Stop conservative monopoly: Colle
[attach]4759[/attach]Despite the blue tide that swept through the country in May’s federal election, Eglinton-Lawrence Liberal MPP Mike Colle says he thinks voters are moving to prevent a fully Conservative Canada in October’s provincial election.
“People are really motivated to vote this time, they feel there are some threats to their city and their province,” Colle said.
He says he’s heard from residents who are concerned about having one party running the show in provincial, as well as municipal and federal levels.
“The middle-of-the-road voter is expressing serious questioning of that being good for them,” he said.
And while the 66-year-old Colle says he always runs scared, so to speak, to make sure he doesn’t underestimate his opponents — in this case Progressive Conservative Rocco Rossi and NDP Gerti Dervishi — he’s heartened by the response to his campaign so far.
“It’s going very well at the doors,” he said.
Colle, who is married with four children, has lived in the Eglinton-Lawrence area for the past 30 years. After going to St. Michael’s College School, he became a teacher there and coached the senior football team for 18 years.
Before being elected as MPP in 1995, Colle was a city of York councillor and then City of Toronto councillor and TTC commissioner, serving as TTC chair from 1988 to 1994.
He was chief government whip from 2007 to early 2010, and is now the Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Children and Youth Services. From 2005 to 2007 he served as Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, but resigned his post in the wake of $1 million grant to the Ontario Cricket Association, which exceeded the amount the group had requested.
Now finishing his fourth term, Colle says he hasn’t given up the battle on some issues in the riding even though they’ve dragged on.
His main priority is to ensure that the Eglinton Crosstown LRT gets built to deal with gridlock along Eglinton Avenue between Yonge Street and the CN Rail line, the east-west boundaries of the riding.
It will also revitalize the businesses along the strip, he says.
In the ’90s, the Progressive Conservative government of Mike Harris cancelled the proposed Eglinton subway line, even though work on it had already begun. Colle says people have told him they’re concerned the same thing could happen again.
“It’s my fear and the fear of a lot of residents, they just don’t have faith that if (the Conservatives) get elected they will build it,” Colle said.
The abrupt cancellation of Transit City plan has been another setback toward improving Toronto’s transit system, Colle said.
“I would have loved to see Transit City and I would love to see this project done, and let’s just do it and stop talking and debating,” he said.
Construction has started on a new hospital at Keele Street and Wilson Avenue, which Colle says will be the largest in the city when completed in about two years.
Although not located in the electoral district, it will service its residents, who Colle says lost adequate hospital space during the Harris era with the closure of Branson and Northwestern hospitals.
Colle also says his party plans on investing in transit, building 18 new hospitals and creating more clean energy jobs if re-elected.
“We’re not promising you massive tax cuts,” he said. “We’re promising to protect our services and make them better.”
The riding’s schools are some of the best in the country, Colle says, something his party wants to preserve.
“You can’t have the fantastic schools and then promise people tax cuts,” he said. “Sooner or later something’s got to give.”
Colle, a marathoner, says he’ll use the mentality that drives him to succeed in that sport to fight for the projects and issues close to his heart.
“I tell people, I’m a marathon runner, so therefore I never give up,” he said.
