By Chad Ingram
The federal election campaign is underway and amid a few exploding proverbial bombshells the major party leaders are busy making stops in communities across Canada and making promises while they are there.
Campaign pledges so far have included increased RESP grants income tax cuts reduced medical wait times and lower cellphone bills among others. There’ll be lots of talk about helping the middle class a group difficult to define and which most of self-identify as belonging to.
Locally vying to unseat incumbent Jamie Schmale are Liberal candidate Judi Forbes NDP candidate Barbara Doyle Green Party candidate Elizabeth Fraser and People’s Party of Canada candidate Gene Balfour. We’ve published profile pieces on each of the candidates over the past months and will publish more of their thoughts on policy heading into the election.
A good way to get a sense of our local federal candidates in Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock is to attend all-candidates meetings and the one in Haliburton County will take place at the Pinestone on the evening of Oct. 9 hosted by the Haliburton Highlands Chamber of Commerce CARP (Canadian Association of Retired Persons) and the Lakelands Association of Realtors. Provincial and federal all-candidates meetings are often well attended and are worth attending.
For those who may have never been to one the evening hosted by a moderator typically starts out with opening statements from each of the candidates. The bulk of the meeting however consists of residents lined up at a microphone asking questions from the floor. That’s the great part of these meetings. They allow you to ask questions directly of the people vying to be your representative in Parliament. It’s like a giant public job interview. And since the people asking the questions are from Haliburton County most of the questions have to do with implications of federal programming in Haliburton County.
In attending you get a sense of what candidates think about a variety of issues how they comport themselves how they think on their feet so on and so forth.
The meeting runs from 7 until 9 p.m. and if you can make it you should consider attending.
