By Denise Fung
Somerset Coun. Elisabeth Arnold says reversing the provincial government’s tax cuts will be the top item on her agenda if elected to Queen’s Park.
As the NDP’s new candidate for Ottawa Centre, Arnold says the tax cut, which reduced Ontario’s income tax rate by 30 per cent last July, should be scrapped in favour of funding social programs.
“The priority is to roll back the Mike Harris tax cut so that we can restore some equity and to fund those needed programs like schools, health care and housing,” says Arnold.
Arnold won the NDP candidacy by defeating education activist John Crump at the party’s Jan. 26 nomination meeting. Three hundred and fifty of the riding’s 1,016 New Democrats took part in a vote that will now see Arnold run against Liberal incumbent Richard Patten for a seat in the next provincial legislature.
Arnold says she will criticize what she calls the “weak-spirited” Liberals during the election campaign.
“The only real alternative to the Harris government agenda is the NDP,” says Arnold. “What we will be doing is going door-to-door, community-to-community, explaining to people what that alternative is and asking them to support my candidacy.”
Crump was one of the first to back Arnold’s win.
“In every nomination campaign people are attracted by one or the other candidates. The important thing is that they get hooked into the party and the ideas and continue working for whichever candidate is selected,” said Crump at the nomination meeting.
Provincial NDP leader Howard Hampton made an appearance at the meeting to rally New Democrats into campaign-mode. He told party members to ignore polls and media predictions that show the New Democrats can’t win and to concentrate on the issues instead.
“If we can get that simple message across — vote for what you believe in. Vote for what you know in your heart is right . . . people will discover that they have elected an awful lot of New Democrats.”
The Liberals and the New Democrats have battled for Ottawa Centre in the last three elections with the Liberals winning in ’87 and ’95 and the NDP winning in ’90. The Conservatives have finished a distant third in all three races.
Arnold, a councillor for Somerset Ward for the past four years, says she plans to stay on city council during the election campaign. She says her next step will be to map-out a pre-election strategy with her election committee.
“I think the people know me as a fighter, they know me as somebody who can get things done. I’ve been able, on a very fractious council, to deliver things that are important to my community. They know they can trust me, and I have integrity; and I will be asking them to put their faith into me.”