CARP ACTION
FLEXING POLITICAL MUSCLE
IT WASN’T TOO LONG AGO that seniors’ issues were an afterthought during any given election campaign. Sure, candidates would acknowledge our demographic’s needs but it was often lip service – in reality, there wasn’t a great deal of effort expended to win their vote. A wink and a smile were all that candidates deemed necessary to secure a checkmark beside their name.
Fortunately, this patronizing strategy no longer works. With older Canadians now forming a large and powerful voting bloc and with CARP actively lobbying to get the issues to the forefront, all political parties are suddenly paying greater attention to wooing this important group. Today, no party can win an election unless it has a well thought-out and researched senior-specific platform.
Case in point was the recent Ontario Votes 2014 CARP Debate, held in late May, just weeks before the election was held (this magazine went to press before the results of the vote were determined).
Hosted by Dale Goldhawk of “Goldhawk Fights Back” and moderated by Susan Eng, VP of advocacy at CARP, the event was broadcast live on AM740 (a division of ZoomerMedia).
All the three major parties sent out their A-listers to the debate: Charles Sousa (Liberal); Christine Elliot (Progressive Conservative) and Cheri DiNovo (New Democrat Party), who answered questions from Goldhawk and Eng as well as radio listeners.
What the debate lacked in shouting and grandstanding – typical of television or town-hall debates – it made up for in calm, cool discussion of the issues that affect CARP members. That’s not to say the candidates let each other off the hook: Sousa drew criticism for the Liberals’ scandals, Elliot for her party’s threatened job cuts and DiNovo for voting against the Liberals’ Ontario-based pension plan.