InQuinte: What will you and your party be doing to help people, particularly small business people and people who are hit hard by COVID get back on their feet as we move out of COVID?

COVID has been difficult for businesses, it’s been difficult for individuals trying to find work or who are figuring out whether they can work through COVID or not.

Our party has a comprehensive plan. It's our main plan for growth in Canada, coming out of COVID, it’s what to do about the economy. And how to grow the economy and secure the future for the residents that are here in Quinte and here in Canada.

I'm focused on wages here, wage growth, I'm focused on jobs in this area and in getting people back to work safely -- those that have been off on CERB and those who've been had to take off time because of COVID. We're focused on a plan, a comprehensive plan to secure the future on jobs.

That includes a Canada Surge plan, which would pay 50 per cent of the salary for employees for six months to help people get people off CERB and get back to work.

We have 3,000 job openings in the area right now. It is a unique situation in Quinte that we have a lot of jobs open, a lot of employers looking for jobs. Our priority number one is to safely get people off CERB and into jobs so that employers can fill jobs that are open right now.

We have announced this week the Main Street tax credit, and we're giving 25 per cent of up to $100,000 that small business owners invest in their own businesses. And this is a for up to two years. So those businesses that are hurt, that need some extra cash to stay open and get going through these hard times, we've committed to invest in that.

That also includes a 5 per cent events tax credit in 2022-23 for companies that spend more. So not only just investing, but spending, more investing in companies, we're going to give a credit for that.

And workers, if you're working in a low wage job, we're going to give you a dollar per hour raise. So we have the Canada Workers Benefit which is a benefit for those that are making a little bit less than their job or, or not making maybe probably minimum wage or a little bit more. We're going to double that to $2,800 per individuals and $5,000 for families. So that's going to help workers right now who are in jobs,

But more importantly, which I'm really happy about we're going to put $250 million into job training. So if you're in a job right now, or if you see a job and there's lots of them available, that you want to work in, there's going to be monies available to train yourself into a better job where you make a better wage.

And that's really important to us in the Conservative Party that we have people in Canada making a greater wage, in the Bay of Quinte making more money, and that they're filling jobs that we have available here now, because we do have jobs that are paying way more than minimum wage, paying $20 plus an hour. And sometimes workers just need training to get in that.

Another great thing that we're doing in the area is promised high speed internet to rural businesses and to consumers -- those that are working from home and for residents -- by 2025. So in three years, we'll have guaranteed high-speed to all residences in this whole area in 2025.

So tax credits, making sure we incentivize workers to train into better paychecks and growing businesses and keeping small businesses open we're committed to growing jobs in this area and making sure that we come out of COVID stronger in the Bay of Quinte.

InQuinte: How are you going to ensure that the job training is going to the people who really need to get elevated and not just simply going to people who are already making good wages, bumping up the middle and leaving the lower behind?

If I'm elected and the first thing I'll be doing, I think jobs, jobs is job. Number one, for me. I'll be working with the Workforce for Training Development and all the Chambers of Commerce and then all business groups just to identify the gaps right now. We know a lot of them, just to stay current and to ensure that we know the jobs that are needed.

At that point, when that money is available, we're going to make sure then that we advertise that and it's the public, it's the people here that we want to be able to say, “Yeah, I want to get that training, and I want to get that job.”

Conservatives, we really feel that the power needs to be in the people. As government, we don't tell you what to do. We want to incentivize you to be able to go out and get training for a better job and have a better paycheck.

So that's the way that we're going to approach it. We'll make sure we know of the job opportunities, the openings. We'll make sure that we have the money available and then we will make sure to advertise and get that money out the door to people.

We want you as a resident to say, “Yeah, I know I want this job or another job and here's the training available and I want to make sure I work myself into a better paycheck.”

 

 

InQuinte: What will you and your party be doing in terms of providing some sort of way to ensure that everybody who wants to work can work and nobody is losing out because they have to stay home with either children or parents.

Ryan Williams: The number one thing is and coming off of the Liberal plan for childcare, we've matched that with a different program, which would give 75 percent of childcare costs back to parents, back to families.

So we agree that we want women and men into the workforce. We want all of those that want a job to be able to do so equally. And we want to make sure that the childcare is taken care of it. It is an important topic.

So the difference we are doing is we right away, we'll be doing 75 percent of childcare costs, a rebate right back to families which is really, really important because it creates that opportunity now, it helps those, those families now that want to get back to work.

And it doesn't wait for spaces to be created or programs through the government. It allows consumers or residents here in this region to be able to choose childcare now and to be able to fill those spaces and take care of their children and get back in the workforce.

InQuinte: The last time national child care was an issue the Liberal plan was to do something similar to what they're doing. The conservative plan under Stephen Harper was to provide money for daycare and no national daycare came up. So how do you ensure that you're giving people tax credits to pay for daycare, how do you ensure that the daycare actually follows the money and those spaces actually come up?

Well, it's, it's really two parts. Probably one part is, is the spaces are already being filled right now by families. So the spaces are filled they're already going to be, they're going to get the rebate for that.

The second part is there are probably going to have to be spaces created. And when we think entrepreneurially and that's my specialty in this region, it's probably going to be looking at some of the other job creation strategies to make sure that those that want to run a daycare would be able to do so as well.

The government-run daycare is a disaster. It's not very successful. The model that Justin Trudeau was using for the rest of Canada and Quebec is a disaster. There's 46,000 children on a waiting list. It was so bad that the announcement three weeks ago was to give it an additional $6 billion to Quebec for a program that he was modelling childcare off for the rest of Canada.

So it was a failed, failed experiment. Our reality and, and talking about Stephen Harper and back in the day was they gave money to the child benefit fund, which was just money that went to an account. This one is better that it gives money to parents who actually are using daycare and using those costs

And I think it'll be very direct. And as soon as our government gets to Parliament we were working on the best methods to ensure that money goes directly to parents who are paying for childcare as soon as possible, not waiting down the road.

 

 

InQuinte: A big issue in a lot of places is homelessness and the cost of either renting or owning your own home. What do you and your party plan to do to try and ensure people can find homes and even someday own their own homes?

So it's one of my main priorities, I think besides jobs and mental health fixing housing is a main priority here. It is a disaster. It's a crisis in this region.

We're going to make housing more affordable, increased supply swiftly and implement a plan in Canada to build 1 million I say, units, not homes, but units in the next three years.

One of the biggest things we're going to be doing is increasing skilled trades, looking at more accurate population intensification models.

We've known this, I've worked with the Quinte Home Builders eight years ago, we knew we had a shortage of skilled trades to build more homes. It's really swinging hammers and building more supply. We're going to work right away with the Quinte home builders on really ways to attract more skilled trades, to Quinte to ensure that when we look at units and what we want to build for the year that we have enough trades to build as many as we can.

And we need to almost double that. I think we need to see at least a thousand units in this region. The federal government's going to restrict any foreign investors for two years. We're going to stop foreign investment into home speculation, those that come in and just buy homes to sell. And we're going to stop that, which is going to alleviate a little bit of that supply.

We're going to review the real estate of the Canadian government, which is 37,000 buildings and we're going to release at least 15% of that federal building supply to housing. So that's going to be something we do right away.

And we're going to make sure that we make things more affordable here for Canadians, looking at seven to 10-year mortgages, but really trying to help Canadians get into a better position.

But I tell you, none of this really matters unless we really take care of the supply. The supply is the job number one for us when it looks to housing and it looks to tackling housing. And there's, there's so much that we need to do.

I've been around it for the last eight to 10 years. I know that at least five or six different ways that we need to look at that. And I'm going to be focusing on that extensively.

InQuinte: When you talk about supply, a lot of people will look at it and say, you know, it's great that you can build new homes that are costing $400 or $500 or $600,000. What about housing supplies for people who aren't going to be taking in enough income to buy a $500,000 house, people who need starter homes that they can get into and build upon.

What we've talked about in the city of Belleville for the last three years is mixed middle, stacked townhouses, some mid- high-rises, looking at different housing, that's going to fit those income levels. And we have to do that.

The other part is intensification. We need to look at ways we build up a little bit more. That would be downtown Belleville or in Trenton may be in, in Picton, but looking at ways that we can build more supply without urban sprawl and making sure that we exasperate the situation.

Homes right now, single detached, are far too expensive. The work that we're going to have to do, from the Conservative Party side, is to keep prices stable. The work that the Liberal government has done has done nothing to keep those prices down, they've only they've doubled in the last seven years since I've been here.

We used to sell homes here, when we talked as Bay of Quinte Living eight years ago, at $268,000. As a value, it was incredible. People could afford them. Now it's over $660,000 last month. It is absolutely unaffordable.

So supply, making sure we look exactly what we need and make sure we're getting that price down and it's going to be units. We say it will be priced units, different styles of homes, even tiny homes, to make sure that we have homes that are affordable for those that need them.

 

 

InQuinte: What is the single most important issue in this election to you personally, and why?

The single most important issue I think this election is going to be the Bay of Quinte region’s prosperity. And it's followed the work I've done for the last 17 years, starting with tourism, working with then population growth and immigration to jobs and working with Quintevation as well as the Quinte Economic Development Commission.

We have a medium household income in this area that's $20,000 less than the provincial average. We have growing poverty and homelessness in this area. We have youth who have grown up here only to have left.

So to me, the single most important issue is to ensure that we have jobs that keep people here and training for jobs that allow people to make more money, to bring home to their households.

It's to ensure that we have local Quinte companies that are growing and expanding, that leave money into the area. It's to ensure we're attracting different entrepreneurs and different groups of clusters of industry that make their home here.

To me, the prosperity of this region, the ability to provide jobs and have people making an income and having a great livelihood will ensure that we have a better Bay of Quinte for a lot of things, for our downtowns, for arts and culture, for having great diverse representation of new residents to this area.

But it's very important, I think it's the single most important thing because we can't, you know, even the housing, the environment and even mental health is just going to spiral downwards.

We need real leadership right now with passion and with leadership that has real experience. And I really believe in the Bay of Quinte, I've believed in it for 17 years, nothing's changed. But without this leadership that we need in this in the region from your Member of Parliament, I really fear for what's next and what's here for the future and I'm committed to what's next, the future and securing the future here in this area.

InQuinte: If you're that committed to the Bay of Quinte, why are you seeking a seat in Ottawa rather than something here? How do you make the connection of why it's important to you to represent this region federally?

Ryan Williams: This is where the decisions are made, this is where the funding flows from, from our federal government. This is where we work strategically with our partners in Eastern Ontario, and then Ontario, and then Canada itself.

Rural innovation job growth creation, and even what we, you know, talk about mental health and environment only comes from a Canada-centered parliamentary decision and vision.

And for me, I can represent our three municipalities with, with great conviction and with great action. If I'm the one from Ottawa, making sure that we're getting that direction, that funding the attention.

I've spent the time on the non-for-profits. I've spent the hundreds of thousands of hours on that, trying to make those changes and I've done what I, what I could.

I spent the time with municipal government, seeing what little teeth we have there to make those changes. This is where the buck stops.

And I know that the time in Ottawa will be little. I'm committed to spending the majority of time here, making sure we use the influence of Ottawa and working alongside other MPs across the whole of Eastern Ontario to ensure that all of us benefit and all of us will do great, great things here in