Gerard Kennedy

Gerard discusses jobs, housing, poverty in Timmins
By THOMAS PERRY The Daily Press

Many of the people enjoying a meal of soup and sandwiches at the Lord’s Kitchen on Thursday may have fallen through the cracks of society.

Timmins-James Bay federal Liberal candidate Marilyn Wood and Parkdale-High Park Liberal MP Gerard Kennedy — his party’s critic for infrastructure, cities and communities — wanted to assure them, however, that their views still count.

They, and a number of Wood’s campaign workers, helped serve soup and sandwiches at the Lord’s Kitchen and listen to what its clients had to say.

“I am very, very committed to reaching the grassroots and shining a light on some of these issues that we don’t necessarily see as being the crux of our problem,” Wood said.

“If we don’t fix the issues with homelessness and poverty and the need for food banks, then how can we possibly expect to have a stronger society.”

Kennedy was in town Thursday for the local party’s annual meeting and he and Wood met with a number of organizations throughout the day including the Timmins Chamber of Commerce, Timmins Mayor Tom Laughren and also attended a round-table on Aboriginal concerns.

“It’s all meant to make sure we get a near North perspective on all of our policies,” Kennedy said.

“I’m the infrastructure critic, but also cities and communities and that means this kind of community has to be taken into account.”

Wood identified three key issues facing the riding heading into the next federal election.

“Jobs has to be the top one,” she said.

“We are seeing a lot of bleeding of our jobs, with the closure of forest industry plants, we’ve seen more than 60 mills close over the last five years or so and we have seen our Xstrata met site close, so jobs are huge.

“But I also think that we need to attract next generation skills training so that we can diversify our economy and we can look at other opportunities and keep our young people … have an opportunity for them to come back if they choose to go elsewhere for their education.”

She also suggested that it is important that young people have a level playing field — starting out with the same level and same calibre of education as is available anywhere else in the province.

Kennedy indicated there is no one dimension to the approach, as the day also included a round-table discussion with the district services board.

Affordable housing is another issue near and dear to the heart of the former federal education minister.

“The No. 1 thing is the federal government has to come to the table … it is a commitment that we have made and there has to be a national housing strategy and the components of it have to be differentiated so that the kind of housing you need here and the kind of funding you need here … there isn’t as big of an assessment base for the municipality, so you can’t necessarily ask them to take that off the property tax base,” Kennedy said.

“You need some 50/50 funding to arrive here from the province and the federal government, but the main thing that people don’t realize is that for the last 10 years the federal government hasn’t been funding housing and it has to get back in.”

No place is the shortage of affordable housing more acute than it is here in Timmins.

“There has been a growth of something like 16% in the waiting list and there are more people on the waiting list than there are affordable housing units in Timmins right now,” Kennedy said.

“And the only way that is going to change is if the federal government gets back in a big way and so we are looking at ways to do that … we have made that commitment.”

And he and Wood are concerned about how they can make it work in communities such as Timmins.

“For example, supportive housing … we’ve got to make sure that seniors can stay in the communities they have grown up in and that means supportive housing so that they don’t have circumstances where their health is at risk,” Kennedy said.

“And that’s obviously the way of the future as we have an aging population in communities all over, but particularly vulnerable for smaller communities where there may be a sense that health services aren’t as strong for them … causing them to move to larger communities to the south.”

Housing is, of course, a significant issue in First Nation communities, as well, and Kennedy suggested that one tribal council needs more than 200 houses just to get up to “level.”

“I think it still startles to know that there are people in not any reasonable standard of housing and we can’t have two standards in this country,” he said.

“Citizenship has got to bring some basic set point that everyone — whether they are First Nation, or whether they are a senior, or so on — can look forward to and that’s the kind of thing we are trying to do.

“In the new take that we are putting on the Near North Policy and the federal government in general is that they have got to be able to fit the differences in the community, not the other way around.

“Too much of what we hear is that one size fits all policies when you get them at all from Ottawa and what we need instead is a real lens that everything goes through and we can do that.”

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