Joy Wakefield, NDP
Thunder Bay - Superior North
The forestry, mining, and energy sectors are crucial for our economy. If elected, how do you propose working with Indigenous communities and those concerned with environmental destabilization?
Well, with respect to Indigenous communities, I mean, UNDRIP [The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples] is part of Canadian law. So the free prior informed consent of Indigenous communities that are going to be impacted by whatever forestry, mining, or energy projects that we're talking about is necessary for the project to move ahead.
I know that there can be a lot of complications sometimes between levels of government and a lot of red tape. So I think it's important to make sure that we streamline processes and make sure that they're efficient. Sometimes, you know, the province is asking for stuff and then the federal government is asking for stuff, and there can be duplication. I think it's important as much as possible that we make those processes straightforward and clear and work together at different levels of government.
And of course, as you said, those sectors are important to Canadians because there are lots of jobs involved. And it's important to support the work that people are engaged in and make sure that they can maintain employment and that more jobs are brought to communities. So we have to obviously balance the environmental aspect of things and the regulations and processes that we have to protect the environment against what communities are wanting. And so it's a dance that we do.
We have to maintain the environment because we rely on it, right? There are lots of communities that are very close to development projects, and we want to make sure that their way of life and that their ability to drink clean water and things like that is preserved. You know, Grassy Narrows is a pertinent example of a community that has suffered mercury poisoning because of industry practices and the government failing to uphold basic rights for the community and basic needs for clean water and access to food that's not contaminated by mercury in the environment. So we can't have disasters like that happening for people who live in this country. And at the same time, we need to make sure that the projects that we need to support Canadian workers and to support Canadian businesses are efficient and can go ahead and have what they need with respect to that as well.
Housing, clean drinking water, healthcare access, and treaty rights are significant concerns for Indigenous communities in NWO; how would you address these if elected?
With respect to housing and Indigenous people. So through the confidence and supply agreement, the NDP was actually able to secure $ 8.3 billion in total federal funding to help address the urgent unmet housing needs of Indigenous peoples that are living in different areas. And that included 4 billion dedicated to community distinctions based funding for First Nations, Inuit, and Metis people living away from their home communities. So the NDP absolutely supports the housing needs of First Nations, Inuit, and Metis peoples.
With respect to clean drinking water. Our leader has been to Neskantaga, I believe twice, to meet with Chief Moonias with respect to the boil water advisory in Neskantaga, which is 30 years at this point. It was 20 years at the beginning of the Liberals term where they indicated that they were wanting to address boil water advisories. And here we still are where many communities don't have access to clean water. So that's an important thing, that it's an important priority for our party to make sure that people do have access to clean drinking water. And we definitely want to target that.
With respect to healthcare access, absolutely. As someone who sat on the board of the hospital and has been involved in healthcare governance for a number of years now, it's concerning to watch the erosion of our healthcare system which is due to both in Ontario provincial choices to not properly fund a lot of healthcare services and also to federal funding that has eroded year over year compared to provincial investment. So the NDP's position is to protect health care, to properly fund health care and, and the NDP has brought us an expansion of public healthcare for the first time in years with respect to dental care and pharmacare. So we want to keep pushing the envelope on that to give people more access to drugs, especially drugs and medications that will improve their lives and improve their health and to keep ensuring that people can qualify for, and that more people can qualify for, dental care. And we'd love to obviously see an expansion to things like vision care and mental health care as well in the future.
And so with respect to treaty rights, I mean we believe in following through on our commitments. And I know that there are a lot of treaties that are currently under negotiation. So like there are, there are some new. I think there's a treaty that was just newly ratified out west and there are some still being worked on. So I would just say simply that we believe in keeping our promises and so we need to work with Indigenous communities to ensure that their rights are respected.
Many NWO residents state they’re facing hardships due to the rising costs of housing, groceries, and fuel; how would you address these if elected?
With respect to groceries, two of the commitments that the NDP has made, number one is to put a price cap on basic essentials. So that would help ensure that organizations aren't gouging people because the cost of average groceries over the last three years has increased about 20%, which is significant for people. We also want to remove GST from essential goods. So that would include things like groceries, restaurant meals, diapers, kids clothing, phone and internet bills, and home heating. And that would help bring costs down for people who are currently paying tax on all of those things. So that would both help to bring the price down as well as to keep the cost from escalating going forward.
With respect to housing, the NDP wants to address the fact that housing since 2015, when the Liberals got into power, rent prices have largely doubled across Canada. And the Liberals promised to stop rent evictions, but haven't followed through on that. So the NDP wants to make sure that we are banning predatory practices that target renters and make things more difficult for them and work on national rent control plans. In terms of homeowners, a lot of people are struggling to pay their mortgage, and mortgage payments have gone up about $1,000 over the last 10 years. There's also a big shortage of homes for people. So the NDP's plan is also to build more homes. There's going to be a plan announced to help first time home buyers. There's going to be some regulation with respect to big firms that are buying up properties that don't need them for housing while other people do. So yeah, building homes, implementing rent control, working with provinces to do that and targeting unfair practices.
The Fraser Institute recently released a study which states that Thunder Bay has Ontario’s highest rate of property and violent crime; if elected, how do you propose lowering this rate?
So as a former defense counsel who worked for legal aid for a number of years in this community and across the north, it's challenging to watch the situation in the courts. There's a big backlog of cases and the courts are often overwhelmed and not quickly dealing with matters. We're also seeing a lot of the use of jail pre-sentence while people are waiting for trials. Canada has a higher rate of pre-sentence incarceration than the United States. And it's not a good thing when you're using the phrase incarceration and higher than the United States. So this ties in in a lot of ways to the opioid crisis and to the homelessness crisis. We're often using jail as a solution, a long term solution for, for dealing with things like addictions, like mental health issues.
So let's use an example. And my grandpa had dementia at the end of his life, right? And if he had, in a moment of not remembering who my grandma was, had pushed her, for example, away while she was trying to help him, if my grandma had called the police, that could have been a domestic assault, which would have then meant that the regular policy on domestic violence means, okay, we have to lay charges. We have to tell this person now to live somewhere else. They have to have no contact with their partner who they were living with. And so we have a lot of these, you know, tough on crime policies that actually end up hurting people who have dementia, who have Alzheimer's, veterans who are dealing with PTSD and things like that.
And so we need solutions for dealing with criminal offenses that address people's humanity and are actually long term solutions. When we look at—I talked about the issue with pre-sentence incarceration—one of the big problems is that there aren't a lot of treatment programs in the jails which are the holding facilities, right? So once you're sentenced, you might go to a jail and there might be addictions treatment, and counseling and other things like that if you haven't already finished serving your sentence in advance. But in the advanced holding facilities, there are a lot of difficulties for people accessing any kind of treatment. So if we take someone who's got an addictions issue, we put them in holding pending their trial, they serve their whole sentence in that holding facility and then they're released at the end of their trial a couple years later. They haven't accessed any treatment. So we need to put money and resources into programming and health care that actually helps solve the issue. And so the NDP's position on dealing with some of the opioid related issues is targeting things like prevention and education and treatment programming and the healthcare needs that are underlying a lot of the issues that happen.
According to the latest information from the Office of the Chief Coroner, the Thunder Bay district has the highest opioid-related death rate in the province; on a federal level, how do you propose lowering this rate?
Unfortunately, that's not surprising. I recently watched the series called Dopesick and I have to say it was, it was really enlightening and it talked a lot about the challenges that people are facing. And there was also a movie that I believe was produced locally called A Sobering Story. And if people have a chance to, to watch that, it's also very helpful because it brings in a lot of the nuance to this issue that's difficult to do in a three minute response to something.
Opioid addiction can really impact people's brains. And so we have to invest in treatment programs that are actually helping people get back on their feet. One of the big problems that we have is there are a lot of piecemeal solutions, right? Oh, go to detox for a few days and then you have to qualify for some other program and then there's a waiting period and then you might qualify for some other program and then there's a waiting period. And people are just constantly left in these lurches where they want treatment and they want to get access to these programs, but they can't. And so when people can't access those treatment programs, relapses are much more likely. And so we need to beef up and invest in those programs because that's what actually helps stop the problem. You can put someone with an addiction issue in jail for a year and then what happens if they don't get treatment? They're going to come out and they're still going to have an addiction issue.
So we need to stop doing what we're doing because what we're doing isn't working. But we've been trying to increase funding for policing and for jail and you know, putting more people in jail on an ongoing basis. And you're telling me that at the end of all of that we still have one of the highest rates of property and violent crime and we have the highest opioid related death rates in the province. So what we're doing isn't working. We need to take a different approach and start looking at, like I said, more education and prevention, more harm reduction, more investing in mental health care. You know, if we had better mental health care supports and addressed some of the underlying issues that people were dealing with, it would be easier. You know, sometimes those things lead directly into addiction. So that would be the NDP's approach.
If elected, how do you plan on alleviating any of the negative effects residents and business owners are experiencing with tariffs?
So with respect to the tariffs, I mean we're already seeing, we're already seeing across the country that there are workers that are being laid off. And so there are a couple strategies that the NDP has to try to target some of the negative effects. One is we want to create a buy Canadian strategy so that we're building more of what we need here and prioritizing products made by Canadian workers. We need to make sure that our economy doesn't rely purely on the United States.
The homes that we talked about building will be a big part of that as well as upgrading the infrastructure that we need, working on an energy grid that helps go across provinces instead of just across to the United States. We need to diversify our trade relationships and we need to incentivize and support more value added manufacturing in Canada. We also support a Workers for Canada plan which is a reform of the EI system involving removing barriers to EI, extending the duration of benefits to 50 weeks, increasing the benefit level to 2/3 of insurable earnings with a minimum weekly benefit of $450. We want to eliminate the one week waiting period and expand the workshare program allowing top ups for workers who have fewer hours of work.
And we also recognize that we need to cover at risk contractors and self employed individuals who lose their work and income as well. We want to also do an outreach campaign and potentially an ad campaign that's going to help appeal to US counterparts in terms of state leaders, unions, and other business leaders. The NDP wants to make a challenge under the CUSMA [The Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement] to have that ready to go and work with allies to pressure the United States. And we also want to reverse conservative cuts of over 1,000 border officers, which will also help to ensure border security, as well as address a lot of the smuggling and trafficking that we've been seeing, which would address some of the previous points that we talked about as well here.
The NDP wants to have dollar for dollar retaliatory tariffs as well as look at cutting the supply of critical minerals to the US if it all comes to that. So those are some of the actions that we will take. And so some of those actions target removing the tariffs. And some of those, like the reform to EI, as well as, you know, addressing the housing issues and addressing the cost of living issues, will also help with the impacts of tariffs, which are going to potentially be higher costs of products and job loss and things like that.
