tend to put more money in the hands of businesses, and encourage innovation and encourage more availability for hiring.
Businesses have lower tax, farm tax and corporate taxes are going down from 50 to 10 per cent. So businesses have more available to them to hire people, including youth.
The other major and increasing problem is the unregulated entrance of some foreign workers. I'm not talking really about immigrants, but we import a lot of off-shore people to do jobs that used to be done by students. What happens is, these people are coming in and they're willing to work for lower than what would be the going rate. But we cannot assume that none of our youth want to do the job. Some would be willing to do those kinds of jobs, but they're all being given to offshore people. We need to make sure that there's a better way of monitoring who is coming in and that we aren’t being exploited. We don't want to give away those jobs.
It would be one thing if none of our youth wanted to do those things, and then we would have to say, 'Well, no, we don't have any choice.'
