Bruce County councillors recently had a chance to bring up some of their concerns to Bruce-Grey- Owen Sound Conservative MP Alex Ruff.
While Ruff was present at the county council meeting on August 3rd, he requested that each member of the council mention one thing that they were concerned about that they wanted the federal government to help address.
One by one, members of the council gave their opinion and gave insight into why they felt it was an important issue.
Concerns given included housing, doctor recruitment, the carbon tax, and nuclear waste management and storage.
Ruff told the council that after more conversation during a break in Thursday’s council meeting, he would be able to take his concerns back to the federal government.
Steve Hammell: Accountability. “It appears as though there are billions of dollars of infrastructure that have disappeared and even with the carbon tax, which is very polarizing. If we knew all those dollars were coming back, then it would be a lot easier to digest and understand how exactly that works and the reasoning. But there just seems to be a lack of accountability at times with the government at that level that I see.”
Luke Charbonneau: Housing. “We need help with housing, and we need the government to focus on and make sure not to forget about rural communities. I understand that the vast majority of the population lives in urban centres and so the vast majority of the money will go to urban centres and that’s reasonable, but rural communities like ours, like Bruce County, need to get their fair share of funding and attention when it comes to the housing crisis.”
Ken Craig: Nuclear waste management and storage. “Certainly host municipalities including the county have been willing hosts for 60-some-odd years. In the big picture, even though there’s aggressive work being done to find a permanent home, we host municipalities bear a significant burden in that regard at this point.”
Milt McIver: Housing, nuclear waste, and federal docking facilities. “I wanted to give the government a plug as well… We had a lot of work done on the Tobermory [docking facility] and it was a great job.”
Mark Goetz: Taxation. “I believe that when you look at the global warming issue, I don’t believe that we can tax our way out of that. And that’s a huge concern it’s just too easy to tax everything these days. I think with the technology and the folks behind the scenes that we have the capabilities with the technology we should be looking at other avenues. If we’re going to compete in a global market in this country, then we need to be competitive with other countries. Putting our producers and our business at a disadvantage with more taxes is not the way to do that. I would encourage our government to look elsewhere other than just taxing.”
Don Murray: The carbon tax. “The carbon tax. Being a big agricultural community. I know [Huron-Bruce MP Ben Lobb] is working very hard on that, but it’s taking a lot of money out of people’s pockets throughout Bruce County in the agriculture industry.”
Garry Michi: Doctor recruitment. “I would like to see us get more help with doctor recruitment. Every community in Canada needs doctors. Maybe make it easier for new Canadians, or those from other countries coming here, to make it easier for them if they’re a doctor in their own country to not have to jump through too many hoops to be a doctor in Canada because we need doctors.”