Emad Barsoum writes: Another Term… Another Hope
The dust finally settled on the provincial elections last week. The campaigning and elections were not the toughest compared to previous provincial elections, they were relatively swift and without much sweat from all different candidates and parties’ leaders.
Indeed, nothing about the results was unpredicted or a surprise; however, the disappointing fact was that fewer voters went to the polls in respect to previous elections, and the question is why? Is it the lack of confidence in the parties competing to win the government of Ontario? Or is it the absence of a party that would appeal to the people to move the province to the next stage of economic and social betterment? But most likely, it is both combined.
Clearly, voters did not sense any authentic or genuine plans to resolve their present problems and concerns in the future.
After the two gloomy years of the pandemic, people are hoping for a promising, prosperous future, a plan for real recovery, however, new and intense challenges have been added to the intricate files that the elected government has to deal with. In addition to the predominant Health care system ordeal, the broken promises on the education system reform, and the perpetual employment dilemma, our province, and the country are going through even sturdier challenges.
The first and most blatant is the extreme gas price hike, which probably no government has any solution for. Yet, they insist on keeping the several taxes added to the gas price, that represents around fifty-five cents of the liter price. But do such high taxes truly contribute to assist people in their daily struggle with their needs and demands to make ends meet!
Such a scary surge in gas prices at the pump is leading all goods and services to jump to unprecedented price levels, resulting in severe economic stress and rapid inflation. Still, even the problem is much deeper, where all daily required services and goods prices went up extensively, the wages stood still. Even if the government comes up with a plan to increase the minimum wages which has limited affect on a mall portion of employees, then this might result into more unemployment, due to small and medium size businesses who will not be able to sustain their expenses, since they are part of the closed loop of higher prices of goods and services from other providers.
On top of all, our communities are experiencing evident lax security on different levels, increased daily crimes, theft, road rage and traffic chaos, and extreme violation of order and discipline.
The prime issue is whether the second term of the elected party that will form a majority government will be able to provide solutions to their massive new challenges, in addition to the previously existing unsolved ones, or not, we have to keep our hopes high for a better present and future.
