Daniel Gatto, President of the U of T Liberals
4th year, French Specialist
The Varsity: What are you and the U of T Liberals doing for this election?
Daniel Gatto: We will be taking a Trinity-Spadina focus. Of course, we will be around to help Bob Rae as well, but the focus will be on Christine Innes’s campaign as this is really a critical riding for the party […] Last year we came within 5 per cent of winning, and this year we are able to mount a much stronger campaign as last time it was very last minute, so this time we’re ready, we’ve prepared well. In terms of our strategy, some things are yet to come. There will be a focus on canvassing, getting youth out there, talking to people conversing with voters […] Now is not the worst of times in terms of getting students involved, but it’s not exactly ideal.
TV: How are you finding campaigning during exam season?
DG: It’s tricky, so often things happen last-minute, whether it’s with campaign business or with school, but in the end things need to get done and you do them. So often you get a phone call, ‘Can you do this?’ and you say ‘Okay’ — it’s just hard to say no when you have the possibility of another Harper government on the line.
TV: What are the most important aspects of the Liberal platform for student?
DG: The most important platform element was just released Tuesday morning, and it’s the Canadian Learning Passport. A $1 billion plan to give every student regardless of family income $1,000 per year up to 4 years of post-secondary education, tax-free. For students of lower-income families, $1,500 per year per four years amounting to $6,000. Part-time students also benefit from the passport program, but at a lower rate.
As Michael Ignatieff has been saying since 2006, “If you get the grades you get to go.” Michael Ignatieff, being a university professor who has worked in many countries as a professor including at U of T, he knows the importance of education. He has spent his life educating himself and educating others, so this is a thing essential to his character. And $1 billion is relatively not that much — the Harper government has spent $1 billion on a three-day G20 summit. Ask yourselves, would you rather have a G20 summit in Toronto […] If you look at the security obstacles of having the summit in Toronto. It’s just mind-boggling compared to having it in a smaller town. It was very inconvenient for the Canadian economy as business-people had to in some cases stay at home, and it was inconvenient for students who didn’t have access to libraries […] So not only did it cost $1 billion in explicit costs, but in implicit negative repercussions who knows how much more this would cost the economy, how much it would impede on the GDP.
If we look at some costs that have come up under the Harper Government, we are looking at $45 billion dollars, if not more, of quite questionable expenses [such as] the F35 plan: the Conservative government was planning to purchase these F35 fighter jets. The initial cost was projected to be $8 billion, plus maintenance $16 billion. This has now gone up to $21 billion, even $30 billion, so we don’t really know when this will stop.
[…] Conservatives have cut GST by 2 per cent and put us in a weak position. Each percentage point cut represented cutting $6 billion per year, so that’s cutting $12 billion from the budget. If we were bringing in $12 billion extra per year over the last several years, where would our deficit be?
Nick Brownlee, member of the U of T NDP
Taking a gap year, going into 2nd year next year
The Varsity: What are you and the U of T NDP doing for this election?
Nick Brownlee: Generally, encouraging all students to get out and be active. As a group, one of our co-chairs is out in Winnipeg being a VCO, I’m being a candidate and canvassing for different NDP campaigns. As a student group we’re really trying to get people to be aware that they can be involved in politics, that politics is about more than just casting your ballot. It can be about being involved in decisions within political parties, on designing platform — and that’s more for the NDPs than other parties, because when the Liberals hold a policy conference they just announce their policy; when the NDP hold a conference we debate our policy […] Students can get involved, students can put forward proposals, and that’s one of the things I was very surprised at when I got involved my first year, when you want to get involved you can jump right in the centre of it.
TV: How are you finding campaigning during exam season?
NB: I’m taking a year off, but in the past, organizing in general in the context of school, it’s a lesson — no matter what stage you are in life you’re going to have commitments other than politics unless you’re working full-time in it, or any kind of activism for that matter, so you have to be very aware of what you can do and make the most of that time. So it’s valuable, it’s a lesson in efficiency really
TV: What are the most important aspects of the NDP platform for students?
NB: The NDP stands for students more than any other political party. We believe in the long-run building towards a universal post-secondary education system that a number of countries in Europe have built. Obviously this is something that you build over time, but in the meantime a great number of U of T students and students across the country are working at the same time as they’re going to school. They’re doing part-time courses, and it takes them a long time to get the degree, and we believe in supporting students through that, so that’s most importantly cutting down on tuition costs, or if they’re going into debt it’s easier to pay off the debt in the future. And so we’re really supporting the students on tuition-related issues […] it’s about giving people a good launch in life and making it affordable, and making sure people have a good retirement is what we’re all about as a party.
[…] The biggest argument I get from most progressive people is that the NDP talk a big game but can’t get elected, so what’s the point of voting for them. But every time Jack’s gone to the polls since he’s been leader, we’ve gained seats as a party. We’re gonna gain seats again this election, we hope to be part of the government, so it really proves Jack’s slogan of “don’t let them tell you what can’t be done because you’ll really be surprised at what can be accomplished.”
[In a later email, Brownlee added]:
A quick clarification of the NDP and student fees; we’re devoted to freezing, and then reducing tuition costs for every university in Canada. This way, every single student benefits and post-secondary education is made more accessible for everybody, including straight out of high school students and returning students. Ignatief’s recently announced plan is less inclusive, as it is a straight-out-of-high-school benefit not useful for returning students, and an as-needed assistance to students from low-income families.
Patrick Langille, Secretary-General of U of T Campus Conservatives
3rd year, History
The Varsity: What are you and the U of T Campus Conservatives doing for this election?
Patrick Langille: So for this election we’ve been going out campaigning, we had a wine and cheese night with several prominent members of the party, and we’ve just been trying to coordinate with different groups that have a similar ideological background to the Conservatives […] we’re going to have a meeting very shortly to coordinate our election capabilities.
Mostly just canvassing, we organize a lot with the York Conservatives, we’re going to go out to Eglinton-Lawrence and Eglinton-West to campaign in the next little while.
The candidate for the TS riding, Gin Siow, is having his campaign announcement this Saturday. A number of us are going to be attending that, just getting involved with the local community and trying to upseat the great red fortress of Toronto.
TV: How are you finding campaigning during exam season?
PL: That’s probably one of the most difficult aspects of it just because we are all students, we come from different faculties, some of us are engineers, so they have particularly difficult schedules right now, but thankfully since the hotbed of campaign season is towards the end of April, exams are going to be finished with, so it shouldn’t be too much of an issue […] It’s just like any other club really, whether or not it’s a sports team, or a political club, or an academic club, you just find a way really, you know your limit, you know how many clubs you can be a member of, so it’s not too difficult I find.
TV: What are the most important aspects of the Conservative platform for students?
PL: Well I think the Conservative Party has done a lot to get involved with a charity that has been promoting science and engineering opportunities for students, funding for equipment, and I think the main point of the Conservative Party this year is to get out of the recession.
Since 2009 the Conservative Party has created nearly 500,000 jobs for Canadians which is more than the number of jobs that were lost during the recession, so it will be easier to find a summer job this year with a Conservative government … Harper plans to give up to $1,000 to offset the cost of hiring new employees for small companies, and many students will wind up working in that sort of small company, so this hiring incentive is going to be very good for students and that’s a major reason why they should support the Conservative Party.
[The] Conservative Party has also been introducing new free trade agreements with the European Union and India, giving access to markets worth — each of them is worth over 2 trillion if I’m not mistaken — and giving access to 1.7 billion customers for Canadian manufacturers in some of the world’s fastest growing economies.
With negotiations intended to be completed by 2013, Canadian manufacturers will be given preference in India. This will actually pump 12 billion dollars into Canadian industry.
I think this will actually be Harpers’ great legacy, his ability to weather this recession. And his budget, which simultaneously creates jobs and lower taxes, I think is definitely needed for Canadians right now. It will allow low-income families to save a bit, and it will also allow companies to more effectively access new markets.
