<strong>Local PC MPP candidates say the party will make youth unemployment a priority</strong>
In a town hall meeting at Kitchener’s Conestoga Place, Tim Hudak and local PC MPP candidates, Tracey Weiler (Kitchener-Waterloo) and Rob Leone (Cambridge), said tackling Ontario’s high youth unemployment rate one of their main priorities.
Weiler said, “It’s the highest and has doubled the national average.”
Their plan includes encouraging youth to consider careers in the skilled trades in order to get a “good paying job” after they graduate, said Weiler.
“There’s a mismatch that we have today between youth unemployment and the demand for good paying jobs in the skilled trades,” she added. “We as a province need to do a better job of helping people early on as they’re in that critical decision making stage to figure out what direction is best for them. For some people it may be a university program, but for others it might be the opportunity to go into the skills trades and get a good-paying job.”
Leone also said, “In our colleges today, we have about 45 per cent of students in college that have a completed university degree in some university. So what that means is that people are spending five-eight years to get a diploma or degree that they could had in three years. That adds to the cost of going to school for the student and also adds to the costs for families.”
In order to deal with this problem, Leone and the PCs proposed a “Colleges First Strategy”.
“Students can have great education at college that leads to a good job, and if you want to go to university afterwards, those pathways should open up, so we want to make that case to voters.”
<strong>Catherine Fife criticizes the Liberals’ 30 per cent rebate</strong>
Catherine Fife and the NDP have and would challenge the Liberals’ 30 per cent tuition rebate if they were elected government after the June 12 elections, citing accessibility issues.
“We were the only party that supported tuition freeze,” she said. “We actually challenged the Liberals on the 30 per cent tuition rebate because we’ve heard firsthand from students that that’s not working and people have to jump through all these hoops to access it.”
She added, “We the [NDP] fought the Liberals to implement the youth employment strategy, it’s a full time job fighting the Liberals and making sure the Liberals do what they say they’re going to do,” said Catherine Fife, incumbent NDP candidate for the riding of Kitchener-Waterloo. “We are the only party that’s holding the line on tuition, and we’ve pushed that every single day, and you saw in this budget they just did not listen. It is not a budget that can be supported because it is not in favour or support of future generations, with Ontario having the highest youth unemployment rate in Canada.”
Fife emphasized post-secondary tuition and investments, infrastructure, affordability, and transit as part of her party’s economic plan.
<strong>The Liberals will continue to expand 30 per cent tuition coverage, particularly the guideline for those students with disabilities</strong>
Students with disabilities can expect the continuation of newly—implemented expansion on the 30 per cent rebate on tuition, said the Liberals.
The plan, which is primarily for full-time students (60 per cent plus course load), was expanded in late 2012, to include part-time students with disabilities taking a 40 per cent plus course load.
In her pitch on why students should vote for her and the party, Liberal MPP candidate Jamie Burton said, “They have continued investment to students … they have this commitment to continue the 30 per cent off [rebate], they also have made the investment in other grants available, they’ve even expanded the 30 per cent off to include part-time students with disabilities … I think that is a clear indication from a financial perspective that that’s going to continue.”
