Conservatives meet and hear a solid argument for teaching young people financial literacy

By Pepper Parr

February 27th, 2023

BURLINGTON, ON

It is interesting to watch a group of people discussing fervently the way they would like to see the country run.

It was an attentive audience.

These are not wackos, they are people who, yes, do have a political orientation: they are Conservatives who talked about every subject you could imagine. The Convoy, the tax regimen we have, doing something to make young people financially literate. Crime, poverty, self-reliance, love of country, family values.

There were two retired police officers in the room bringing a perspective that is not often seen.

Younger people, older people, politically astute people. People who ran for office and won, people who ran for office and didn’t win.

People who ran elections and people who are probably going to run elections again.

Lianne Roon, Trevor Parry, Geoff Turner and Malika Dolaty didn’t disagree with each other and brought solid background information to a gathering of Progressive Conservatives on Saturday.

The reason for people being at the event was to talk about affordability and housing.

They painted a grim picture.

There were no clear cut answers.

There were several good explanations.

Many of the people in the room were prepared to blame the government in office now; that’s part of what politics is all about.

But this group was not bashing the government – many certainly did think the government has got it all wrong and believe the federal government is borrowing far too much money to pay for the services they deliver.

They did agree that the spending the Liberal government did during the worst of the pandemic was money that had to be spent and of course they good have done a better job – the benefit of hind sight.

Lianne Rood MP, Lambton, Kent, Middlesex said she was elected to listen to people and that meant hearing what the protesters who shut down Ottawa for a period of time had to say.

Lianne Rood MP, Lambton, Kent, Middlesex gave a different view on the Convoy that shut down parts of Ottawa in January. She said she walked about the protesters and listened saying she was sent to Ottawa to listen and she left her walk about with a different understanding about what people thought when they used the word Freedom.

Rood is a potato farmer, she and her family run a potato farm and gave the audience of about 50 people a different view of what it is like to sell produce to the supermarkets. She no longer sells to that sector.

She has some views on the protection some of the agricultural sector get. Eggs, milk, chicken are all managed markets – tight rules on what products can be sold for and how much can be produced. Supply management is not the best idea from her point of view.

Malika Dolaty works for a large finance company. Her passion was the failure to make young people financially literate – young for her starts is as low is as five years of age.

She put up some numbers that made is very obvious that if younger people were not financially literate they had little chance of being home owners in the future.

Geoff Turner, tax lawyer and the candidate of record for Etobicoke Centre believed that the approach the federal government has taken to the deficit is wrong.

Geoff Turner, tax lawyer and the candidate of record for Etobicoke Centre believed that the approach the federal government has taken to the deficit is wrong. He said for the federal government to use a GDP to debt ratio as the guideline for what the government can afford to borrow is never going to see a balanced budget which he felt was vital. He had solid data that was difficult to fathom in the amount of time he had to explain it all.

Trevor Parry – a lawyer and a tax minimization expert said he would love to run for office but a young family and a wife that wants him to be home meant public service was not going to be part of his career going forward.

He described Canada today is as a “banana republic with snow”; that family does not matter to this government; that former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney is a Communist and that health services are over managed.

He was entertaining.

Emily Brown, the federal candidate for Burlington in the last election was the moderator who kept things on track.

Emily Brown, the federal candidate for Burlington in the last election was the moderator who kept things on track and added that there will be a Town Hall meeting on Seniors in the future along with Town Hall meetings on Public Safety and another on Energy.

It was a good meeting, attendance for a cold Saturday was satisfactory.