Interview with Matthew Rowlinson, NDP candidate for London West
Hurley: So it's fair to say, then, that the number one election issue for voters in London West is the economy?
Rowlinson: Yes, for sure. When you ask people what matters to them, they say jobs. They want more jobs, and they want better jobs. And what that says to me is that London and Southwestern Ontario have really been hurt by the structural changes in our economy over the last 20 to 25 years.
And lots of people will tell you this is the result of global changes, and there's nothing that we can do about it. At least up to a point, I disagree. The decision to make the oil industry the main growth sector of the Canadian economy was a decision that was taken by governments. And I think that, for a number of reasons, that was a bad idea.
Hurley: Do you think Canadians would benefit from a more diversified economy?
Rowlinson: We would undeniably benefit from having a more diversified and balanced economy. Canada is always going to be a resource producer. But Ontario has some of the best farmland in the world, and yet we are a net importer of food. We no longer have a food policy in this country.
What the Conservatives have instead is an agricultural policy, and that policy has led them to invest a million dollars in an ethanol plant around Chatham, on amazing farmland, to raise commodity corn to produce ethanol. That's nuts!
We need to support local farming, we need to support resource extraction industries, we need to support all kinds of high tech fields, we need to support digital technology and the high tech construction fields, and we have to build an economy for the future.
Making a big bet on the oil industry basket was environmentally irresponsible, and we're the high cost producer in a global economy where the market price is set by someone else. And we're just getting rip sawed by fluctuating commodity prices. It's terrible for people who are employed in the oil industry, and it's been terrible for us here (in London West).
We have an unbalanced economy and we really need to rethink the way it's organized. And the NDP is committed to doing that in fundamental ways.
The global expansion of free trade, and the global expansion of the rights of large corporations, didn't begin with NAFTA but it was kind of the turning point. Now we have the TPP, and the NDP is committed to giving real scrutiny to this deal. Because I think it takes our economy further down the road that we've already gone down. And it's not a road that's working for us.
Hurley: From terrorism to the niqab to a slew of negative attack ads, the Conservatives have been using fear to rally support for their party in this campaign.
Instead of fighting this election over "big ideas" on the economy and the environment, the Harper team seems to be pandering to voters' worst instincts.
Why do you think the Conservatives have chosen this approach?
Rowlinson: They have no record to run on. When Mr. Harper isn't talking about the niqab and how we have to defend ourselves against ISIL, and his local candidate here – Ed Holder – is just as bad as he is in banging away at those two issues, he's claiming that we have to vote Conservative because they're good stewards of the economy.
Well, as I've said, 400,000 manufacturing jobs (have been) lost on Mr. Harper's watch. There's been at least six straight budget deficits, maybe even seven since I don't believe the numbers we're hearing this year. What good stewards? They don't have a solid economic record to run on.
They have no rational defence of the use of Canadian forces in Syria and Iraq. There's no strategy or known outcome there; they're just sending forces there as part of a symbolic gesture to show how bad ISIL is.
So there's no strategic view of foreign policy, and there's no effective economic policy. Tax cuts for big corporations and tax cuts for the rich, which has been their economic policy, have demonstrably failed.
So they don't have anything left, except to say that there's an Arab person under your bed and you should be really frightened. And it is shocking. It's a campaign of division that I've never seen in Canadian politics before; it's more the kind of thing that you get in U.S. politics.
This is an almost uniquely multicultural country, and there are a number of Muslim Canadians in my riding, and they're scared. The government is targeting them, and it is running a campaign of fear directly against Muslim Canadians.