Meet the Candidates – Mario Leclerc, NDP

As part of our election coverage, we reached out to all political candidates with the same set of questions. Each candidate was given an equal opportunity to participate. We are publishing their responses exactly as submitted, without edits or corrections, in the order that we received them.

1. Economic Development and Job Creation
Stormont–Dundas–South Glengarry includes everything from farms and factories to small businesses and tourism.

What specific policies will you support to stimulate local job creation, attract new investment, and help small businesses thrive across both rural communities and the City of Cornwall?

The NDP will support parliamentary leadership in hammering out policies that respond to the current threat to our economies, the U.S tariffs. We will be part of the united front that the federal government must present to that threat and we will support the retaliatory measures that parliament levies in response to the threatened tariffs. Closer to home, on the local level, we recognize that rural communities need the stability that supply management provides in some of the agriculture sectors. The NDP is pledged to continue to support that policy. Our local economy is varied, as your question indicates. Manufacturing occurs in the more urban communities of the riding and in SDG, especially in Cornwall which is our industrial centre. No business can thrive without workers and our aggressive housing policies will hasten the development of the housing that is in very short supply. And we will increase the supply of affordable housing, where rental costs are commensurate with wages. We commit to ensuring the infrastructure is in place for the businesses to expand.

2. Healthcare Access – Family Doctors, Mental Health, and Emergency Care
Many residents struggle to find a family doctor, wait times for mental health services are long, and some local ERs have faced temporary closures in recent years.

What will you do to ensure that SD&G residents have consistent access to primary care, timely emergency services, and better mental health support—whether they live in Cornwall or the surrounding rural townships?

Both provincial and federal levels of government pay for healthcare, but it is managed by the provincial governments and overseen by the federal government. It is the federal government’s responsibility to to uphold the five principles of the Medicare Act. Those principles are accessibility, universality, portability, public administration and comprehensiveness. Federal money transfers are dependent on compliance with those principles. There is no question that care available to Canadians is rationed and constrained unduly and unevenly across the country. As government, we take the oversight responsibility very seriously and we will challenge provinces that are remiss. We will work with them as partners to preserve and protect the most reassured of the Canadian social programs. We are committed to set and uphold national standards across the five principles.

3. Infrastructure – Roads, Bridges, and Broadband
Poor road conditions, aging infrastructure, and patchy internet still affect many parts of the riding.

What steps will you take to secure federal infrastructure funding for SD&G, including road and bridge improvements and expanding high-speed internet to underserved areas?

Currently, there are programs of grants and loans for municipalities to maintain these essential assets and to extend them where they are warranted. Effective broadband is essential to our economy; these needs go beyond transportation and include communication, without which no economy can prosper. We will continue the partnerships with the provinces to ensure that programs that drive development are maintained and enhanced as needed. We are especially concerned about the spaces between communities and cities and the need to incorporate them into the urban networks. What the railway did for Canada leading up to Conferderation is what broadband can do for Canada now and the NDP is committed to supporting it.

4. Agriculture, Sustainability, and Climate Adaptation
Local farmers are facing unpredictable weather, increased costs, and shifting environmental regulations.

How will you support modern, sustainable farming in SD&G—helping producers adapt to climate change through innovation, environmental stewardship, and resilience-building programs that work for family farms?

The NDP is absolutely committee to meeting the challenges of climate change. One has to look no further than the province of British Columbia which has led the country’s responses, because of the foresight and vision of successive NDP governments. In 2011, the NDP adopted the Triple Bottom Line as a guide to decision making. Briefly, that entails a balance in development and strategies between economic benefit, environmental responsibility and social well-being. Adherence to the triple bottom line is the only way to create and sustain meaningful sustainability. Under conservative and liberal leadership, family farms are disappearing at an alarming rate. The government has to reinvest in agriculture, in rural communities and family farms. Canada needs a national food strategy that helps strengthen economic resilience in rural communities and better links local food networks to urban areas and we pledge to work toward that goal.

5. Affordability and Cost of Living
Whether in Cornwall or rural SD&G, families and seniors are struggling with rising housing costs, groceries, fuel, and utilities.

What actions will you take to make life more affordable for residents across the riding, and how will your policies ensure that both urban and rural communities benefit—not just major cities?

Two NDP promises address these most pressing issues. Food on the table and a roof over one’s head are top of mind across all sectors of society. These problems didn’t start at the grocery store though. They have grown out of a dislocated economy under which workers struggle to keep up but inevitably lose ground. Wages in Canada have not kept up with the cost of living and the real work on affordability starts in the workplace. We will support workers’ efforts to earn a fair wage, a living wage, At the same time we pledge to tackle escalating grocery prices with a hard cap on essential items. The affordability crisis in housing is the result of years of neglect on the part of senior levels of government and we pledge to reverse that. We will continue Canada Mortgage and housing Authority’s attempts to partner with municipalities and developers to bring more rental housing units, especially affordable rental units into communities and most recently, Jagmeet Singh announced a program of government loans for first-time home buyers. Conservative and Liberal governments have been giving low-interest loans to developers for years. The NDP government will extend low-interest government loans to families. There are precedents for this. In the early 70s, when the boomer generation was flooding the ranks of the unemployed threatening to enter into an adulthood of loitering, the federal government offered easily accessible and affordable student loan and grant programs and went further with the LIP grants to stimulate and enable entrepreneurship for those who lacked capital. A generation gained access to education and experience that ensured security and prosperity. Well, those without adequate housing or prospects of home ownership are today’s generation at risk. A federal NDP government will be there for them with low interest government loans.