{"id":24996,"date":"2019-10-18T19:05:02","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T23:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=24996"},"modified":"2019-10-18T19:05:12","modified_gmt":"2019-10-18T23:05:12","slug":"leona-alleslev-seeks-mandate-as-conservative-mp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/leona-alleslev-seeks-mandate-as-conservative-mp\/","title":{"rendered":"Leona Alleslev seeks mandate as Conservative MP"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A year is a long time in politics \u2013 and it\u2019s a\nparticularly long time in the riding of Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Auroran\u2019s interview with Leona Alleslev coincided\nwith the first anniversary of Leona Alleslev\u2019s dramatic floor crossing, which\nsaw her leave the governing Liberals for the Conservative opposition, and it\nwas also the first of a campaign for which Ms. Alleslev is vying for\nre-election and a mandate as a Conservative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is no question that it was a difficult decision\nand not one that I came to quickly,\u201d Ms. Alleslev tells The Auroran. \u201cThe\ninitial reaction on social media, Twitter, and stuff like that, was either very\npositive or very negative, and I fully appreciate that with social media. I was\nreally surprised it was far more positive than negative. I would be at the\ngrocery store, I would be at the Library or picking up kids at something, and\npeople would quietly come up to me and say, \u2018Thank you for doing what you did.\nWe need people who are willing to stand up for us, even if it may not be easy.\u2019\nThat is what our representative is supposed to do. I hadn\u2019t expected that and\nit was very powerful for me because it was very kind of them to take that\nopportunity to say that directly to me, but it also showed me that maybe there\nare some things more deeply broken in our system.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past year, Ms. Alleslev says she has taken a\n\u201cmore in-depth\u201d look at the country\u2019s Parliamentary structure and she has found\nthat there are \u201csome things more deeply broken in the system.\u201d Things have\neroded to a point where individuals are more \u201ccontrolled by the Prime Minister\u2019s\noffice\u201d or the whip and \u201cthat undermines our whole democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think we are going to have, as a nation, the courage\nto reinstate some of the really important things that Members of Parliament can\ndo: freedom of House of Commons committees that aren\u2019t, perhaps, whipped,\ncommittees who can criticize the government. Those kinds of things we haven\u2019t\nseen in a while.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During her time as Member of Parliament, Ms. Alleslev\ntypically spends the summer knocking on doors finding out what issues matter to\nlocal residents. Almost everyone she has talked to, she says, is concerned\nabout what is going on in the world, from Brexit, to tensions in North Korea,\nCanada\u2019s relationship with China, trade, and the impact that is having on our\neconomy, and even Russia \u201cbeing more active\u201d in our Arctic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHere at home, they are obviously concerned about the\ninstability they are seeing in jobs and the increase in precarious employment,\nthe lack of competitiveness, the lack of money and foreign capital investment\nthat is leaving the country, the job-losses of multinational corporations\nannouncing they are leaving the country and all those kinds of things,\u201d she\nsays. \u201cIt is almost a perfect storm: the fear globally as well as the\nchallenges we\u2019re facing at home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, how does a vote for the Conservative party address\nthose concerns?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking at two very stark contrasts in terms of\napproach,\u201d she says. \u201cWe are recognizing, as Conservatives, that\ncompetitiveness actually is around comprehensive tax reform and around tax\nstructures because while taxes are something we do here at home to collect\nrevenue to provide the services that we as Canadians have decided we want to\nprovide for, it is also an impact on whether or not we attract and retain\nbusinesses and trade with other trading countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBeing that 90 per cent of our GDP comes from trade, it\nreally matters. The fact a Conservative government has said we\u2019re going to\nfocus on Canada\u2019s competitiveness and what that tax structure looks like so we\ncan attract and retain businesses here and that our goods and services will be\ncompetitive, I think that will make a significant difference. Likewise around\nforeign policy and defence, the fact Conservatives have said Foreign Policy in\nDefence and relationships with our allies like NATO, our commitments to NATO\nand our commitments to our military will have a significant difference as well.\nIt\u2019s almost a price of admission, so we need to have a minimum capability to\nretain the confidence of our allies and our own ability to defend ourselves at\nhome. People trade with people they trust. If you have those relationships that\nare secure, then you\u2019re going to have trade and that will have a direct impact\non our economy as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When asked how these compare to local issues, Ms.\nAlleslev says she approaches that question in two ways. While Canadians, she\nsays, are \u201cat a point where we need to look at the whole country because there\nare fundamental things we need to look at\u201d like trade and \u201cnation-building\u201d she\nis hearing from residents they are \u201cfrustrated\u201d with the government when\ndealing with CRA, on immigration issues, and other public services. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want to focus on the big things like economy,\nnation-building, trade, defence and security, foreign affairs, but I also want\nto really influence the government on making sure we can actually deliver the\ngovernment services to the standard Canada expects us to deliver them to, and\nthat\u2019s right here from my constituents and right across Canada as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill Votes 2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/FE-A-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6va","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 19:26:04","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}