Peggy Revell
Local candidates have hit the campaign trail following Friday afternoon’s historic vote that toppled the minority Conservative government.
With voters heading to the polls May 2, incumbent NDP MP John Rafferty is looking to hold onto the seat he won in 2008, usurping two-time Liberal MP Ken Boshcoff, who also is back on the campaign trail.
“We’re ready in this campaign, as ready as we’ve ever been in any campaign,” said Rafferty.
“I don’t think any of us really wanted to have an election, but sometimes those things happen and sometimes they’re necessary,” he added.
Less than a week into the campaign, Rafferty said much of his day-to-day happenings hasn’t changed with the election call—he’s still meeting as many people, attending as many events, and knocking on as many doors as he could as an MP.
“It’s interesting that there’s a real hope that we’re going to end up with a progressive government at the end of this,” Rafferty remarked.
“And that a lot of people who have said, ‘Oh, we don’t need an election now,’ are going to say, ‘Well, maybe this is a good thing that we did this.’
“Let’s hope that’s what the outcome is.”
Boshcoff, meanwhile, will try to turn Thunder Bay-Rainy River back to Liberal red following his defeat in 2008.
“People have been extremely supportive and very positive,” he noted. “I have not been so encouraged in years.
“I think that Canadians appreciate a balanced, responsible approach to government and there’s only one party that is offering that,” Boshcoff added.
But while Rafferty and Boshcoff are seasoned veterans in the riding, both the Conservatives and Green Party have put forward new faces this election.
“I appreciate that my opponents have experience, but neither of them have ever had a seat at the table,” noted Maureen Comuzzi-Stehmann, who is running for the Conservative and also following in the footsteps of her uncle—longtime Thunder Bay politician Joe Comuzzi.
“I’m running because for the first time in my life, I can stand behind a man and the government that he represents—and that’s Stephen Harper—and be proud to be part of his team,” said Comuzzi-Stehmann.
“[Harper] has done a fabulous job, he has focused on Northwestern Ontario, Thunder Bay-Rainy River, including Superior North, and he and his team have focused on our region, which has never, ever had this sort of this focus ever,” she stressed.
Comuzzi-Stehmann added the community has been “very, very kind” to her family after three generations, and she wants to now give back.
“[Rafferty and Boshcoff have] had their opportunity, they’ve had their opportunity many times to make a difference in this community and I think it’s time for a change,” she reasoned.
“If you want the same old, same old, then you’re going to vote for what you always have voted.
“But if voters want a change—and you want to make a difference like Greg Rickford, my friend and colleague has done in Kenora—then you’re going to vote Conservative and you’re going to vote for Mo Comuzzi,”
Rounding out the ballot is newcomer Ed Shields for the Greens, a medical geneticist and retired McGill University professor with two doctoral degrees, who returned back to the Thunder Bay region for retirement after 30 years of teaching.
“We drastically need new blood,” Shields said about Canadian politics, noting the Green Party’s platform is much broader than just the environment.
“We’ve had four elections in the last seven years, and we keep getting the same sort of people.
“We just need new ideas, and the Green Party is filled with new people and new ideas and their ideas are really excellent,” he enthused.
Since moving back to the region, Shields said he’s been “pretty much a hermit” living in his log cabin in Neebing.
“I find it kind of ironic that now I’m finding myself giving television and radio interviews,” he chuckled. “It just doesn’t seem quite to fit—but I’m learning.
“It’s so far turned out to be a wonderful experience.”
Shields said he decided to run for Parliament for two reasons.
“I have a son who is a major in the Canadian infantry, and he’s spent two tours in Afghanistan and may have to go back again, and his old man spent his life doing research, travelling around the world and working on leprosy and congenital malformations and stuff, but I never really did something for Canada, I felt,” he explained.
“So I felt it was time for me to pull my weight.”
As well, Shields noted that out of 308 MPs, none hold a PhD in science.
“We have all these science-related issues, and these people just do not have the background to understand these issues,” he argued, adding this leads the government to relying on special interest lobby groups for information.
“Who in government can make well-informed decisions about science-related issues?” Shields asked. “[Also] nuclear energy, safe drinking water, safe food supplies, [and] health care?
“I wonder if business people and lawyers can do that—I think not.
“I think [other backgrounds are] important, but we need to have someone like me and other scientists to confront the misinformation that’s given by special interest lobbyists,” he stressed.
And with “jobs, jobs, jobs” as one of the top issues for the region, Shields pointed to his background in science as one of the solutions.
Thunder Bay-Rainy River is a “wonderful, beautiful area” where small companies in biotech, genomics, and pluripotent stem cells would fit well into the fold, he noted.
“You don’t need to ship big products out, you can ship the little test tubes out,” he said. “So instead of it being done in Vancouver or Toronto, these sort of jobs can be done here.
“And we have a wonderful lifestyle that should be able to bring small entrepreneurs and business to our areas.
“The future is biotech and new technology,” Shields stressed, saying the economic problems are going to be solved with a new economy that includes biotech, solar, and “green” energy businesses—all which can be done in the region.
Jobs are also the main issue for Comuzzi-Stehmann during this campaign, as well.
“It’s very important that we stimulate our economy and try to encourage people to relocate to Thunder Bay a). for lifestyle and b). to help out with our economy,” she said, citing the example of one young entrepreneur who will be launching a biotech company this weekend.
She encouraged young people to “take a chance” and use the government support and dollars out there to create jobs.
Another important issue is our aging population, said Comuzzi-Stehmann, pointing to the experience of her own family, including her husband who is a senior citizen and who has been able access both the pension-splitting program and Guaranteed Income Supplement.
“I think that it’s going to be a huge, huge issue,” she remarked.
“I’m here to fight for my mom and for my husband, and for all those who have worked all their life and don’t have secure pensions and just depend on Old Age Security.”
For this election and the region, Boshcoff sees effective representation, “seizing the opportunities in the new economy, and “protecting those things that are important to Canadians, such as health care and pensions, as being the top issues.”
“A good member of Parliament works hard, delivers, listens to people, and I know that I can do an excellent job at that,” he said.
“This is our time,” he stressed. “The northwest is really poised to grow and I think that you need the right member federally to make sure that things happen.
“There’s a narrow window,” Boshcoff warned. “We can either make sure that all these things happen in the mining sector, in the research, or we can miss the boat.”
Also important is the protection of pensions, he said.
“Basically, what we’ve seen in terms of the Harper government is that we’re all vulnerable,” Boshcoff charged.
“No matter what age you are, you want to make sure that you have some kind of income security.”
For Rafferty, the priorities with this election are affordability, retirement security, and health care—issues that always have been “top of his agenda,” the NDP’s agenda, and also the biggest concerns constituents brought up during the phone-in town hall meeting he held just prior to the election being called.
“This recession has been very hard on folks and continues to be, we’re not out of it yet,” he stressed.
“Lots of people in Northwestern Ontario are having trouble putting food on the table, particularly seniors but others, too.
“Everything that I’ve done in the last two-and-a-half years, I’ve tried to always gear towards making life affordable for northerners,” Rafferty added.
“Things like fighting the harmonized sales tax, my bill, C-501, severance and pension security.”
Rafferty said health care also is a big issue, citing the rising costs that will be seen over the next decade.
“We need to have a really good dialogue about health care and how we can make it better—with all the related things with health care: lack of family doctors, and so forth,” he said.
“It’s a big top issue of mine and people’s, too.”
Fort Frances-based campaign offices still are being set up by the candidates.
In related news, the Elections Canada returning office in Fort Frances is located at 130 Second St. E., Suite 2 (the Senic River mall).
Advanced voting will take place there April 22, 23, and 25.
