By Eric Nemrodov and Anton Nemchinski ![]() Elections are just around the corner, and politics is on everyone’s minds! Debates, accusations, embarrassing revelations between the political parties and their leaders make all the headlines. Yet, in all the chaos, we tend to forget who we are actually voting for, and who will represent us in parliament… our MP candidates! So we decided to reach out to Thornhill’s MP candidates and asked their opinions on various student-related issues like Ford’s cuts, transportation and marijuana. In this article, we summarized the responses of the Conservative candidate for the Thornhill riding, Peter Kent. The full transcript is available on this link. Mr. Kent is the sitting MP for the Thornhill district and has been representing the riding since 2008. Re-elected in 2011, Mr. Kent was appointed Canada's Environment Minister for two years. In October 2013 he was elected Chair of the House Standing Committee on National Defence. Beyond politics, Mr. Kent had a 40-year-long career as a broadcast journalist and published for numerous Canadian and international media. He was the first journalist to anchor CBC’s The National and was the Deputy Editor of the Global Television Network. On Environment As former Minister of the Environment, Mr. Kent had a lot to say about the party’s plans to reduce carbon emissions and fight climate change. When we pointed out that Canada is one of the worst carbon emitters per capita in the world, second only to the U.S., this is what he had to say, “A lot of the critics of Canada’s emissions, which are around 2% of global annual emissions, use that per capita measure and by the per capita measure, China is one of the lowest emitters in the world. The reality is if we are going to address climate change and if we're going to address the reduction of emissions, the big emitters have to do their part. The little emitters and Canada should do its part, but if we shut down the country tomorrow and stopped emitting a single megaton of carbon dioxide, CO2 would still be generated by the Chinese, by the Americans, by the Indians, by the Brazilians, by all of the Gulf State oil producers, Nigeria... for they still flare their gases from their petroleum production. So to do a megaton per capita for a country as large as Canada, of one of the largest countries in the world, with one of the smallest populations in the world is a red herring. To use the per capita measurement I would say fairly that it's a red herring. All of that said, Canada has to do its part to reduce emissions...” Mr. Kent described many regulations, projects and incentives that his government put in place in the past, such as his outlawing of new coal-plants, tailpipe regulations for cars, the green home tax benefit, etc. Mr. Kent explains the effect of some of the regulations he put in place with the help of Environment Canada and the scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency in the U.S, “ ...if any of your folks bought a new SUV since 2017 you paid extra for that vehicle because of the technology that the automakers had to put into it. The benefit was that the cars would emit 50% less emissions and they would also consume 50% as much fuel so that was a cost-benefit because it costs less to run the car.” Mr. Kent was also very critical of the carbon tax, which is a measure pushed by the Liberals, and argues that it doesn’t really change behaviour. “...The economists will tell you that the carbon tax is the easiest way to change human behaviour and it is. But it has to be so big that people stop driving SUVs, Ford 150s, they stop driving super trucks to move earth… For people who live near the poverty line, for low-income Canadians, for a single soccer mom, that extra $0.31 a litre can be the difference between getting to work or not, or getting kids to school or not. So if we were to impose a carbon tax that would truly change Canadian’s behavior it would have to be several dollars.” Yet, according to the B.C. government, which has been implementing a carbon tax since 2008, they dropped their carbon emissions by 4% while managing to grow its real GDP by 19%. While a 4% change is relatively small, B.C. is incrementally increasing the tax which should keep lowering carbon emissions, and it is still not clear that modest carbon taxes have no effect. On Legalisation of Cannabis Mr. Kent made it clear that the Conservative government won’t reverse the laws put in place, yet he was very critical of the way the situation was “handled”. “I think it was inevitable. A Conservative government won't reverse that, won't criminalize [it] again. We think that it was done very badly, we think that a promise was made in the last campaign to legalize and then there was a rush to legalize and they found out that it wasn't as easy as they thought, so there was a delay, but in rushing to legalize they didn't realize all of the other things that needed to be done, for this is a big change in the way society treats a hallucinogenic product...” He also blamed the Liberal government for setting the prices too high on the legal market, which discourages people from transitioning from the black market. “... then they found that today the black market, the criminal Market still dominates sales in Canada. In British Columbia, 80% of the product that’s sold is still on the black market, not the government market and it's unregulated and part of the reason is the Liberals set the price...” And this is true, according to StatCan, 40% of cannabis users buy illegally even after legalization, so it seems that many Canadian cannabis users are dissatisfied with Trudeau’s solution in some way or another, “It was an election promise of the wrong sort and it was a rush to technically make it legal ...but the regulation, the quality, the service, certainly in Ontario, has not been what I think a lot of people dreamed it would be when they made a Liberal check on their ballot back in 2015.” On Trudeau’s Media Bailout and Media Bias For context, Trudeau recently set aside $600 million dollars for struggling news outlets in the form of tax credits and incentives. In the past, Mr. Kent has expressed heavy concerns on how this bailout could affect journalism independence and objectivity. In our interview, he elaborated that CBC and other Canadian news organizations become sensitive to political parties since the Liberals tend to fund them more, at least partially contributing to a left-leaning bias in Canadian publications. “I think that there's a very obvious bias in recent years, but when we were in government, they didn't like the Conservatives because we were trying to downsize a little bit. The Liberals, as soon as they were elected, upsized and you can see, and I think it's pretty clear on a lot of issues, that there is an in-built bias.” He stated that another reason for media-bias is that traditional media organizations, like the Toronto Star, have declined in readership over the last few decades and have to resort to more opinionated content in order to compete with CBC in attracting viewership and advertisers. “...in the last century journalists, tried to be, the word was “objective”, we tried to be objective. Gather the facts and lay them out. We didn't necessarily come to conclusions, we left that to the consumer. If it was a newspaper, radio, television today every journalist is basically a columnist… who are the best writers in the newspaper if we want to sell newspapers? With a brand-new newspaper who are the best writers? Well, they're the columnists, the guys with flashy opinions, the guys who stack their stories to support their point of view on a story…” He continues, “So opinion was all of a sudden the front page and Canadian consumers, to be honest, I don't think they realized they were getting less balanced information to make decisions on.” He finished off by saying that the $600 million bailouts are only a temporary solution and that the government should seek more robust and sensible proposals. On Doug Ford Education Cuts The Progressive Conservatives (Doug Ford) and the Conservative Party of Canada (Peter Kent and Andrew Scheer) are two different parties, even though they tend to attract the same voters. Also, since education is under provincial jurisdiction, and Peter Kent is a federal politician, he can only comment on this issue from an Ontario citizen’s perspective. Mr. Kent mentioned several of his concerns regarding Ontario’s leadership and education, like the fact that Doug Ford is currently spending $4 billion more than Kathleen Wynne had planned to spend had she been re-elected, Mr. Kent responded to the question of Ontario’s leadership and reference to "education cuts" by pointing to the fact that Doug Ford is currently spending $4 billion more than Kathleen Wynne had planned to spend had she been re-elected, “A lot of fiscally prudent conservatives were disappointed that the Ford government is actually spending more on education in its first budget than the last Wynne government and you can see why the Ford government was elected after 13 years, 15 years of McGuinty and Wynne government where in terms of Education they went through exactly what the conservative government is going through now with the teachers unions with the Maintenance Workers Union.” Furthermore, he said Ontario teachers are one of the highest-paid in Canada, implying that teacher unions are being unreasonable in their negotiations for higher pay. “...[Unions] want more money, they want more members and more teachers, they want more bodies in the union, which is the union’s job to try and do that. But in successive contract negotiations the Liberal government, the Wynne government even spent millions of dollars on pizza for the union negotiators when they were right up against the wall when the last contract expired 3 years ago. But Ontario teachers are the best-paid teachers in Canada, it's great to be a teacher in Canada so I'm not sure what the solution is going to be in terms of resizing and reprioritizing...” According to StatCan, in 2014/2015, Ontario teachers with at least 10-years of experience get paid $91,000/year, second only to North Western teachers who are paid $108,000/year. Compare this to Canada’s average household income of $70,000, without even including teacher benefits. On Transportation Many people in Toronto, especially commuting students, justly feel that transportation is too expensive because according to the CBC Torontonians pay the 5th highest transit fares in the world. We asked Mr. Kent if he had any plans to solve this issue, apart from Andrew Scheer’s promise to return a 15% tax credit return on transportation. “... for the very young in downtown Toronto, up to 12 you ride free? There should be another consideration up to the end of secondary, and university students should have exactly the same opportunities as if they want and then seniors it goes without asking.” He mentioned Andrew Scheer’s promise to prioritize the extension of the Yonge Subway line to Richmond Hill, which will run through Clark Avenue, which should, in theory, help Thornhill residents commute to downtown Toronto. “...in that same announcement that Andrew made about the energy corps across Canada he also said the extension of the Yonge Street Subway to Richmond Hill would be a priority of our government so I mean there's a recognition public transit works.” On Student Debt/Loans Mr. Kent thinks that one of the major issues in post-secondary education is that university student fees rise faster than parents' income, so most students can’t get the support they used to get from their parents, “ …domestic student fees have gone up way faster than the rate of income for parents who might be helping out or for students to bear the burden of the loans that it would take to go through three years, four years, post-grad… it's a huge challenge and it's one that impacts the affordability of the first houses for doctor graduates after the 7 years of the internship, with a huge debt and can't buy a house. And that's on a huge scale, that's not good for the economy, not good for society, not good for communities…” One of the reasons he gave was that some universities, especially the University of Toronto, take in many international students for their financial profit. This makes the university more competitive for domestic students, making it harder for Canadians to get in. “...but it still [University of Toronto] wants more and more International students because universities make a lot of money off International students and they charge them significantly more than Ontario students in your case,” he elaborates, “Canada has gone the same way they follow the European and the American model but in doing that and then having to expand. York University, you've seen it explode over the last 10 years just in the number of buildings, all of that capital investment, a lot of it's been covered by the international students, a lot of it hasn't, so domestic student fees have gone up...” Mr. Kent says that the government and universities should settle the escalation of costs year to year to make post-secondary education more affordable for Canadian citizens. What should students do if they want to get involved in politics? Mr. Kent recommended students to get involved in local EDA’s for door-knocking and opportunities to gain volunteer hours. “I'd say get involved early, our campaign has a lot of volunteers out knocking on doors with me. I'm not saying I want you guys to join me, I'm not trying to encourage you to become young conservatives but with every political party there's an opportunity to get involved in the local EDA. I've talked about policy talk, about policy changes, talk about the way government relates to people and at election time particularly you can get your student service hours, you can get them knocking on doors for the political party of your choice and you get to talk to the spectrum of people who volunteer, of all ages, young, middle-aged, rich, poor, elderly just about the political process.” The MP also suggested that changing the voting age to 16, an idea which Jagmeet Singh(NDP) and Elizabeth May(Green Party) have supported, could be an option if high-schoolers were more educated and more aware at their high-school. “...there's a proposal now by some politicians that the voting age be lowered to 16. That's interesting, I would support it if the school's, I talked to Mr. Lee's class a couple of times a year, social studies current affairs, there's a lot of really smart kids in those classes that know what's going on in Ottawa but there are a few that really haven't paid attention... but I think education and awareness is essential so I would think that informed 16-year-olds are just as capable of making wise decisions as uninformed 30-year-olds...” Generally, he advised listening and watching political content, more specifically CPAC which broadcasts House-of-Commons debates and other political-related events. He ends by saying that “that's one of the things that you can't avoid, there's politics in everything”. Advice for Aspiring Journalists Seeing Mr. Kent’s long career in journalism we wanted to ask him for suggestions to students who are looking for a career in journalism. He recommends getting a degree in a specialty first, like law or science, because political science and general arts degrees are “too broad” because there are too many graduates and only the top get into journalism. “These days I would say get a degree in a specialty first, law, science, environment, political science is a bit too broad and a general arts degree is a little too broad because we're seeing that there are too many graduates and only the top of the classes get a job in journalism but if you develop these days, with the concern about the environment, a scientific a degree in science in a particular area (water, air, chemical) you would find you would be more likely to find an opportunity. With law and all of its different applications, you'd be more likely to find an opening than a General Arts Craft would as a journalist.” he later adds, “...and the thing in journalism today is it's not enough to be just a great writer or a great photographer or videographer or editor or producer, a lot of entry-level journalism jobs you got to do the works and you gotta do it enthusiastically and you gotta do it, not without asking because that's unhealthy, but you gotta be able to just bite down.” He concluded that journalism is a great career, although it became harder since he started, and stressed getting a journalism degree after a specialty degree. We hope that this interview sheds some light on Peter Kent’s plans and positions. We would like to credit Mr. Kent for really putting in the effort to answer our questions, providing us more than 12 pages worth of interview material! Unfortunately, we couldn’t fit all of Mr. Kent’s ideas into the article, but we definitely recommend reading or listening to the full interview, if you are interested. If you want to read more interviews, stay tuned on Voice of Vaughan for the upcoming interview with MP Candidate Gary Gladstone for a look on the other side of the aisle.
2 Comments
Armando
10/15/2019 06:57:21 pm
Very informative. He will definetly receive my vote.
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Felix
10/16/2019 08:26:59 am
I saw the name Peter Kent, but I did not know this was the guy from the National. He is a principled guy. He quit because he believed that CBC should be independent from the government.
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