On June 7, Ontarians will be casting their vote to elect their Legislative Assembly. For those voting in the West Hamilton-Ancaster-Dundas riding, the riding in which McMaster resides, voters have four choices: the incumbent Ted McMeekin from the Liberal Party, Ben Levitt of the Progressive Conservative Party, the National Democratic Party’s Sandy Shaw and Peter Ormond, representing the Green Party.
Each of these parties have a unique approach to three major issues the McMaster Students Union has highlighted in the past couple of years: tuition, transportation and affordable housing.
Of the parties covered, two have released official platforms: the NDP and the Green Party. The Liberal Party released the Ontario budget back in March 2018, which makes up of what the Liberals plan on implementing. The PC Party has not released an official platform since the party leadership shifted from Patrick Brown to Doug Ford, and thus all points listed are taken from press releases or other media outlets and their coverage.
Tuition
In the past few years, the McMaster Students Union has committed itself to advocating for lower tuition, typically through their membership in the Ontario University Student Alliance. OUSA has released documents and blog posts advocating for the lowering and control of international students’ tuitions,tuition freezesand other like-minded initiatives. Previous MSU board members have also advocated for tuition freezes, such as former MSU president Ehima Osazuwa and his Tuition Task Force.
The Liberal Party has committed itself to creating more Ontario Student Assistant Program tuition grants for low-income students to pay the average cost of one year’s tuition.
The NDP, on the other hand, promises to offer tuition grants to all students who are eligible for OSAP. The NDP also plans on wiping any student loan interest either owed or paid to the government by any student who currently holds a provincial loan.
The Green Party plans on offering interest-free loans, meanwhile the PC Party has not made a discernible statement on post-secondary tuition.
Transportation
The MSU has advocated for better transportation multiple times, most notably with their delegations to City Hall in support of a light rail transit. Former MSU vice president (Education) Blake Oliver held multiple meetings with relevant city hall officials during her term to advocate in favour of bringing LRT to Hamilton.
In addition, improving transportation has been a major topic for MSU presidential candidates. Ikram Farah, the current MSU president, plans on working with Metrolinx to improve GO bus transit by extending key bus lines to run later into the evening.
The Liberal Party promises to invest $79 billion into different transportation projects all over the province and match a federal infrastructure grant of $5 billion, of which roughly $4 billion will go to improving public transit.
The NDP promises to invest over $800 million in transit all over the province, but most notably promises to immediately start construction on Hamilton’s LRT project, in addition to a number of other projects all over the province.
Since the Ford campaign has not put out a clear platform, it is still unclear what the PC Party plans to do with respect to public transit. The PC Party does, however, plan on taking a different approach to the LRT project by putting it to a vote, noting that the city will still receive funding for other infrastructure projects if it is voted down.
When it comes to public transit, the Green Party is squarely focused on making it more environmentally friendly and sustainable by phasing out combustion engines, as an example.
Affordable Housing
In the past year, the MSU’s main advocacy team worked extensively on projects aimed to improve the living standards of students. Both former MSU vice president (Education) Ryan Deshpande and current MSU vice president (Education) Stephanie Bertolo worked on projects such as the Landlord Wiki project, aimed to improve the experiences of student tenants. Such problems are a part of the larger affordable housing crisis going on in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.
The Liberal Party promises to invest over $1 billion in affordable housing, with the aim of eliminating chronic homelessness in Ontario by 2025. The Liberal Party also promises $547 million over five years to improve social housing to make the buildings more sustainable.
The NDP’s approach to affordable housing is interwoven into their approaches to other issues such as mental health and the opioid crisis, but overall they plan on building more than 30,000 housing units for those marginalized.
To address the affordable housing crisis, the PC Party plans to allow some development in the Green Belt, the world’s largest protected green space.
If elected, the Green Party would institute a rule requiring all new developments include a minimum of 20 per cent affordable homes, in addition to other approaches such as laneway housing.
Each party offers its own approach to addressing the major issues highlighted by the MSU in the past years. If you wish to learn more about each candidate, you may check each party’s website for more information.
Recently, the Sil took to the streets to find out what McMaster thinks about Ontario elections. You can watch the full video here.
In the 2011 Canadian federal election, the age group of 18-24 year old students came in with the lowest voter turnout rate. This age group only had 38.8 percent voter turnout. This statistic is downright embarrassing for these Canadians. University students along with other young adults should be lining up at the polling stations to get their voices heard.
This is the mindset all Canadians should have. They should want to play an active role in this democratic and free country. This age category specifically is filled with university students, college students, even high school students as well as recent high school graduates who entered directly into the workforce. All of these different demographics of young voters are important for the country’s economy, making them an important asset to the government. The age group of 18-24 are some of the most indirectly and directly affected citizens through government action plans and legislature. That being said, why don’t they care enough to go to the polling station? Shouldn’t everyone want to have influence in what is being done at the parliamentary level?
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In the recent Federal budget there were many key points that affect young citizens, from fostering job creation, innovation and trade, as well as the government battling youth unemployment. These are many ways the government directly affects the 18-24 demographic, yet young people don’t care. Toronto’s mayor is smoking crack, the Ontario budget deficit is through the roof, yet young people still don’t care. But that video of Rob Ford running into a camera has how many likes on Facebook? The youth’s ideology of politics is inane: on Facebook everyone bashes the current senate that is filled with scandal, and then they glorify Rob Ford, who recently went on Jimmy Kimmel Live, yet they still don’t vote.
One of the biggest reasons found proving a lack of voter turnout rate (regardless of the age category) is insufficient education and knowledge levels. Coming from a generation who lives on the computer, and never leaves home without their phone, shouldn’t we be the most educated on day-to-day news?
Seemingly, they should be the most educated on these topics because these Canadians are the ones in the classrooms, spending their days at the libraries. Therefore a Canadian university student has no excuse on not being knowledgeable on the elections, and the candidates running for the positions.
It is a day-to-day battle for the federal government to gain interest across all age demographics in a free nation like Canada. To gather up excitement for an election is not an easy task. In the last federal election young voters saw an increase in voter turnout rate through the movement behind Jack Layton of the NDP. It seems to be apparent that youth need to be voting for a personable leader rather than for the political party filled with traditional old white guys. Justin Trudeau seems to be gaining speed with the oncoming election.
There are many opposing arguments to why Canadians don’t vote. Ontario residents saw this through the option for political reform in the 2007 provincial referendum. The option given to the people was for electoral reform on which system Ontario should use to elect members to the provincial legislature.
At the time, and still to this day Ontario uses a first past the post system, which is based on the election results of individual electoral ridings. The proposed change was to institute a mixed member proportional electoral system. 63 percent of Ontario residents voted to keep it the same way, and only 37 percent voted to change it. This proves that it is not the electoral system that is the reason for lack of political participation.
The overall federal government voter turnout rate has been in steady decline since 1984 where it hit 75 percent, which is minus a few exceptions until 2011 where it came in at 61 percent. Therefore it is pivotal for the overall outcome of Canada that university students need to start caring about the election process. These students will be around for on average the next 60 plus years. Which could translate into 12 federal elections or more. If they don’t care to vote, that is a lot of wasted political freedom. The prime minister and elected members of parliament control how the country is run, don’t you want a say in it?
