Marcus Powlowski, Liberal (incumbent)
Thunder Bay - Rainy River
The forestry, mining, and energy sectors are crucial for our economy. If re-elected, how do you propose working with Indigenous communities and those concerned with environmental destabilization?
Good question. And I think that this is one of the major issues facing our country is that certainly we want to be able to develop our resources for economic reasons, but also for security reasons. We certainly don't want to be dependent on countries like China. And in addition, when you look at, for example, producing electrical vehicles, the lithium that comes out of China is very dirty lithium, meaning that lithium takes a lot of electricity. When that electricity is from, from coal powered generators, you're producing a lot of greenhouse gases. So it's important for Canada that we don't have to rely on other countries for essential things. And for that reason, critical minerals are an important thing here in Northern Ontario. Certainly we have a lot, a lot of them.
I have, as you may know, worked a lot with trying to get our government to provide some funding for lithium companies like Frontier Metals to be able to set up a lithium refinery here. Certainly the only way things are going to happen is with the cooperation of the Indigenous people. So having a strong cooperation with the Indigenous people is important. And with that in mind, I would like to point out that we have Charles Fox running for the Liberals in Kenora. I played a role in getting Charles to run and get our party to take him. I think having somebody who's the former grand chief of NAN [Nishnawbe Aski Nation] representing us in dealing with those communities and representing those communities is really important. And certainly I think our government realizes and the whole point of critical minerals, a lot of the critical minerals relate to the green transition, which I think is reality one way or the other. But if in the Green transition you're causing environmental destruction, it's kind of counter to the whole purpose of the Green transition. So certainly it's important that safeguards are in place.
And I think our government has been involved and we have lots of safeguards. I think [Prime Minister Mark] Carney has suggested that there be one process for addressing environmental concerns rather than having like provincial and federal at the same time. So it's a necessary barrier. But we don't want to have unnecessary red tape and getting projects going, especially when we have the cooperation of the Indigenous community.
In that vein, I would like to also point out the road to Pikangikum and the bridge to Pikangikum. That was certainly something that I advocated for, helped to get funding for that project which will help get the lithium to market, but also is very much needed for the community of Pikangikum. In the months prior to my pushing to finance that there had been three deaths of children in the community because they couldn't get them out. I've worked in similar communities, fly-in Indigenous communities, and that's always a problem, getting people out. So I would say that's the road. There is a good example of how with cooperation you get a win-win situation. It helps the Indigenous community with their health care but it also brings jobs to the community and they're all on the same page in terms of the development project there. The local Indigenous communities, the companies, and the government. And I think that getting that cooperation is really essential. You can't just, as Doug Ford has suggested, just drive a bulldozer up there regardless of how the local people feel about it.
Housing, clean drinking water, healthcare access, and treaty rights are significant concerns for Indigenous communities in NWO; how would you address these if re-elected?
Well, I think we have to be better at the business of governance. I think the political willpower has been there. But for example with drinking water, I think the government has certainly shown its intent on addressing the issue but I think there are technical reasons why we haven't been very good at doing things. So anybody as I grew up and well, you live in Kaministiquia you know that some winters your pipes freeze, pump breaks, you have to fix it. And there's my understanding is from people who work on the water supplies in those communities, each community has a different system. And so when this there's a problem with the system you have to send up someone from Thunder Bay who's got to determine like what's your pump, what parts you need. You have to bring in the parts. There isn't one kind of universal system. There seems to be poor coordination so that where's we don't fix the problems as promptly as we ought to.
Well healthcare, and I worked a couple of years in Indigenous communities as a doctor at times as the only doctor in Norway House, Manitoba, Maine, Labrador and Iqaluit. Providing adequate health care to those places is difficult, very dependent on flying people in and out, I would suggest Thunder Bay. And this is something I think we ought to be concentrating on as a community that we help develop the expertise in all these areas, whether it's water, housing, healthcare for remote communities, because we are kind of the gateway to those communities. These are major issues.
If you look at a map of the world, there are not that many places in the world that don't have roads into them, but we got a lot of them in Northern Ontario. So the challenges and their real challenges in healthcare and housing. We have a particular expertise in this, I think for the university and the college and the government. We ought to put more money into creating and making Thunder Bay a center of expertise in healthcare for northern communities, in housing for northern communities, in water. Because these are, when you look again at the map of Canada and the U.S. like how many places in the United States are there no roads into? Not many. So it is a kind of specialized area that perhaps needs unique approaches.
You also mentioned housing is another one. And with housing you need water, you need electricity. I think we ought to be looking at innovative ways of approaching those problems where perhaps, for example, more could be done with solar, wind power, water power for those communities. And I don't know whether we've really done as much as we could in considering different ways of approaching these problems.
Many NWO residents state they’re facing hardships due to the rising costs of housing, groceries, and fuel; how would you address these if re-elected?
Well, so many of those things, for example inflation and the cost of food, a lot of that is because of global factors. Inflation was worldwide coming out of COVID. And so I would suggest that with some of those things that are global issues and driven for example by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, pushing up the price of fuel, that is something that we can't address. Now if you look at the inflation rate that certainly has decreased over the last year or so, I think we're around 2% or something, which was what the government was aiming towards. So we are doing that.
So it was your cost of living, housing, and I would say in terms of affordability in life, one of the things that we want is to have a robust economy, to have well paying jobs. And if you ask who is going to be the best in ensuring that we have the robust economy that we need in order to finance all our social safety net, for example, I would absolutely say that Carney is overwhelmingly the best qualified, given he is kind of an economic financial superstar. Not just in Canada, but globally. In terms of being former governor of Bank of Canada, governor Bank of England, a top executive with a number of companies, if there is a leader who's going to be able to navigate us through, especially with the, the threats, the existential threats posed by Trump and the tariffs, who's going to help us through these troubled economic times? Here's a guy with a record of how he brought England through Brexit, he brought us through the 2008 financial crisis. He's absolutely the guy to kind of ensure that we weather these economic stormy times.
And as for housing and the cost of housing, we as the government have certainly been addressing this issue for a while. There's the first time ownership Savings Plan we've already announced. We're cutting the GST for first time home buyers for houses under a million dollars. There's things like the Housing Accelerator Fund which we gave over 20 million to Thunder Bay in order to provide the finances to help the municipality to change the rules so we could build more houses. Because a lot of times the problem is like with bylaws. And so for example, in Thunder Bay they changed it to allow fourplexes in places.
Carneys talked about more modular housing, more of an innovative approach. If you drive around Thunder Bay, you see a lot of these little box houses which were the post war houses when the federal government last really became involved in a major way in housing. And I would certainly think when he talks about innovation, he's looking at those kinds of approaches to cheaper, rapidly built housing. And he said that our plan is to double the number of houses being built per year. And I say part and parcel of this issue is immigration because part of the thing that has contributed to rising cost of housing is the rapid increase in population through immigration, which yes, has helped to create a problem.
That's why we've limited immigration. But I'd also suggest, particularly in a place like Thunder Bay, Northwestern Ontario, part of the problem in building more homes and I've talked to people in various who were kind of involved in building that they could be doing more work, but they don't have enough employees. They can't get enough employees. Same with like Resolute with their sawmills which make the lumber to build the homes. I know talking to the people in Atikokan, when they want to build something in Atikokan, they talk to contractors in Thunder Bay and the contractors in Thunder Bay are busy enough in Thunder Bay and they say, “you want us to come out to Atikokan and you got to make it worth our while,” which means driving up the cost. So having more people in the trades, more people in construction would certainly help to address the supply problem. So we need immigrants for that. So it is a bit of a balancing act with immigration in terms of bringing in immigrants to do the jobs but also being aware that that's potentially going to worsen the housing problems. So it's a bit of a chicken and the egg problem.
The Fraser Institute recently released a study which states that Thunder Bay has Ontario’s highest rate of property and violent crime; if re-elected, how do you propose lowering this rate?
Great, great question. I certainly agree that we have a problem with crime. We've long had a problem with crime in Thunder Bay. I would say an important contributor to crime is poverty, lack of jobs. So a robust economy certainly will contribute to addressing that issue. So get people good, well paying jobs. Having less people unemployed on welfare is certainly something that I think would contribute and that's why things like getting the lithium refinery, getting the subway car contracts from Toronto is really important because you have people making money, a happy economy, I think you're going to see that decrease.
I think we also have to, and I actually put in a proposal for our platform, I don't know if we'll accept it, that if elected, we would rapidly convene a group of experts to advise our government on how to increase, improve recruiting for police forces. The RCMP has been in the process of ramping up the number of officers in Northwestern Ontario. I've been very much pushing for that working with the RCMP and the government. But one of their big problems is recruitment and it's not just a problem in Northwestern Ontario. It's a problem across the country with the RCMP. A big problem with Indigenous policing not having enough policing. I think it's certainly essential that people feel safe in their communities, and have police that are available to respond when there's an issue. And I have been involved, there was our federal money that went to policing and policing in Thunder Bay. It was a little circuitous because the money went to the province and then from the province to Thunder Bay. So tracking the money and saying exactly where it went, it was a little bit difficult. But that money was and did apparently come to Thunder Bay.
But addressing the crime issue has been a fairly major concern for me and I think [Thunder Bay Police] Chief Fleury has been great. I've worked with, I've gotten to know him quite well and I certainly look to provide any assistance that we can be in terms of addressing this issue.
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?
So I've been very much involved with this issue. The Health committee, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health, which I'm part of and have been for the past six years. We did a big study on this which was ongoing, which was interrupted and now finished. And we won't come to conclusions, but we, and I spend a considerable amount of time thinking about this, dealing with this and speaking to experts around the world on this problem. As a former emergency room doctor, I certainly have seen in my life and treated lots of overdoses. Obviously it's far better to prevent people from overdosing to begin with. I think the causes and the solutions for the opioid crisis, the drug crisis are really multifaceted.
Certainly one of the things again is an improved economy, which I think will, and if you look at why Thunder Bay is worse off than other places, I think that's part of the issue. I think having adequate resources for addressing mental health problems is absolutely essential. That the waiting times to see doctors and specialists is too long. We don't have enough people dealing with substance abuse. We need to have rapid access to OAT, which is opioid agonist treatment.
If you look at globally who's been the best in responding to the drug crisis, some countries have done better than others. Portugal, Switzerland for example, I think are two good examples of countries that have done better in terms of safe supply. I would say Switzerland is the model we have to look at which is not giving people a bunch of pills. And BC is moving to this as well, only observed treatment, but they have a lot more observed treatment. And once there's a therapeutic relationship between the user and the physician, they may allow some take homes, but it's only when there's a well established relationship after months and months. So it's a very big problem.
There's drug courts which is another thing that, which we, we don't have in Thunder Bay, but a lot of places have drug courts, which again is a different pro, a different approach to drug offenses which kind of looks at, at more of a therapeutic approach to crimes related to drug use. We don't have that. Another, and I think part of the whole substance abuse, homelessness, mental health problems are all kind of intertwined and part of the approach to all that too is I think more supervised housing which and probably, I think probably a need for more chronic psychiatric facilities which as we know Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital at one time existed. We closed those down. But there's a certain amount of people who are homeless drug users who have mental health problems that I think and BC is doing this as well. Looking at BC, I think it is in a lot of ways ahead of us and the rest of Canada and their approach that they have. They are in the process of addressing and creating more chronic, chronic psychiatric beds.
But also going door to door, you meet a lot of people who've lost somebody, especially young people. I've got teenage boys. And you know, this is a worry for all of us in Thunder Bay. And you have to. There isn't a simple answer for this complex thing. I would say, the other thing that I would say that I would really stress is that when we look at solutions, and I think safe injection sites are one of the solutions is a proven cost effective approach. But I would say one thing that has been somewhat missing in our approach is that we also have to recognize that other people in society should not be, should be adversely affected as little as possible by the substance abuse problems.
So in a lot of downtown cores where there has been a proliferation of drug use homelessness, it's kind of created “no go zones” in the downtown areas where people don't want to go. Old people don't want even, never mind old people, even younger people don't want to go because they feel physically threatened to go to those places.
So I think it's important that that doesn't happen, that the government does address the problem and does try to help people with substance abuse problems. But I don't think we want to create a downtown core in regions which are basically open drug use where there is little policing. I don't think that serves the interest of the community. The other people in the community who also have the right to be able to use the downtown areas because it's their community as well. So you have to kind of, I think a big part of governance is striking that balance between competing interests.
If re-elected, how do you plan on alleviating any of the negative effects residents and business owners are experiencing with tariffs?
Well, I think the most important thing in our response is an intelligent response. Trump is difficult to play at. Sometimes he's bluffing, sometimes he's joking, but certainly he means it a lot of the time. And he does present an existential threat. He does say, has said or implied that he wants us to become the 51st state. That is not going to happen. We're nobody's lap dog and we never will be, as we certainly will not be Donald Trump's lap dog. So now, having said that and established that that's not in the cards, how do you play Donald Trump in the American administration, which seems to, from day to day, change its approach? I think you have to have an intelligent approach. And I think Mark Carney, we managed to yesterday, get by better than most countries. And there's no standard tariff, but there are tariffs on steel and aluminum. There's tariffs on certain aspects of cars. There looks like there'll be tariffs coming on, on softwood, lumber, and pharmaceuticals.
So I think number one in our approach to all these things is we'd like to have the tariffs removed. Trade wars don't help anybody. I think global trade has benefited both consumers and workers worldwide. So the biggest aim is whether through friendship and cooperation agreements with the United States, we can get them to drop the tariffs. But if that isn't the case, then we've already shown and applied retaliatory tariffs aimed at goods coming from politically connected parts of the country, like, for example, Kentucky bourbon. You put tariffs on bourbon. Canadians don't buy bourbon. And then you have Kentucky people pressuring their government to get rid of our tariffs. So Canada gets rid of their tariffs.
But on top of that, I mean, if the Americans were to ratchet up, we could, we could impose export taxes, for example. Most of the United States potash comes, which is a big part of fertilizer, comes from Canada. Most American uranium comes from Canada. Most imported oil comes from Canada. And it's heavy crude, which doesn't have an American replacement. Their refineries need the heavy crude. Electricity, semiconductors, a whole bunch of things the Americans depend on us for. We don't depend on the United States for a lot, but we could put either export taxes on those or even export restrictions.
So I think we have to be nimble in response to the United States. If we can get along with them and avoid things to begin with, that's better. If we can, through agreements and or threats of retaliatory measures, get them to drop their tariffs, that is ideal.
But if this becomes a political issue overwhelmingly, the biggest decision or the biggest thing that voters ought to consider in this election is who do we want sitting across from Donald Trump and Elon Musk negotiating for Canada? Do we want, and it comes down to two people, it's either going to be [Pierre] Poilievre or Carney. And we have a choice between a guy who's been former governor of Bank of Canada, governor Bank of England, and led both those organizations through very tumultuous economic times, or do we want a guy who went right out of undergraduate university into Parliament, has never had another job in his life other than being a paperboy. Who's going to better represent us? I think pretty clearly Carney would be the guy.
