Eric Loewen of Aylmer local provincial candidate
By NICK LYPACZEWSKI TIMES-JOURNAL
Elgin-Middlesex-London Green Party candidate Eric Loewen was born five years after his party was formed in 1983 but says, despite his age, he’s ready for the big leagues.
“It is a big step up,” says the 22-year-old Aylmer resident. “I don’t have a lot of experience in politics. I have a lot of volunteer experience through business associations such as the Elgin Business Resource Centre, the newly formed Home Based Business Association and I just love working with people, listening to their needs.”
“Owning (Loewen Painting) and then the volunteer experience, I know a lot about how to run a business and running a business, in a lot of ways, is like running a family or a lot of other things.”
Loewen announced his provincial candidacy last month. He registered with the Greens about a year ago because he says it reflected his own ideologies.
“(The party) brings a closer relation with the people around us and especially the earth as well and brining back that union to parliament is something that I feel very strongly about,” he stressed.
However, the young man has a lot on his plate with the Green Party of Ontario’s extensive platform and lofty promises to erase the province’s almost $20 billion deficit by 2015 — a target two years earlier than the reigning Liberals and Progressive Conservatives — and create more jobs.
Loewen explained getting out of the red will be done, in large part, by emphasizing preventative health problem education as a means of reducing the funds fed to the health care system.
“We want to invest in education about how to properly take care of yourself for health care purposes, basically reducing the need to spend money in our health care system.”
“Smoking for example: a lot of people are going in for lung cancer or something to that effect and using expensive equipment to do treatments or to do X-rays. If we can eliminate that spending, then we can save money and that’s where our budget gets balanced.”
That alone will not erase the multi-billion dollar figure. Loewen ruled out cuts to education but not health care. He did, however, add that if there’s a need for health care spending, “we will make sure that spending is there.”
To balance the books, the candidate said the party will likely look into program spending cuts, a traditionally unpopular option among voters but one that likely needs to happen to combat the deficit. At the time of a Times-Journal interview, the candidate was unable to specify which programs would face cuts.
“I think there will be some program spending cuts. I don’t have any specific details in that area. That’s all I can tell you,” he advised.
But along with potential service cuts, Loewen and the party promise a focus on entrepreneurship and other measures to create jobs.
The East Elgin Secondary School graduate says anybody with an idea to start a business will be provided the resources and incentives to do so. Loewen said that will be done through enhancing existing services — such as the Elgin Business Resource Centre or the region’s Youth Entrepreneurship Partnership program — based on their recommendations and internal analysis..
“For those that don’t have that sort-of (entrepreneurial) drive to them, we want to reduce income taxes and business taxes especially so that more local, smaller business have the income available to hire more more people,” Loewen said.
“I have no official numbers; I just know we want to lower taxes to stimulate growth and that will be the big thing, lower taxes, especially on the personal and businesses taxes to really bring about growth in the community.”
The Ontario Greens also pledge to freeze provincial tuition for the 2012 school year while maintaining current budgets; create an Ontario Food and Farming Policy Council to funnel agricultural planning among various ministries and stakeholders and eliminate corporate and union political party donations.
As for the last point, Loewen says it will create more legitimate races.
“(Currently), you’re not allowing the little guy who might be a smarter, better representation for the riding to be able to succeeded because he won’t be able to get the information out to everybody. If we remove the corporate and union benefit sponsorship then, what happens is, it becomes a closer game and a fair game for everybody.”
A full breakdown of the Greens’ platform is found at itstimeforgreen.ca.
The latest polling information from Nanos Research puts Green party of Ontario support at just over 3% — about 13 points down from the next lowest party, the NDP.
Tags: business associations, preventative health, home based business association, party candidate, lung cancer, middlesex london <BR/>