'Look at the economic record of both parties,' Dryden

Liberal MP Ken Dryden paid a visit to North Bay Monday to follow up on the round table discussions he had on poverty with local social agencies in January.

The Liberal big gun is the party's social critic and he says the issue of poverty isn’t a sexy one but must be at the forefront of the current federal election. He says the talk focused on much of the same things discussed in January except now there’s a context for it because of the federal election.

He says the Liberal plan targets to cut 30 percent poverty in general public over 5 years, and a 50 percent cut for children over 5 years.

“Those are our targets those are the things that we are going to be aiming for, we’re going to aim for them publicly in a way in which everybody knows that that is our commitment and if we fail in our commitment we will be the focus of that failure,” explains Dryden.

“This is not a quiet in the weeds statement this is something that we want to do.”

“It is to reinforce that message that we didn’t have to come up with the 30/50 plan, political parties don’t come up with anti-poverty plans -- we did and we did because we are serious.”

Dryden says the Harper Conservatives prefer to talk about nothing versus taking on serious issues that impact the lives of everyday Canadians. He says it will be a challenge to keep things like poverty on the top of the election agenda.

“Why do we get into politics if not to do big things like this,” states Dryden.

“I mean is it for the lifestyle I don’t think so, is it for the glory of getting hammered at I don’t think so, you do it because you hope that there is something that you might be able to do that actually makes some things better and I don’t know that I know of anything that might have a bigger impact then a really significant fight against poverty.”

“Our challenge between now and between the end of the election is to defeat the direction in which this campaign is generally going which is the way the way in which Mr. Harper would like it to go. Where this is a campaign about nothing -- that’s not good enough."

"There a lot of big some things that this campaign should be about and one of them is poverty and you just listen to Mr. Harper whenever Stephan Dion comes up with anything that is a real something (he says) it is impossible, it’s outrageous, it’s insane, it’s crazy no answer in terms of well here’s what we would do instead it is to try to tear down that which is the something. Well that kind of campaign isn’t good enough, if we have a campaign goes the rest of its course about nothing then Mr. Harper will win but if it is about something we’ll win.”

Dryden says it is not enough to just address the issue of poverty but it is also important to re-engage Canada’s disenfranchised population with the political process and that they actually make a difference.

“Those for whom things aren’t going very well to a great extent they don’t know what to about how to make things go better and second of all they just sort of assume that somehow the answers for everybody else aren’t answers for them because they’ve never been answers for them.”

“So they assume that politics and they assume an election campaign really is something that somehow in the end it’ll all be over and they’ll be unaffected afterwards. What we’re saying is watch us again this was no quiet commitment that was made this is something that is front and centre.”

Dryden also calls on the voting public to look at the economic record of the past and cautions Canadians not to buy into the Conservatives smoke screen that they are the party for the economy.

“Look at the economic record of both parties,” he says.

“For some reason both in the US and in Canada the assumption is that the Republicans and the Conservatives are the parties of the economy all you need to do is look at the record. I mean look at the record of the last Democratic government in the US Mr. Clinton’s government, look at the record of the last Liberal government in Canada the Martin government and Chretien government in terms of the economy.”

“During both of those periods of time both of them inherited immense deficits both of them inherited immense problems in terms of the record the Liberal government from 1993 until we lost in 2006 there is probably not an economy amongst the G8 that did better than Canada during that period of time, so somehow Mr. Harper talks about the economy as his -- well guess what that is not even close to what the record says.”