'Quite frankly our member is missing in action,' Aspin

Nipissing-Timiskaming Conservative candidate Jay Aspin, with help from Chief Government Whip incumbent MP Gordon O’Connor, officially opened his campaign on Trout Lake Road Thursday night.

O’Connor said he came to the Bay help raise Aspin’s profile in the region.

“I thought to come here and to launch Jay Aspin’s campaign,” he explains.

“Jay has been in this riding for 35 years but he hasn’t been everywhere in the riding. And I thought to get some publicity so people in the rest of the riding would know who Jay is because he’ll be knocking on their doors and his representatives will be going around.”

“And I just thought it would be a great idea to get him well known in the rest of the riding.”

While applauding Aspin for stepping forward to run in the riding, O’Connor took a couple of swipes at incumbent MP Anthony Rota and his record.

“I wouldn’t call him a liar, he’s a weak individual. I mean he missed 70 votes; he’s the caucus chair 70 votes in parliament. And then he promised the people up here that he’s vote against the long gun registry and when the crunch came he voted for it.”

“So I don’t know what you call that but it’s certainly a matter of trust.”

Aspin echoed O’Conner saying that Rota is missing in action and as the MP for Nipissing-Timiskaming he will turn things around.

“My priorities are the government’s priorities the jobs and economy in this region,” he states.

“We need new investment, we need trade opportunities, we need new growth, we need to get this riding moving again.”

When asked what he can offer that the liberals can’t for job growth Aspin said his focus will be on tax cuts.

“Well it’s clear cutting taxes … cutting taxes works. We’ve had 480,000 jobs created since the great recession. We’re the number one low ECD country or let’s say among the top in the industrial world in terms of rebound from the recession. “

“We’ve brought back more jobs to Canadians than any other country so that’s the number one answer is cutting taxes works and we want to continue to cut taxes.”

“There have been a number of initiatives just announced in terms of EI, in terms of extended capital appreciation, the government is announcing all the kinds of measures to assist small business.”

“I’ve worked over the last 10 years in my career, my professional career, economic development career with all kinds of small businesses and that’s what they need. That’s what they need to get ahead, to create jobs so that people have jobs so that’s the big picture. There’s no use tinkering around the sides giving piecemeal things like the Liberals want to do this … something for this, something for that, what good is that when you don’t have a job,” he asks.

As for FedNor Aspin wants to see it remain in its present state.

“I’ve worked with FedNor for 10 years with the contracts I’ve administered and FedNor does not need to be an agency.”

“We don’t need that red tape and bureaucracy, we need the help at the ground level.”

“We need programs that are contemporary, which FedNor is now revising its programs, we need that kind of assistance. FedNor is doing quite well we don’t need more bureaucracy and red tape that the Liberals want to hoist on us. ACOA and agencies like that there are four-five provinces involved in a co-op maybe they can withstand the bureaucracy but we don’t need that in northern Ontario.”

“This government does not want to cut this program this government’s increase that program by $4 million in the budget and the Liberals voted it down."

As for his short-term goals Aspin says he would immediately extend a hand out to get community based projects moving again.

“This region is dead we need to start moving again. We need to start engaging the government tools that are available and get this riding moving. “

“Quite frankly our member is missing in action.”

“Long-term what I’m looking at is this juggernaut that is called the whole, the SAGE semi-automatic ground environment, that could possibly be turned into data secured location but there seems to be so much red tape.”

“I’d like to be at the table at the decisions and move that project forward so we can utilize that and create possibly tens of hundreds of service jobs. That’s an opportunity waiting to be had if we had a member on the government side.”