{"id":25008,"date":"2019-10-18T19:15:46","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T23:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=25008"},"modified":"2019-10-18T19:15:56","modified_gmt":"2019-10-18T23:15:56","slug":"liberal-tony-van-bynen-pushes-for-housing-affordability-and-business-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/liberal-tony-van-bynen-pushes-for-housing-affordability-and-business-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberal Tony Van Bynen pushes for housing affordability and business growth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

As Mayor of Newmarket, Tony Van Bynen worked on\nincreasing housing affordability both at the municipal table and at the Region\nand, pending the results of the October 21 Federal election, this is work he\nwants to continue in Ottawa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Van Bynen, who was acclaimed to carry the Liberal\nbanner in Newmarket-Aurora over the summer, says he hopes to have the chance to\nbring this experience to the House of Commons should voters in Aurora\u2019s north\nriding put their confidence in him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are a lot of relationships that are influenced\nfrom the Federal government to the Municipal government,\u201d he says. \u201cOne example\nis the gas tax and how successful that has been. There are other opportunities\nwhere we can build stronger relationships between the Federal Government and\nthe Municipalities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Van Bynen cites \u201ccollaboration and working together\u201d\nas the hallmarks of his public life, working with both the Liberals and\nConservatives as a municipal politician to get things done. But, alarmed by\nsome of the policies of Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, he has decided to\ntake a partisan stance in an effort to keep Newmarket-Aurora red.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of people are concerned about cutbacks to health\ncare, cutbacks to community support services, and a lot of people are concerned\nabout the environment and that surfaces frequently and often,\u201d says Mr. Van\nBynen on what he\u2019s hearing from voters at the door. \u201cThe struggle around\naffordability and making ends meet is visible and I think people are concerned\nabout what might be at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the issue of affordability, he says it is important to\ncontinue to explore all the options. Just before sitting down with The Auroran\nlast week, he said he had a conversation with residents of a Newmarket co-op,\nand was struck that despite it being a \u201cgood model\u201d there has been little\nprogress on building on that principle. That, he said, is something he would\nlike to see built upon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cExploring those kinds of ideas for affordable housing, I\nthink, would be my job, making sure there are programs that have some\napplication that can help advance that,\u201d he says. \u201cAnother example [of my track\nrecord] is rolling up my sleeves with the community. Belinda\u2019s Place (the\nNewmarket shelter for single women) is a case of rallying the community to a\ncause, and look what we did: we raised a million dollars to advance that\nproject. In the first 18 months, although there are 38 beds in Belinda\u2019s Place,\nthey helped up to 220 women that were homeless find a permanent home. It is\nthose kinds of projects I want to be active and engaged in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another area in which he would like to be active and\nengaged is making high speed broadband for business the norm, an area that has\nlong been a cause for York Region municipalities, including Aurora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are things we can pursue to support the business\ncommunity so the business community is able to support the social needs [of the\ncommunity] as well,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a balance and something I bring to the\ntable: both perspectives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The need to support social needs, he says, is something\nthat was driven home to him as a child. An immigrant from the Netherlands, he\nis one of eleven children. They worked on farms before and after school to help\nmake ends meet and then, when he was in Grade 5, they suffered a loss when\ntheir house burned down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had absolutely nothing,\u201d he recalls. \u201cAll of the\nneighbours said, \u2018Okay, you kids come over here,\u2019 and we dispersed the family\nfor a range of six to eight weeks until we found other accommodation. It is\nthat experience which explains who I am and why I am so committed to building\ncommunity, why I believe we need to support each other, and why I believe in\ncollaboration and working together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The incumbent Liberal government, he says, have rolled\nout programs that have been effective in building and supporting that sense of\ncommunity, such as lifting an estimated 900,000 people out of poverty through\nmeasures including the Canadian Child Care benefit, over a million jobs created\nover the last four years, turning around a recession, and low unemployment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat this tells me is we need to continue investing in\nour community and those are principles and philosophies I will be supporting\nbecause I know how important they are for our community,\u201d he says. \u201cI think in\nthat area, around health care, I know that there is a lot of good discussion\ngoing on around pharmacare. Ideally, I would like someday to see a standard of\nhealth care so that if you\u2019re Canadian you can expect a standard of health care\nno matter where you are. In terms of social network supports, the National\nHousing Program is something that I would endorse and work towards advancing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI fully intend to keep the party accountable to the\nvalues I have signed on with, but at the same times, I fully expect the\ncommunity will hold me to account. I think I have a good track record with that\nand I intend on continuing that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCommunity is an absolute\nnecessity for us to be successful \u2013 and it creates opportunities because people\ncare and the experience itself is life-changing.\u201d <\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Newmarket-Aurora Votes 2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25001,"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-25008","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-N-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6vm","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-13 04:28:07","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\/25008","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=25008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}