The Lorne Brooker Show on 800 CJBQ continued its “Meet the Candidates” hour on Thursday interviewing Amanda Robertson of the Ontario NDP.
Robertson is running in the Bay of Quinte by-election scheduled to take place on September 19, 2024.
She began her interview with Lorne Brooker by going over her background from being born and raised as a dairy farmer, to working upwards of three jobs in retail, restaurants and at the Toyota plant in Woodstock, to getting her master’s in occupational therapy, to moving to Belleville and joining the board of directors at the John Howard Society and running for School Trustee with the Hastings Prince Edward District School Board.
Robertson says all of these experiences have helped lead to her running in the election so she can help remove barriers and have more people represented in government, not just the wealthy or well-connected.
“It’s driving me to enter into this world and to align with the NDP, because they are a party that has been built out of workplace movements, out of looking at the little guy and fighting for the little guy. And I think often, they’re the people who hurt the most when life gets the hardest for people in the Bay of Quinte.”
Brooker asked about addressing concerns in the middle class.
Robertson says the reality is that there are more people struggling than people may want to admit.
“We have health care workers and education workers who are accessing the food bank right now. We just had a study come out province wide, a million people using food banks. That is outrageous, and it’s completely unacceptable, and it’s not the same people who were using a food bank 20 years ago, 15 years ago. These are families. These are people who are fully employed, people who are working three jobs, people who work seven days a week, and they are having to access the food bank.”
A caller to the segment asked Robertson about major infrastructure projects being taken on by municipalities such as the water treatment facility in Wellington.
Robertson criticized the province saying the municipalities are taking on too much of the burden when it comes to major projects.
“We have an opportunity to send a message to Doug Ford and his friends at Queen’s Park that we’re not happy with what’s going on, and that this isn’t sustainable, and that we need a partner who’s willing to come to the table and fund it. Partial funding and the passing of the buck to the federal government and ‘oh, we’ll give you this if the federal government jumps in and also contributes,’ That’s unacceptable for a provincial government. We are hurting in our community, and we demand better.”
Robertson’s husband is a family doctor with the family coming to Belleville in part because of the doctor recruitment program.
She says it shouldn’t be up to the municipalities to fight each other with incentive programs to try and attract and recruit doctors to the region.
“I know when Belleville started their program, they were one of the first, but since then, it’s like this revolving door where we have people coming, staying for five years and then leaving. So it’s not solving the problem in the way that I think it was intended to.”
The series has previously interviewed Lori Borthwick of the Ontario Green Party and Tyler Allsopp of the Ontario PC party.
Sean Kelly of the Ontario Liberals is scheduled to be interviewed for Meet the Candidates on September 17.
The full interview can be found below:
