Jason Davis is ready to bring his blue-collar work ethic to Queen’s Park – all he needs to do is turn a blue riding orange.
Davis, the recently announced NDP candidate for Perth-Wellington, signed on to run in this election is his feeling that more people who truly understand what it’s like to worry about putting food on the table and making rent are required when it comes to making the decisions. He wasn’t backing away from calling many sitting MPPs out of touch, either.
“There’s a huge disconnect right now in the sense that the other parties don’t genuinely understand what being working class means,” he said. “Look at the number of current MPPs that are landlords – it’s disproportionately high compared to the population. Look at Kingston, for example. They just declared a state of emergency because one in three households are struggling with food insecurity. To a lot of individuals that are in office today, that statistic can be jarring but it’s not understood what actually being one of those three families means.”
Davis believes that applying the sort of filter he uses to look at situations like that across the riding would expose a lot of people who are closer to feeling that pinch than ones who are more comfortable.
“I’ve heard from people that food banks aren’t asking what your income is anymore because it’s not relevant – no matter how much you’re making, it doesn’t seem to be enough for a lot of people,” he said. “Maybe we haven’t had anyone in office that’s ready to make that public statement that says we’re in an emergency situation.”
There was plenty of criticism levelled against the current Doug Ford-led Conservative government by Davis, pointing out the missteps in education and health care as the obvious and glaring ways he believes they have let Ontario down.
“One of the things I’m going to try and do with this campaign is host town halls in the northern part of the riding, and I want to invite anyone in the community that wants to come out to talk,” he said. “There will be two microphones and we can have a discussion on policy and pose questions. We’ve had billions of dollars to our debt under Ford yet all of our social services have been underfunded and cut, and we didn’t lower taxes. How did we add so much debt while cutting everything that we rely on? Ford was recently on FOX News and he was asked why doesn’t Ontario want to be the 51st state. He talked about how great America is and how much he loves it, but I realized at that point that the things that define me as a Canadian are things he doesn’t value.”
Davis’ criticisms didn’t stop at Ford’s doorstep and he was unequivocal about whether or not current MPP Matthew Rae deserves to be re-elected: absolutely not.
“He was the assistant to the education minister at the same time we lost at-home licensed child care in the same month the $10-a-day program was supposed to come out,” he said. “They moved all their licenses so no one could sign up for $10-a-day and thousands of families weren’t able to access a program that our tax dollars pay for. That is our district deliberately not helping us. He was also assistant to the Minister of Housing in a region that doesn’t have any overnight stay for homeless men for this community – how can he get up and say, ‘I’ve brought $200 million to this community’? That wasn’t $200 million in new funding because it used to be $400 million and it was cut. He just advertises the amount and acts like that’s enough to get a big round of applause. I think that, in this region, he hasn’t done anything to help us. I think that he likes to believe he has, but no he hasn’t.”
One of the common perceptions Davis and the NDP have to fight come election time is that voting in the NDP will hit people in the pocket book more than any other party. With concerns about rising costs being amped up by a potential trade war with the United States, it makes busting that perception all the more important.
“The idea that an NDP government is going to cost you more is not true,” Davis said. “We just added $100 billion to our debt, and we’re spending $10 billion on Highway 413 which, by third-party analysis, will save drivers 30 seconds. We’re also spending however many billion dollars to move a science centre which turned out to be a lie. So when you talk about government spending, I’m looking at the Kathleen Wynne government and how much they spent as well. I don’t think that the idea of an NDP government as this big, expensive thing is correct because we’re just taking the money we’re spending and using it on services we rely on instead of on land speculator interests and developments that aren’t in the best interest of the populace.”
When asked how he would react to winning a seat in another Conservative-led government, Davis said he would be ready to do whatever it takes to make constituents heard.
“If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s making my voice heard,” he said. “If it's its a conservative majority or minority and I’m elected, I will stand up and I will fight for the fact that we still do not have anything for our homeless. I might not be in the position where I can write policy but I’ll definitely be in the position where I can throw shame where it’s deserved and make it public enough that it becomes politically unviable for them to ignore me.”
There are two all-candidate's meetings scheduled for Stratford: Tuesday, Feb. 11, at The Local Community Food Centre from 6-8 p.m., and Thursday, Feb. 20, at the Stratford Rotary Complex from 5-7 p.m.