Seeback and Post focus on most important topics to Dufferin-Caledon ahead of the federal election

By Rob Paul, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Since its creation in 2003, the Dufferin-Caledon riding has elected a Conservative MP in all six of the federal elections it has existed for.

Prior to incumbent Conservative Kyle Seeback's election in 2019, former Conservative MP David Tilson won each of the previous five elections dating back to 2004.

In the six federal elections Dufferin-Caledon has been a part of, the Liberal Party has finished with the second most votes five of six times—in 2011 Green Party candidate Ard Van Leeuwen finished second.

With the federal election upon Canadians—Monday, September 20—Seeback and Liberal Party candidate Lisa Post are reaching the end of the campaign trail in hopes of representing Dufferin-Caledon.

Since the election was called by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on August 15, candidates will have only had 36 days—the minimum campaign length by law—to prepare for Canada's 44th federal election.

Over these last few weeks, Seeback and Post have been door knocking as they hear what residents of Dufferin-Caledon want to see from their next representative.

In his second election as a candidate in Dufferin-Caledon, Seeback says it's clear that the issue highlighted the most by constituents is cost of living, which has only been made more of an issue due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“What I've heard the most during my time as a Member of Parliament is affordability,” he said. “Whether it's homes, internet, or now inflation, go to the grocery or the gas pump and we have a problem with inflation. This is another thing that the government has been asleep at the switch on. The prime minister actually said he doesn't give monetary policy much thought; well, that's why we have rampant inflation that's making it harder for Canadians to pay their bills.”

Having been Dufferin-Caledon's MP since 2019, Seeback is passionate about ensuring that the prosperity of the agriculture sector continues because he knows it's the lifeblood of the area and he worries that it won't be a priority for Liberal representative.

“The number one employer, and the number one contributor to GDP in Dufferin-Caledon is agriculture, and we have to support agriculture and we have a great platform that's going to do that,” he said. “We passed two critical pieces of legislation in the House of Commons. The first, to remove the carbon tax from farm fuels for drying grain, using your equipment, all of that. It was huge, and the Liberals voted against it, which to me is shocking—they clearly don't understand how hard it is to farm.

“The second bill that we passed is going to make it easier and more affordable to pass down the family farm to the next generation. That's a huge issue, I've visited hundreds of farms and when I've talked to farmers they say to me, ‘Kyle, my kids can't take over the farm, it's just too expensive and there's just no way to do it.' We want to address that because I think we should keep family farms going. I think what's shocking to me is that the Liberals voted against it. When I talk to people in Dufferin-Caledon, if you elect a Liberal in Dufferin-Caledon, they'll be voting against the interest of farmers because they will whip that vote. The Liberal Party is not friendly to the agricultural community.”

Although it's her first federal election, Post has spent the last three years as a member of Orangeville Council, and between her time in that role and campaigning, she has frequently heard about how difficult it is to get by financially in this day and age.

“The biggest topics I'm hearing at doors right now is overall the affordability of life, that's the big one,” she said. “Housing plays a part in it and having access to reliable and affordable internet also plays a part in it, but it's more than that too. It's being able to afford life and being able to get our workers back into the workforce in an affordable way.”

Knowing people need to save money, Post thinks one of the biggest positives with the Liberal platform is the potential move forward with low-cost childcare for every family across the country.

“One of the ways we want to move forward and be able to do that is to provide affordable childcare and it's one of the key pieces of our platform that I am the most proud to talk about because it's been done successfully in our neighbouring province of Quebec for years. Rolling that out country-wide is a big deal, being able to provide families with a $10 per day daycare is a tangible savings in their homes that will make their overall life more affordable and make it easier for them to go to work in an affordable way. When my kids were little, it cost me a fortune to send them to daycare—I was barely working to make money, I was pretty much working to pay daycare. We need to stop that practice and make sure that when people are going to work, they're able to bring money into their home because when they get money into their home, guess what they do with it, they put it back into our economy.”

By providing low-cost childcare, Post says it will have a snowball type effect for the economic recovery by encouraging more people to spend the money they're saving and reignite businesses as they come out of the pandemic.

“If there's not the money to go back into our economy then our economy is not going to keep moving. Economics 101 is that that we need people have money in their pockets in order to keep moving the economy. A great way to do that is to try and find creative ways to make life more affordable and for young families, the cost of daycare is a huge one. It's one of the topics when I talk to people at doors they're excited about. People are coming out of precarious employment situations where they didn't know if they were working or if they were going to be off with all the closures—closures have made it very difficult for people to have reliable income.

“We have to make sure we're doing what we can to take care of people so that we can get out of this and start to move forward. That's where we seem to be stuck right now, we need to finish this pandemic and we need to be able to successfully move out of it in a way that's positive and affordable so people can feel comfortable and safe going back to work.”