TedWEBTed McMeekin

@TedMcMeekin

Liberal Party

www.votetedmcmeekin.ca 

Climate change, McMaster University, social work, Chapters bookstore and public service were all topics of conversation with local MPP Ted McMeekin, who is running for re-election after 14 years of representing the ADFW riding.

McMeekin was born and raised in Hamilton and has a deep connection with his riding. He spent two terms as a Hamilton City Councillor and as the Mayor of Flamborough, and has served in the cabinet as Minister of Government Services, Minister of Consumer Services, Minister of Agriculture Food and Rural Affairs, and most recently, Minister of Community and Social Services. He received his Bachelor of Social Work from McMaster University and has also attended Wilfrid Laurier University and Mohawk College.

The upcoming election has introduced debate around a number of issues, but when asked which one is the highest priority for our area, Mr. McMeekin responded with climate change.

“I think one of the most important issues that we face is one we are facing around the world, and that’s climate change,” McMeekin said. “I think we need to be doing everything we can to educate ourselves about what we can do to curb climate change and what kind of investments we can make, be they in public transit, bike paths or with the Cootes to Escarpment Park.”

But climate change is not his only concern. A veteran of the education system, Mr. McMeekin is determined to place emphasis on education.  “My first love is McMaster,” he said. “I have a series of advisory committees but the one I enjoy the most is the advisory committee about post-secondary education. There are 16 students and I meet with them four times a year and get advice from them on all kinds of issues. That makes me a better representative for students and generally the McMaster community.”

He also addressed the Progressive Conservative Party’s threat to dispose of the 30% tuition rebate, stating that the Liberal Party will keep the tuition rebate if re-elected.

Mr. McMeekin has represented ADFW as the MPP for almost 14 years, and in that time he has worked with students and the administration to bring in approximately $170 million in capital investment to the university to fund projects such as health sciences expansion, the Nuclear Research Building, the Centre for Spinal Cord Injury and the new L.R. Wilson Hall Humanities building.

A lifetime resident of the area, Mr. McMeekin has held many positions including the Mayor of Flamborough, the owner and operator of the original Chapters bookstore, a professor, a community worker with the United Church of Canada, and has worked in many other positions in government.

With a background in social work, Mr. McMeekin places an emphasis on helping people in the community. “The promise I made when I was first elected was that I would put together the best constituency team in the province. And I did that,” McMeekin said. “As of last week the three women in my office have responded to over 548,000 requests for information and assistance. […] So I think all of that together equals being a pretty good MPP.”

 

AlexWEBAlex Johnstone

@alex__johnstone

NDP

http://electalexjohnstone.com   

You can see the contribution Alex Johnstone has made to the community through initiatives like the declaration of Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) as a living wage employer and the organization of the Elect More Women conference.

As a current School Board Trustee for HWDSB, member of the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction’s working committee on Shifting Attitudes, and board member for the Quest Learning Centre United Church in Westdale, it becomes even more obvious that Alex Johnstone is dedicated to the city and its people.

Education is very important to both Johnstone and the NDP. The party promises a tuition freeze for university students, and is looking to make student loans interest free. For students in medical school, a credit of up to $20,000 for debt reduction will be given for employment in rural communities.

“I’m still paying down my student debt, actually,” Johnstone admitted. “I graduated in 2008 and I still have three more years to go.” NDP policies like tuition freezes and interest free loans will help manage the debts incurred from attending post secondary school.

Johnstone is also an advocate of improving the education system, especially for special needs students. “I was a special needs student myself – I actually failed grade one,” said Johnstone.  “But I had really amazing teachers and resource staff that changed my whole trajectory. I was able to go ahead and earn two University degrees. That to me really demonstrated that with the right supports, you can change a child’s path.”

In addition to improving the education system, the NDP is looking to attract businesses to Ontario by lowering hydro rates. Their plan involves merging four of Ontario’s hydro agencies to minimize duplicated management costs.

In the business sector, NDP plans to reward businesses that create jobs by giving a tax credit of up to $5000 per employee hired. They also plan to cut back small business tax to 3% to help small businesses thrive.

“I have a record of working hard on behalf of families, certainly as an elected school board trustee this past term. I’ve worked very hard to get results for families,” said Johnstone.  “I always start by saying that I can’t promise you’ll get 100% of what you’re asking for but I will try my hardest and we will look towards a compromise, always. It has worked out really well that way. I think that my track record alone demonstrates that I’m an excellent person to fill this role as MPP.”

 

DonnaWEBDonna Skelly  

@donnaskellypc

Progressive Conservative Party

http://adfw.ontariopc.com

Donna Skelly describes herself as an extremely hardworking person and a strong supporter of the community. She lives in Ancaster, and is highly involved in the non-profit sector and in local sports. Skelly was a journalist for 22 years at CHCH Television in Hamilton, and has moved on to become involved in politics with the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario.

Skelly’s platform focuses largely on job creation and the economy. She has seen a worry in the community about a lack of well paying jobs and avidly promotes PC leader Tim Hudak’s plan to create one million jobs if elected in Ontario.

“I grew up in Northern Ontario, north of Sudbury in a tiny little town,” Skelly said. “I’m a journalist and I knew back then – I knew when I was 14 – what I wanted to do. I also knew that when I graduated that as long as I wanted to work hard I could work anywhere in Ontario. I knew I could get a job in any field anywhere in Ontario and that is simply not the case anymore.”

“If you end up graduating from university with debt and can’t get a job it’s devastating,” Skelly said. “We have to turn the province around by creating high paying, full-time jobs.”

The Progressive Conservative Party’s plan encourages students to look to the trades for apprenticeships that will promise high paying, stable jobs in the future. Other sectors they say will assure high paying jobs are science, technology, engineering and business.

The plan emphasizes strengthening the private sector in order to create more jobs. This includes making the tax rate for business the most competitive in North America, as well as reducing rising hydro bills that may deter businesses from settling in Ontario. This comes at the cost of the lost 30% tuition rebate, and reductions in numbers of teachers and education staff under Tim Hudak’s plan to cut 100,000 public sector jobs.

Skelly described the plan as “tough medicine,” but necessary to balance Ontario’s budget.

“It’s a good solid plan and it’s going to give you hope, it’s going to give you an opportunity to grow up in the Ontario that I grew up in – where taxes were low and where jobs were so prosperous and readily available across Ontario,” said Skelly about the PC plan.

“I’m the right choice because I’m extremely motivated,” she said. “This is my second time running, and trust me, if you give me an opportunity to represent you I will work really, really hard. But more so, you have to have the right plan. We have the right plan.”

 

RayWEBRaymond Dartsch

Green Party of Ontario 

http://www.gpo.ca/riding/3/candidate-0

Rayond Dartsch is a registered nurse, a political and environmental activist, and a McMaster and Mohawk graduate. He is the MPP candidate for the Green Party of Ontario.

Dartsch identified the most important issue in southwestern Ontario as transportation and gridlock.

“I was wondering: who is going to fix this problem?” Dartsch said. “That’s one of the things that drew me into politics in the first place.”

The Green Party believes expansion of GO service to communities such as Ancaster, Dundas, and Waterdown, as well as light-rail transit in Hamilton, will help solve the gridlock program.

“There’s all this crazy talk of highway 401 having to be expanded to 10 or 16 lanes out to Kitchener,” he said. “But if you have extended GO service…that’s where your solution to gridlock is.”

In terms of education, the Green Party of Ontario’s biggest proposed change is the merging of the Catholic and public school boards. Having two school boards duplicates services such as bussing and wastes an estimate of $1.2 to $1.6 billion each year.

Along with merging the school boards, the party aims to support youth through the creation of a Social Innovation Fund. The fund would give grants, loans and mentorship to young entrepreneurs in order to offset the high youth unemployment rate.

“As someone who is still paying off his own student loans, I am very aware of the affordability issues facing students, and that has to be addressed, not just by making student loans more available and making people go deeper into debt,” Dartsch said.

Another strategy to create jobs is to double the health tax exemption for employers with payrolls of less than $5 million. “Cutting small business pay roll taxes, as far as I’m aware, is very helpful to someone considering hiring because it lowers the cost for that,” Dartsch said.

Many have been skeptical of the Green Party, but Dartsch thinks Canada is ready for Green Party leadership. “We’ve had a century or more of experience with the Liberals and the Conservatives, we’ve even had a NDP government for a few years,” Dartsch said. “I think looking at the Green Party platform, it is a fresh look at a lot of old problems and fresh solutions to problems that exist today that didn’t exist before.”

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Make sure to visit the polls on the 12th and decide who is going to represent the riding you live in.

Aurora Coltman
Silhouette Intern

McMaster will be receiving over $2 million to expand learning services offered to students and to gain insight into educational needs based on recorded project outcomes.

The funding was provided by the Government of Ontario’s Productivity and Innovation Fund, a $45 million fund that will be supporting 120 different projects at various colleges and universities in Ontario.

PIF has three main goals: restructuring courses to utilize online and multimedia resources, helping colleges and universities focus on their individuality (for instance, certain academic programs) and inspiring cooperation between Ontario universities and colleges to provide opportunities to access services such as data storage, libraries and procurement.

Ted McMeekin, the MPP for Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale, told McMaster’s Daily News, “It is critical to keep our postsecondary learning environments current to student needs and economic demands. These investments will put [McMaster] on sustainable financial footing while improving the learning experience for our students.”

McMaster University can now use the funds to make several major changes relating to those three goals.

McMaster will be using $1,170,000 for a Graduate Professional Skills Portal. The portal will have a number of training modules for graduates from across Ontario, and that can later be used in an academic environment for online and in-person learning.

Another $500,000 will be applied to creating a new first-year experience program. The program will be student-targeted and dedicated to providing services for students, including creating new foundational courses, redesigning older courses, and providing support for students.

The final $575,000 will be used to develop a common utility consumption database and benchmarking system among McMaster, Waterloo, Laurentian, Carleton, Ottawa, Windsor, Trent, Lakehead, Brock, Queen’s and Guelph. The database and benchmarking system will be used to record, and eventually reduce, student emission and consumption costs.

“Ontario’s universities are always striving to improve the student experience,” said Bonnie M. Patterson, President and CEO, Council of Ontario Universities.

“A highly educated workforce is key to Ontario’s economic recovery and international competitiveness. The government’s investment in productivity and innovation will help universities deliver a world-class education with even greater efficiency.”

Huzaifa Saeed, VP (Education) of the McMaster Students Union, speaks at the University Club after McMaster president Patrick Deane and Ontario minister Glen Murray.

As many students have already experienced this year, OSAP is no longer primarily a paper process and there will be no more lineups to receive financial aid.

Glen Murray, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, stopped in Hamilton this morning to give a statement about the streamlining of OSAP.

OSAP Express is the new application process, and it affects more than 300,000 applicants and recipients in Ontario. Approximately 15,000 post-secondary students in Hamilton are expected to benefit.

The program requires students to sign a loan agreement once in their post-secondary career rather than each academic year. Its aim is to speed up confirmation of enrolment and direct deposit processes, and to eliminate lineups at the financial aid office.

“This came as a result of student associations advocating for change in the system, and we've delivered,” said Murray.

He said the new program would make receiving student aid easier while saving hundreds of thousands of dollars for institutions that choose to implement it.

“Moving forward, there is going to be a qualitative way in which we spend,” said Murray.

Huzaifa Saeed, Vice President (Education) of the McMaster Students Union, said at the announcement that OSAP Express is a much-needed step toward a more accessible post secondary system.

“The cost of education is a big issue, but a large part of the issue has to do with reception [of financial assistance].”

Pointing to a 2009 federal survey on financial literacy, Saeed said many students are in the dark about financial options and have not taken full advantage of all available student assistance.

Murray’s announcement comes on the heels of the 30 per cent off tuition grant introduced last January by the provincial government.

The grant, promised by the Liberals in the 2011 provincial election, aims to make education more affordable by delivering assistance with less hassle.

The program offers refunds of $1,680 to students in college and university programs and $770 to students for those in college diploma and certificate programs.

"So often, students are eligible for something and they don't know. As a result they end up not accessing that resource," said Ted McMeekin, MPP for Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale.

"Streamlining the process will put it all together for students to get that information."

Since the tuition grant came out, 200,000 refunds have been received, which means approximately 100,000 refunds have yet to be claimed.

The grant is available to full-time students at a public college or university in Ontario whose parents have a gross income of $160,000 or less. Students must be residents of Ontario and must have graduated high school within four years before applying directly to a postsecondary program.

Kacper Niburski

Assistant News Editor

The red sea has combed over the province again, though this time, it’s only a minor flooding. Dalton McGunity and the Liberals scored a minority parliamentary caucus on Oct. 7, just shy one seat to a majority.

While that may come as a disappointment to some, the Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale (ADFW) riding stands as a Liberal stronghold yet again this year. With 17,521 votes, compared to the next best 13,846 for Donna Skelly, the Progressive Conservative candidate, Ted McMeekin cruised into victory as the Liberal MPP.

Neither new to the political scene nor lacking experience, McMeekin’s prominence as a politician is well recognized and merited. As a member of Ontario legislature since 2000, a cabinet Minister of Government and Customer Services in 2007, and an ADFW Liberal MPP since 2007, McMeekin has gleaned a variety of political titles.

“My political success is not because I have the best constituency team in Ontario. It’s because I have the best constituency team in the country,” he stated in an interview with the Silhouette.

He added, “I believe all politics are local. It’s relational. It’s collaborative. If you’re a local, collaborative, relational sort of person with a record of accomplishment, people tend to embrace that.”

According to the polls, the voters did just that.

As to what the voters may have embraced, some ambiguity surfaces. McMeekin did not elaborate the current platform at length, however, he reminded that, “It is whatever Dalton wants.”

This, according to McMeekin, is “most certainly the very best for ADFW.” McMeekin highlighted that the Liberal Party’s interests coincide with those of the ADFW. His previous track record, some may argue, stands as a testimony of that.

From 2007-2011, McMeekin, along with the Liberal Party, was involved in overseeing $12.5 million in funding for textbooks and school supplies, protection of the Pleasantview Lands, $30 million in funding to clean up Randle Reef, creation of the new Westdale Urgent Care Centre, a $4.4-million investment to expand Ronald McDonald House and, most pertinent to students, managing the grant and operational details of the Wilson Building for Humanities and Social Sciences.

“After the last election, I made a list of twenty specific things I wanted to get done, and I’m pleased to say that 19 of those things today are a reality.”

“These next four years will be no different,” McMeekin stressed. “This year, there is going to be a new list. I have 11 things that I have identified that I want to work on so far.”

With a new list of projects comes new obstacles. While not explaining the particular details regarding the 11 issues currently on the table, McMeekin briefly mentioned a few he would like to address as MPP.

“There’s a St. Mary’s quarry that is looking to be opened in Waterdown, but it will have detrimental effects for the residents there, so I intend to make sure that quarry never opens. I intend to make sure that peninsula highway is never built. I intend to work on the 20th item I was both working and partially successful on the last four years, which is to have the area from the Royal Botanical Gardens to the Escarpment declared Ontario’s first urban provincial biosphere park.”

Such initiatives directly contend the oppositional political drive in provincial parliament. Without a majority, the question surfaces of whether or not McMeekin’s, and by extension the Liberal’s, clear impetus of unfounded respect for the land and rural living that characterizes much of the ADFW riding will be maintained.

McMeekin hopes that it certainly will. He plans to help “obtain more resources both provincially and federally to be better stewards of the land.”

However, there is no such guarantee.

McMeekin acknowledged this and warned, “This political situation will take a certain form of maturity from other parties to do what is best for ADFW, for Ontario and, ultimately, for Canada.”

As for what this “form of maturity” is, McMeekin simply said humorously, “not politics.”

McMeekin’s official post-election role at Queen’s Park will begin later this month.

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