Incumbent MP says affordability a common concern
BY JOHN CHICK Special to the VOICE
Not unlike his NDP opponent Nameer Rahman, Niagara West incumbent Conservative MP Dean Allison says the issue he’s hearing the most this election season centers around the cost of living.
“It always goes back to affordability,” Allison told the Voice. “People are saying, ‘We’re working hard, but we don’t have much money left over at the end of the day, and we could use some help.’ So I think a lot of the message in what I’m hearing, is life is still pretty expensive.”
Unlike the NDP, however, the Conservatives say the best way to combat this is through tax relief. The federal Conservative platform includes various proposals such as rebates for parents who enroll their children in sports programs or arts classes, as well as increasing contributions to registered education savings plans (RESPs). The Tories also promise to scrap the federal carbon tax.
“We’ve got a lot of good policies in my opinion, that are going to put a few more dollars in people’s pockets,” Allison said.
The Beamsville businessman is running for his sixth term representing the riding in Ottawa —he was first elected in 2004 under the leadership of Stephen Harper. When the Voice spoke to Allison in late September, a cursory, non-scientific drive around Pelham indicated exponentially more lawn signs supporting local Liberal candidate Ian Bingham than Allison. That’s evened out a little since, and Allison said at the time his staff was in the process of upping their sign game.
“Yup, getting signs up,” he said. “My sense is the campaign’s going well … we’re going about and trying to execute our plan the way we do every election—identify votes and then try and drive them out to the polls on October 21.”
Pelham hasn’t been represented by a Liberal on the federal level since it was part of the now-abolished Erie riding, in the mid-1990s.
Despite our consistently blue-coloured mapping, Allison said that constituents in Pelham and elsewhere in Niagara West have relayed to him dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“This is anecdotal, but from my perspective, it feels different on the ground than it did in ’15,” he said. “People I think are a little bit frustrated … they feel like what they were promised with this prime minister is not exactly what’s been delivered.”
While Trudeau has been mired in political and personal scandal for most of 2019, Allison said the biggest issue he has with the current administration is a sense of hypocrisy.
“What we’ve been saying is [Trudeau will] say one thing to us and then do something different,” Allison said.
“But it’s not just what we’re saying, people are telling us it almost feels like there’s a double standard —you know, there’s one set of rules for him, and another for everybody else. I think that’s what the frustrating part is.”