Greg Schirk, Conservative party

Is there any way in particular that you would like students to be involved in politics? How would you like students to be involved. In what way?

Student involvement in our political system is absolutely essential. Citizens of all ages are responsible for electing the people who govern the municipal, provincial and federal levels of government. And the leaders of each generation will ultimately take their turn governing and serving Canadians.

Student involvement begins with self-education – making sure that you really understand our political system and, in particular, the responsibilities of each level of government toward its constituents–and the responsibilities of citizens toward each level of government. Political responsibility goes both ways! It’s also important to have a solid understanding of the spectrum of political beliefs and where the various parties stand on the current issues of the day and on the issues that will shape your future. With self-education, you can base your decisions about who to support and elect on fact and understanding, not on simple stereotypes or on what other people say.

Some students will also want to become involved through student government (like the CSA) or through campus clubs (like the Campus Conservatives). As a lifelong political geek, I encourage this kind of involvement. But the first step is self-education. Knowledge is the basis for any type of political involvement.

What elements of your platform do you feel specifically pertain to students?

The PC plan (available at www.changebook.ca) will benefit students now and after graduation in at least four ways:

[First,] a PC government will invest in post-secondary education to increase accessibility. For example, we will redirect an existing $30 million fund to allow more students to qualify for OSAP.

[Secondly,] the PC’s believe that small business is the backbone of our economy and the primary source of jobs, opportunity, innovation, and risk. A PC government will ensure these businesses have every advantage to succeed and grow, which will in turn ensure that today’s students are graduating into a healthy jobs market.

[Thirdly,] a PC Government will put more money into the pockets of graduates (and their families) by providing meaningful tax relief, such as lowering income taxes by 5% on the first $75,000 of taxable income.

[Lastly,] a PC Government will also take a fiscally responsible approach to managing Ontario’s money.  The provincial debt is a quarter trillion dollars. It is increasing by $56 million per day! Since Baby Boomers are retiring, the responsibility for this debt will soon rest entirely on the shoulders of today’s students and their parents. PC’s will bring Ontario’s spending under control as soon as possible so that our debt can be reduced.

How can students and candidates communicate and form a better relationship for this political term?

I believe that government must listen to and communicate directly with the people it serves. If I am elected Guelph’s MPP for 2011-2015, I will set up effective means for the residents of Guelph – including the students at the University of Guelph­–to reach me. I will organize a variety of means that people can use to contact me to share their thoughts and concerns.  I’m already very Internet-savvy and keep up with the latest technologies, so my communication methods will be student-friendly.

As well, I will take advantage of invitations to speak to student groups in person. As someone with a long career in sales, I love to engage in face-to-face conversations and debates. If invited, I’ll do my best to be there.

However, in return for being open to communicating with students, I need students to be interested in communicating with me. I said earlier that student involvement begins with self-education. No matter what your political leanings are, I hope that you will let me help you understand what Progressive Conservatives stand for and why. Having a good relationship doesn’t mean we have to agree, but it does mean we have to be willing to learn about each other.

 

James Gordon, NDP

Is there any way in particular that you would like students to be involved in politics? How would you like students to be involved? In what way?

I want students and youth to be involved in all political arenas – not just marking an “x” on a ballot, although that is very, very important.

Students are engaging with the electoral process in inspiring ways of their own making, like vote mobs.  In a recent candidate debate, the local liberal candidate said that “students don’t vote.” We are delighted to discover that this is not the case!

Students at Guelph are engaged in political causes, activism and volunteerism of all kinds outside of the sphere of electoral politics. I want to start a genuine discussion about how we can work together to bridge the artificial divide between Queen’s Park and community activism.

I know that you, as students, are aware that political policies affect you directly and that there are viable alternatives to politics as usual. By working together, we can create the world that you want. We need the energy, optimism and creativity of students in all political realms to build a more fair, just society.

What elements of your platform do you feel specifically pertain to students?

There are key points of our platform for students, including a four-year tuition fee freeze, reimbursement of lost tuition revenue to institutions, elimination of the provincial portion of student loan interest, tuition forgiveness for new doctors who work in under-served communities [and] a workforce entry plan for youth.

The Liberals have let university tuition rise 30 per cent following their two-year freeze in 2004-06. Our commitment to students is to freeze tuition fees for four years. Since under-funded universities rely on that revenue as part of their regular operating budgets, we’ll reimburse institutions for the loss of income, to provide stability to them.

We’re taking our cue from the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, who’ve frozen their student fees. Following their example, the Ontario NDP plans to eliminate the provincial component of interest on student debt.

We’ll create a workforce entry plan, to ensure that graduates find good jobs.

The other parties have made promises to students, but they don’t help everyone equally. The Liberals might provide a tuition rebate, but it won’t apply to part-time students, students in professional programs, or graduate students. It won’t prevent tuition fee increases, and it won’t offer relief for people who incur debt.

How can students and candidates communicate and form a better relationship for this political term?

I’ve heard that you don’t feel like government is responsive to your concerns. That’s not good enough. Students in Guelph should feel they’ve been listened to, and that their MPP is going to take their issues seriously, and advocate for them at Queen’s Park.

I see the campaign itself as the beginning of an ongoing, two-way dialogue.

Candidates and political parties need to earn your vote and offer you action on the things that matter most to you, like affordable education and housing, effective public transit, and building an economy where graduates can find good jobs.

Some parties will tell you that the student vote doesn’t matter, or they’ll play on your fears to try to get your vote. I won’t use scare tactics or negative politics to get your vote. I am committing to open dialogue and change—and we are so close in this race that an NDP vote is positive and strategic. Voting power on campus is significant. Exercising your democratic right can change the face of leadership in this country in a dramatic way.

To learn more about what our policies, visit our website at jamesgordonndp.ca, or find us at facebook.com/jamesgordonndp.

 

Liz Sandals, Liberal Party

In what ways would you like to see students and other youth voters involved in politics?

It’s really easy when you’re on campus. I know Ontario Liberals have an affiliate of our riding association as a student club, so the Ontario Young Liberals link to both the provincial Liberals and the federal Liberals and get really quite involved in things that either myself or Frank Valeriote are doing. And we work quite closely with them, and not just at campaign time– because they obviously are doing lots of work on the campaign, and did lots of work for Frank Valeriote on his campaign– but we work with them between campaigns too. Either Frank or myself would go out to events that they would be having, but there have also been a number of provincial Young Liberal conferences at the University of Guelph, so Frank and I would also get involved in going to those provincial young liberal conferences so we can be talking to local issues to people from all over the province and talking about what it’s like to be a politician, so that’s a really good way for students to get involved in politics and have direct access to what’s going on politically.

In what ways can students and politicians communicate, and how can each ensure there is a relationship between the two?
When there’s an issue that is particularly of interest to university students, the external affairs commissioner, or whoever else is interested in that policy issue, would often come to my office and we would talk over the issue. Back when we first came into office, the Liberal government had hired Bob Rae […]to have a look at university funding, and the CSA had done a lot of work here locally on what was their position, and I met with them about their particular attitudes towards university funding and one of the comments that came out of that was middle class access to OSAP. So […] when it came back to our caucus and the minister of training, colleges and universities, I passed that info on and said we really have to look at this  […] and we actually did change the OSAP rules to accommodate that to some degree, so that was an example of when there was actually a direct track form CSA interest to influencing provincial policy.

I would have individual groups of students come and see me sometimes, sometimes a particular club, because I’m a woman and my own background is science, I’ll often get requests to come and talk to groups of students about issues of women in science. […]  So there’s all sorts of ways in which I would interact with different groups of students, and I actually am on campus relatively frequently, doing things with the administration and often that involves student representation too.

What elements of the Liberal Party platform do you feel specifically pertain to students?

The two parts of our platform that I’m getting the most interest in are the 30 per cent tuition cut for middle income families, [which] would apply to undergrad programs. […] We [would] take the average of all the undergraduate programs in Ontario and find the average, and then we’d take 30 per cent of that. We would pay that directly to the university, and then whatever the difference is the university would bill you for, but it would be approximately 70 per cent.

The other […] is the Green Energy Act, [which] provides a 20 year contract to people, and it can either be what’s called Microfit—it could be an individual homeowner, or a church, or a small business—right up to a commercial project. But people are getting 20-year contracts for generating solar, wind or, in some cases, small hydro-electric projects. There’s some interesting things going on here in Guelph like biogas with waste from Cargill or collecting methane from the old dump. And then the fact that, to get one of these contracts, your actual equipment and installation has to have Ontario content, that’s lead to all these jobs in Ontario, new jobs, and there’s actually 1000 jobs in Guelph, primarily related to solar, but some to wind, so students are really interested in the green energy file I’m finding.

 

Steve Dyck, the Green Party

Is there any way in particular that you would like students to be involved in politics? How would you like students to be involved. In what way? 

I would love to see students involved in talking about the issues. The thing about students is that they’re going to be around to experience the consequences of our decisions that we make today and they’re going to pay for them financially and they’ll also experience the social and environmental consequences or benefits of the decisions we make. So it’s really important that they think about the issues and be involved in using innovation and social engagement as a really important part of the political process.

What elements of your platform do you feel specifically pertain to students?

One of the main components of the Green platform is creating jobs for the 21st Century. [In] the 20th Century our economies were based on eliminating jobs, as we got more efficient with labour, we became more prosperous.  In the 21st Century it’s going to be an economy based on energy efficiency, so our platform offers ways for students to experience the benefits of investing in innovation and technology to ensure that Ontario is prosperous and that our children and our children’s children aren’t paying the debt for more nuclear power and for the environmental and social consequences of failing to address climate change and our carbon-based economy.

How can students and candidates communicate and form a better relationship for this political term? 

Transparency in government is a key component of our platform and we as a party, and I as a candidate, are committed to using technology to allow more interaction between policy development and the people that I represent. Using web based communication, webinars and Town Hall meetings– teleconference Town Hall meetings– really engaging with the citizens of Guelph to hear their concerns and engage with them on the issues that they need our government to be more responsive on.

 

Drew Garvie, the Communist Party

Is there any way in particular that you would like students to be involved in politics? How would you like students to be involved? In what way?

Democracy needs to be fought for. This struggle includes letters of protest, mass demonstrations, picket-lines, strikes, occupations, and…. voting. Not voting is exactly what the right-wing parties and their corporate owners want.

Voter turnout generally, and especially among youth, is at record lows. Does this mean that we are apathetic, that we don’t care about “politics”? We are deeply interested in the urgent issues of war, climate change, mass unemployment, housing, universal social programs, etc, as it is our future that is at stake.

It’s not us that have turned our backs on politics, it’s the right-wing political parties that have turned their back on youth. We have less and less confidence in these parties and in the antiquated and undemocratic “first-past-the-post” electoral system. Year after year, tuition sky-rockets while any increase to the minimum wage is lost to inflation. What serious solutions do the major parties present to young peoples’ current future of mcJobs, unemployment, student debt and environmental devastation? Yes, some of us are justifiably cynical, but cynicism is not a solution. The Big Business parties don’t address the needs of youth because they hope that we’ll feel disengaged and not act.

What elements of your platform do you feel specifically pertain to students?

Students happen to be people so all of our platform applies! Please check out www.votecommunist.ca for the whole thing.

That being said we do have policies on post-secondary that most students would be interested in. Tuition fees continues to be the biggest barrier to post-secondary education. Tuition in Ontario is now the highest across Canada and the average undergraduate student now graduates $37 000 in debt. My party proposes the elimination of tuition fees. This is very realistic considering many countries around the world have done so successfully. The list includes; Mexico, Cuba, Germany, all of Scandanavia (which also provides a living stipend), and many more. The 2.4 billion dollars in corporate tax cuts from last year alone would be enough to send every Ontario undergrad to school for free this year. It’s a question of priority and political will.

My Party is also in favour of ending military recruitment on campus. Students shouldn’t have to choose between going to war and making ends meet. Reversing privatization and corporatization is also a priority for the Communist Party. In order to fill the funding gap left by the province, the universities are forced to ask for more and more money from private sources (*cough – “Better Planet Project”). This means big corporate dollars that impede academic freedom and force research for profit, not for the benefit of communities. This also means the cutting of funding to “less profitable” programs and areas of research, for example the cutting of the University of Guelph’s Women’s Studies program two years ago.

How can students and candidates communicate and form a better relationship for this political term?

I’d say that’s mostly up to the candidate that gets elected. If they put forward an agenda that benefits students then we can work together. If not, then we as students should hold them accountable.

Consider this:

-Less than a hundred years ago millions of Canadians (women, Aboriginal people, Chinese, Japanese and Indo-Canadians) could not even vote, but we won through struggle;

-Labour unions fought for and won the weekend;

-After years of campaigning we won Medicare in Canada, a battle that our brothers and sisters in the US are still fighting. This system is threatened in this election;

-The women’s movement finally won reproductive rights with the de-criminalization of abortion (tell that to Tim Hudak);

-Massive protests helped force an end to the Vietnam war; today’s anti-war demos pushed the US withdrawal from Iraq and prevented Canadian troops being sent to Iraq in 2003.

Everything we have one has come from the ground up. This includes pressure from the student movement. Regardless of who wins on October 6th, we, as students, need to be a player in a broad “People’s Coalition” that will demand real progressive change from Queen’s Park.

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