With a federal election call approaching, Sonny Spina, Sault Ste. Marie’s Conservative candidate, officially opened his campaign headquarters at 109 Queen Street East late Friday afternoon.
Erin O’Toole, Official Opposition critic for Foreign Affairs and former Minister of Veterans Affairs, whose brother-in-law hails from the Sault, was on hand for the official ribbon cutting ceremony, attended by approximately 50 Conservative supporters.
Spina, speaking to SooToday, said there are many issues the Conservatives will focus on in the upcoming campaign, the main three being affordability, ethics and the environment.
“I’ve had the chance to speak to thousands of people over the past couple of months, and those are the three key issues I hear about every day.”
“Our goal is to put more money back in their pockets. We know right now the current government has put a carbon tax on everything. It’s raising the price of gasoline, groceries, the cost of heating your home. Our party’s plan would be to immediately eliminate that carbon tax and then remove the GST from home heating and energy costs. We’re a few short weeks away from winter coming in northern Ontario, and that’s going to be something really important to put money back into the pockets of Canadians.”
Pointing to the federal ethics commissioner’s recent ruling which stated Prime Minister Justin Trudeau exercised improper political influence in the SNC-Lavalin scandal, Spina said “I’m hearing people are ready for a government that is ethical and accountable. Justin Trudeau is the first prime minister in the history of our country to be found guilty of ethics violations. That’s not acceptable to voters.”
“People are concerned about the environment, as are we. The environment is a major issue for me because I spend a lot of my time outdoors, and the one thing people don’t get is how a carbon tax protects the environment, and I don’t understand it either. We have a real plan that will help the environment that will reduce emissions in Canada without penalizing people at all.”
Conservative leader Andrew Scheer has unveiled an environmental plan which focuses on green technology as opposed to taxes.
“We’ve seen billions of dollars in promises (from the Liberals),” said Spina, a Sault Ste. Marie Police Service officer who has been involved with numerous local charitable causes.
“This government ran on a promise four years ago they would run very minor deficits...but they’ve added nearly $73 billion to the national debt. Now we see another string of promises in the past couple of weeks where they’re promising billions of dollars to different groups and projects, but what we know is these projects should’ve started three and a half years ago,” Spina said.
O’Toole, a former Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) officer who practised law before going into politics, currently representing the Durham riding east of Toronto, joined Spina on a walk atop the International Bridge span earlier Friday.
“That will be memorable. I do tours of a lot of facilities but never from 200 feet above an international border. It was interesting to take a look at Algoma Steel from the top of the bridge,” O’Toole chuckled.
O’Toole said “there never should have been steel tariffs on Canada. In fact, the removal of steel tariffs was brought about when the Conservatives got involved, when we went down to Washington. We said we would hold up the NAFTA agreement if the tariffs didn’t get removed by spring, because the talks were going nowhere. We’re here to get Canada get back on track.”
“The local MP (Liberal Terry Sheehan) didn’t support my bill on pension reform that would’ve helped Algoma Steel pensioners, who always see their pensions at risk. He didn’t support that, so we need a voice that understands the issues. I’m here to support Sonny Spina, to support someone who’s served the community in uniform, but also, over the last decade, with Rotary, United Way and many other causes. This is someone who has the Sault in his heart and he’ll make an amazing Member of Parliament.”
O’Toole told us he believes voters will see through any spending promises the Liberals may make in the coming weeks, stating Trudeau has a string of broken promises following him heading into the 2019 campaign, including those involving electoral reform, a balanced budget and improvements to veterans pensions.
“He promised to be all things to all people…(but) I think a lot of Canadians have lost trust in Justin Trudeau.”
The 2019 Canadian federal election is scheduled to take place on or before Oct. 21.
