By Eric Nemrodov Thornhill has been predominantly Conservative for over 10 years, with an election range of 50-60% in their favour. Will Mr. Gladstone succeed in attracting Conservative voters? Will he prove himself to be a worthy opponent to current MP Peter Kent(read his interview here)? In this interview, we talked to Mr. Gladstone’s assistant Willie Handler to discuss the Liberal platform and their plans to improve Thornhill. Mr. Gladstone comes from an entrepreneurial background, having worked for different profit and non-profit organizations like the UJA Federation for Greater Toronto and the Reena Foundation, in managerial and executive roles. According to his website, he has worked to support different ethnocultural communities and those with developmental disabilities. This is his second attempt at becoming MP, his first unsuccessful in the King-Vaughan district in 2015. On Environment Mr. Handler tells us that the Liberal Party wants to end all emissions in Canada by 2050 and that they’re going to be planting two billion trees. When we asked what Mr. Gladstone is planning on specifically, aside from the Liberal Platform’s promises, he told us about their eco-friendly lawn sign policy, “He has a policy where he is not going to be using any lawn signs during the campaign. The lawn signs are not only made up of non-recyclable plastic, but they also end up in landfills, and every election there are hundreds of thousands of these that end up in landfills. So, in following the three principles of waste reduction, he is only using the hard-plastic sign, only on arterial roads, which means that he will be using approximately 83% fewer signs than a typical election campaign. He will collect up all the signs at the end of the campaign and reuse them for next time, except for the ones that are too damaged to be reused. York Region actually does recycle those types of signs. So that’s how he is personally investing in helping to have an impact on climate change and he has challenged other candidates to do the same.” On Conservative Opposition We asked what Mr. Gladstone will be doing to overcome Thornhill’s strong Conservative voting base, given its election history. Despite Liberal polling numbers declining in recent years, Mr. Handler remains optimistic about their chances, “Well, what is he doing? He has been busy knocking on doors, he’s out twice a day and today we have visited around thirty-three thousand homes and getting a very positive response. So I don’t think necessarily the past results are going to happen this time around.” On Marijuana Even though marijuana was legalized by the Liberal Party, we had to ask about Mr. Gladstone’s stance, and we got a very neutral response. “I think he has stated that he is a non-user but respects the fact that there are Canadians who support the legalization of Marijuana and are responsible users, and as such he feels its fine, he has no issues with the government policy.” On Doug Ford’s Cuts Mr. Handler stated that Mr. Gladstone does not support the cuts and that the Liberal Party seeks to make post-secondary education more affordable, “Well, he is opposed to the cuts and as an MP he will have a limited role in education because it is under provincial jurisdiction, but certainly he will voice his opposition and he has voiced his opposition already in the past. The Liberal Party has made certain commitments, specifically for post-secondary school education, commitments to make them more affordable. And, the party platform reflects that and with especially around student grants and student loans.” On Transportation We asked Mr. Handler if they had any plans to make public transportation like buses or subway less expensive for student commuters, “Again, yes the Liberal government is committing to I believe it’s 6 billion dollars towards public transportation. One of its priorities is in fact the extension of the Yonge Street subway and the role for the federal government is funding because public transportation is a service that is provided by municipalities. And by additional funding, the idea is that the network can be expanded and sort of [sic] in their increase.” The prioritization of the extension of the Yonge Street Subway seems to be a common concern since both MP candidates we interviewed included that in their campaign promise. We then asked whether Mr. Gladstone supported Justin Trudeau’s decision to revert the 15% tax credit on transportation, which used to make transportation slightly cheaper in the long run. “That is not part of the Liberal Party platform. Part of the reason is that it does in fact favour wealthier Canadians rather than... a lot of students are sort of low-end wage earners, in fact, one of the things that the Liberal platform has is that the first 15,000 dollars in income will not be taxed at all. So I think it works for the benefit of students much more than the transportation tax credit would.” While not having the first 15,000 dollars in income taxed would technically save three times as much money than a 15% tax credit on transportation, it is not clear how this would directly impact high-school students since most of us don’t earn that much money. That being said, parents who don’t use public transportation would benefit more from the tax cut proposed by the Liberals. Final Statement We asked Mr. Handler if there is anything else he would like to say to our readers on behalf of Mr. Gladstone before ending the interview, “I would just like to point out to you and your readers that Mr. Gladstone has been involved for the last 25 years in doing advocacy work and fundraising for charitable organizations and non-profit organizations. And a lot of them, especially work in the ethnic communities, and people with disabilities. So he will prepare to advocate for the students of Thornhill in Ottawa, certainly, his background reflects that, and I think that that is something that people should be quite aware of. He will fight to make sure that Thornhill residents get their share of services and benefits from the Federal government, something that has not happened in the last 4 years.” The responses we got in this interview seem to be more generic Liberal Party answers, due to the fact that Mr. Gladstone wasn’t available for the interview in person. We thank Mr. Handler for speaking on behalf of Mr. Gladstone. You can check out the transcript and audio file in this link.
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