Adam Chambers: Round Two?
By John Swartz
SUNonline/Orillia profiles candidates from each party in the forthcoming federal election. Each candidate was asked the same set of questions. All candidates were invited to participate, however Rebecca Elming, Press Secretary of the New Democratic Party said, Simcoe North candidate Melissa Lloyd, “is not available for an interview.”
Adam Chambers is the Conservative Party of Canada candidate and incumbent MP. He has deep roots in Simcoe North, his mother’s side of the family came to Canada in the 1880s. He lives in Midland with his wife, Jane, two children and a new addition to the family since the last election, a dog.
“A Lakeland terrier. It’s kind of like an Airedale but smaller,” Chambers said, agreeing it was the perfect size for his kids.
Before becoming the riding’s MP, Adams was assistant vice-president of Canada Life and a member of the Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care board of directors.
He graduated with degrees in law and business from the University of Western Ontario.
He worked for former finance minister Jim Flaherty on two occasions.
“I was a student the (first) time. I was in law school. I had taken two years off work for Jim. I learned a lot. I was very fortunate, and lucky, frankly,” Chambers said.
He left that job to practice law, but returned to work for Flaherty as his director of policy, working on the last budget Flaherty would present in 2014.
Chambers began his affiliation with the Conservative Party while at Western. What has kept Chambers attached to the Conservative Party? Is there anything about the party he would change?
“I’ve been around the party for more than 20 years now and I’ve seen various iterations of how it works on campaigns while we were in government, while we were not in government. I think my advice is the same for any party; you have to continue to listen to party members, you have to continue to listen to the general public and where they are at. That’s one of the things the party has done very well. We’ve been listening to people. I know there’s a bit of a pushback on career politicians, but when you think about it, for Pierre’s (Poilievre) entire career he’s spent listening to Canadians. He’s knocked on hundreds of thousand of doors over his entire career to understand what people care about. I think he comes to his current proposals after all that listening and talking about the things that matter to people, which is affordability, crime, spending and taxes,” Chambers said.
“I’m motivated by wanting to see a change in government in Ottawa and restoring the Canadian promise to make it feel like if people work hard they can get ahead.”
In his first term in office he was elevated to shadow minister for the Canada Revenue Agency.
“In the last couple of years there’s a lot of challenges at CRA. I’ve dealt with the auditor general and the ombudsman, both of which accepted my advice to launch investigations at CRA in service standards and confusing in instructions that CRA has provided to accountant’s and taxpayers. I was happy the auditor general is reviewing service standards and the ombudsman just released his investigation on one of the policies they were trying to implement but was very confusing,” Chambers said.
Politicians and candidates get asked a lot of questions. It’s almost embarrassing to watch one speak endlessly when it is clear they don’t have an answer instead of saying, “I don’t know,” and promising to find out. Each Candidate was asked how they inform themselves about subjects they are unfamiliar with.
“That happens all the time. People’s challenges are very unique so you are often learning something new about how to help someone, learning something new about government, learning something new how to navigate this very large bureaucracy in order to assist someone. I am blessed to be serving with some wonderful staff I was able to retain from Bruce (Stanton, former MP Simcoe North) who have a lot of experience in dealing with the government, which has been very helpful,” Chambers said.
Housing
Housing is the first topic posed to candidates. The feds got out of funding housing. Now they want to get back in to support building lots of homes. SUNonline/Orillia believes this is missing the mark, an expensive home relative to ability to pay is still an expensive home. SUNonline/Orillia also believes the heart of the matter is corporate Canada, through Real Estate Investment Trusts and Airbnb, they are the prime instigators of price increases. What would candidates do to change housing from owning commodities to owning homes again?
“We have to have a conversation about the overall financialization of housing, there’s no question about it. I’ll give an example. CMHC allows for you to use the equity in your one home to borrow against it to invest in another home,” Chambers said.
“What about population growth? I’d love to spend more time to talk about the whole industry; however I will say I think rising prices are a function of a few things. But, recently it’s been interest rates. If interest rates go up, when you are renewing your mortgage you pay more. What’s driving interest rates? Well, inflation drives interest rates. What’s been driving inflation up? Deficit spending by government, government fiscal policy like carbon tax, and general money printing. When you flood the economy with cheap easy money, prices skyrocket.”
“And by the way, the current federal government has said there’s been no government that’s spent more on housing than us; $80 billion. OK, what’s the result? Doubling of housing costs, when you have interest rates that were low for so long, and then COVID happens and the Bank of Canada floods the market with money, prices go up.”
“The Bank of Montreal singled out Orillia as having one of the hottest real estate markets in the country. In 6 years the average house price in Orillia went up by 300%. I can tell you people’s incomes didn’t rise by 300%. What are we going to do?”
Immigration
Immigration is a national concern, many economists say we aren’t taking in enough people to sustain the society we created? The CPP and economic growth need working people, but the workforce is getting smaller compared to the retired class. How do candidates think our infrastructure should be rejigged to accommodate immigrants, and will they make sure immigrants are treated fairly by employers?
“When you grow the population by 3.5% for a couple years it will necessarily cause some strain on services and housing. Frankly, the federal government was completely asleep at the switch when that happened,” Chambers said. “I don’t think I’ve seen one economist who said you can grow the population by 3.5% a year every year.”
“We have a declining birthrate. If you want to keep growing the population and the economy you need to add a certain number of people through immigration.”
“In order to get growth you need to have some kind of immigration. Good news, a lot of people want to come to Canada, which means we can be selective, who are we asking to come, what skills do they have, how will the help build the economy, how will they help add positively to the country? I would say as long as I’ve been around there was a large general consensus of welcoming immigrants. We need them. In the last couple years, the current government’s failure to manage the system has regular people turning on the system and now they are questioning immigrants, which isn’t healthy, for the economy or society.”
“The government has not relied on the point system, which was the envy of the world, so we need to get back to the point system. I feel sorry and sympathetic for some of these immigrants who are in search of a better life and the system we set up isn’t serving them well, and it’s not serving us well. In many ways Canada is their dream, their hope and they come and it’s not a good situation for them and it’s not a good situation for us. I really have sympathy for people who have given up everything, their families have gone into debt just too send their child to have a better life and we are not living up to our end of the bargain.”
There have been reports of immigrants being exploited by their employers, and by landlords. Why isn’t anything being done about those issues?
“There’s people involved in the system who don’t have our interests at heart, or immigrants themselves. We have to get back to the point system. We have to make sure fraud and abuse of the system and young kids aren’t taken advantage of.”
And provincial governments take advantage of immigrants as a means to fund colleges and universities since non-resident tuition is higher.
“The student experience for post secondary needs a revamp and overhaul. The federal government stamps every visa that gets approved. The federal government ought to have known there was too many being given and that was going to create a problem.”
Many immigrants come to Canada having been professionals in their country of origin, yet there are barriers to get certified to work in Canada in their fields.
“We have qualified immigrants today that work in healthcare, but we don’t let them. Let’s do a better job of allowing these talented individuals to practice their trade here.”
“It’s hard to plan for that right now when the system is currently on fire and broken. You are right. There will always be a demand for people to come to Canada so why can’t we provide them with that better life.”
Canada also has a golden opportunity regarding the situation south of the border. Many professionals are looking for a way out. What can we do to get those scientists, researchers and doctors to come to Canada?
“With what’s happening in the U.S. currently I think Canada should say, we still need to grow, we need people and we’re open for business. If you want to come here and you are educated, have a skill, and you can be a positive contributor to society, community, or the economy, I think it’s a blessing to be in Canada so we can enforce a points system.”
“What if we had a program to recruit very specific research individuals? Absolutely. People who might say, “I don’t feel welcome in the U.S. anymore,” We can say we have opportunity for you here in Canada, but we have to fix our current system,”
Climate Change
Many national and provincial politicians, and industries want to back away from climate change measures, motivated by ridiculous deregulation and jettisoning of environment professionals in the United States. Is this a good idea? Or a bad idea?
“Protecting the environment from climate change is more than just fossil fuels. We need to reduce the human impact on the environment. More land conservation. More farmland conservation; we shouldn’t allow state owned enterprises to buy farmland,” Chambers said.
“Canada has an opportunity to help the world decarbonize by exporting natural gas. That’s’ one opportunity where I think Canada can lean into its role reducing emissions around the world,”
“I recall when I was young in the early 90s, the conversation was pollution knows no borders. I agree. If we could sell our liquefied natural gas to India; they are building new coal plants and they use coal. If we can displace their coal with Canadian natural gas we will reduced the global emissions. If we replace one third of India’s coal plants being built, we will save the world, every single year, double the amount of emissions the entire country of Canada produces. To me that sounds like a good idea. That means we need to produce and export natural gas,”
It’s one example Chambers has of how Canadian resources sold to the world could also serve as our part to reduce carbon emissions. He has others.
“If you think of some of our high energy user industry, concrete, aluminum, steel and agriculture; Canadian aluminum is some of the cleanest aluminum in the world. Mostly because the energy used to produce the aluminum, in Quebec is hydro-electric. That’s emissions free energy. In Ontario if you are building steel, some of that’s nuclear. If you compare the aluminum that comes out Quebec and the aluminum that comes out of China, the aluminum that comes out of China is produced by coal and it’s 6 times more emissions intensive.”
“You can ship wheat in Canada around the world 6 times before it has the same carbon footprint of the wheat that comes out of some places in Europe because of what’s used to produced, we have lower emitting emissions to produce the grain.”
He thinks our industry is already ahead of most of the world and forcing more climate mitigation controls on them misses the point.
“We shouldn’t be saying to Canadian industry you should shut down because of emissions. We should be comparing some of these industries to their global counterparts. Actually your emissions for product produced are less than your international competitors, so the world needs more of that.”
But switching energy production, for industry and in general is going to happen.
“I think it’s more of a question of timing. We’re in a transition. Renewables are increasing. Uses of fossil fuels are decreasing to some degree. The world will always need fossil fuels, so as a country why shouldn’t the last barrel of oil be Canadian? Why shouldn’t the last barrel equivalent of natural gas be Canadian, especially when we know our oil and natural gas is ethically produced, is environmentally some of the cleaner options in the world.”
There’s also a political angle to consider.
“If we are able to sell LNG to Europe, guess who’s not selling LNG to Europe? Russia. The fact we could displace Vladimir Putin’s war machine, the economic driver of his war machine should have been enough for us to say we should lean into this a bit,”
“We are a resource based economy. We should be a clean energy superpower. I think LNG is a tansitionary fuel that can help power other countries using dirtier forms of energy. We have a capacity to build energy infrastructure in this country that’s going to move clean forms of energy east/west and north/south.
Americanization Of Canadian Politics
Many people complain about the Americanization of Canadian political discourse. Some politicians have adopted the tactics, the issues and the phrases. Do we not have enough of our own problems without importing them? How much responsibility does media bear for amplifying this?
“The phenomenon of an Americanization of Canadian politics, and you mention the media, when they platform Donald Trump every day, wall to wall, I’m sure to the exclusion of other real substantive issues, I’m not sure that’s the greatest service to the public,” Chambers said.
“We have a significant number of domestic issues we need to address regardless of who sits in the Whitehouse, and we’ve talked about them today, immigration, housing, environment, I’d add a couple more to this, like crime. These issues are with us before Donald Trump, they’ll be with us after. I’m not sure giving maximum exposure to what’s happening in the U.S. is done us a service. I think everyone has to be mindful of the Americanization of the political climate here.”
Chambers cites government not being transparent on some issues like gun control, feeding into the issue, legislating here, when the problem is south of the border and smuggling guns into the country. He also thinks the governing party sis not immune to using American tactics, speaking of the button scandal.
“That is a direct importation of American politics. It was Liberal Party operatives. This is the same government that wants to be the arbiter of censorship, misinformation. That makes me very skeptical any government should be the arbiter of misinformation when you have people who are purposely trying to undermine the political process,”
The media is not without blame. Some are reckless in giving voice to people and groups who argue in bad faith, they create dichotomies on issues that are largely made up or don’t have two sides, and in some cases lie about events and facts. The Canadian Association of Broadcasters used to have an ethical code about truthfulness, but you won’t find one on their website now. The Canadian Association of Journalists also have one, but it is largely ignored. The CRTC regulates broadcast and cable licenses and news was required to be truthful in order to keep a license, but one hasn’t seen a report of a CRTC investigation into irresponsible news dissemination in a long time. It can also be argued our media, largely owned by American venture capitalists is part of the problem. Should there be regulation of ownership and enforcement of what is on the books?
“I think there’s been some success with this model in Quebec; change to a charitable purpose so you could get tax receipts for supporting independent media. What isn’t great is subsidization of media by government itself because it creates a perceived conflict of interest,” Chambers said.
“We should not be treating everybody the same and government should not be subsidizing the large corporate (outlets). We should give people confidence in independent media and the current system the government has set up erodes the confidence of people in media.”
“I think the other thing that’s eroded trust in the media is the media itself by blurring the line between opinion, editorial and reporting. I think the journalistic profession has to do a better job of self-policing its own members.”
The Last Word
Candidates usually have a burning issue not anticipated by the questions posed to all. This is their chance to speak on it.
“My issues are the ones I’m hearing at the doors from people. A concern about affordability, concern about housing, concern about crime and concern about government that’s grown substantially and doing the things it’s supposed to do,” Chambers said.
“I do believe we have to work to restore the promise of Canada. There is an opportunity here through hard work and a little bit of good luck you can have a pretty good life. You can have a good job, a place to live, a safe neighbourhood. That’s what I want for my kids. I had the opportunity growing up and building a life for myself and my family. I want them to have the same opportunity I had and I want them to feel like it’s in reach. Right now, too many people feel like the opportunity, or that promise, is a little too far away,”
“Which is why the number one economic issue over the last three years has been inflation and I think the government completely ignored it. First they said inflation wasn’t going to happen. Then they said inflation would only be here for a short time. The result is something that was only worth a dollar a few years ago is now worth $1.30. that’s basically like a tax.”
“There’s lots of opportunity to help with affordability in general.”
(Photos by Swartz – SUNonline/Orillia) Main: Adam Chambers is the Conservative Party of Canada candidate in Simcoe North.
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