Mahoney gets ethnic media as captive audience

Mahoney gets ethnic media as captive audience

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Doug Ford’s no-show gives Mississauga mayoral bet Mahoney full attention of ethnic press

By Maria Assaf

After Doug Ford’s announcement that he was taking his brother’s place as mayoral candidate, not many ethnic reporters were left to attend the meeting for the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada on Sept. 12.

Mississauga Mayoral Candidate Steve Mahoney

Also missing from the event was Doug himself, who at the time was giving a press conference in front of his mother’s house in Etobicoke. His brother mayor Rob Ford had abandoned the mayoral race that day after doctors discovered a cancerous tumour in his abdomen.

“We all know what’s dominating the airwaves today,” said Steve Mahoney, the only politician who showed up at the meeting. “Try to get a message out in the media today with the frankly circus that’s going on in the municipal election in the city of Toronto. And it sucks all the oxygen out of the air,” he said.
By the time he began speaking, nearly half the seats were filled.

Mahoney is running in also a quite eventful mayoral race. After 36 years in power, 93 year-old Mississauga mayor, Hazel McCallion is finally not seeking re-election. Many think these will be the first real elections the city has had in decades.

Without another speaker, Mahoney was able to get his message across to reporters throughout the entire length of the meeting. “I consider in my city, the ethnic media as you call it, to actually be the mainstream media,” he said.

He talked about his plans for what he considers one of the most multicultural cities in Canada. With nearly 50 per cent of residents belonging to different immigrant communities, Mahoney was certainly speaking to the right crowd at the ethnic press meeting.

Mississauga is the sixth largest city in Canada. “We have become a big city and we can no longer avoid the pressures that come with that,” he said.

One of his plans is to create the role of an ambassador who will help newcomers with major aspects of settling in Canada. The key matter will be helping immigrants get their academic credentials recognized so that they are allowed to work in their field.

“The biggest problem when people come here from another part of the world is they don’t necessarily get the straight goods from the embassy in the country they are leaving from. They think they’re coming to a land of milk and honey in Canada and they don’t have the proper information,” he said. “Then they get here with credentials that are not recognized by our senior levels of government and they get caught up in the red tape.”

He said his ambassador would work with the provincial and federal branches of government to provide people with the right information to help them achieve their professional goals in Canada. “They will help work with them to get their credentials recognized or to find out what to do,” he said.

Mahoney said this would even include loans for immigrants to pay for their certification tests. “If somebody is a new arrival in this country and they need $4, 000 to write a test that would then make them a doctor, can we not for goodness sakes provide some assistance so that they can take that test? Because, once they are a doctor they’ll have no trouble paying it back. So my ambassador would work on those ideas,” he said.

Mahoney’s political career includes a decade as a city councilor in Mississauga, 8 years as a member of parliament in Ottawa as well as chairing Workplace Safety and Insurance Board for nearly six years. His main opponent is Bonnie Crombie, also a city councilor.

He said another problem his administration would tackle in Mississauga, are the long wait-lists for affordable housing. He said his city has the longest wait-time in the Greater Toronto Area. It can take someone more than 10 years to be approved for subsidized housing.

Mahoney is realistic and doesn’t give any promises about fixing this issue promptly. “I don’t think I can do that in a four year term, but I think we can start attacking the problem now,” he said. “I’m prepared to provide an incentive to developers who will build high-rise rental apartments on the condition that they build 20 percent of them as affordable housing.”

Cheaper transit is also in big need for lower-income Mississaugans who commute to Toronto for work every day. Mahoney said no mayor could solve the inequality gap, but that he would improve transit by building cheaper housing along the least used transit routes. That way if more people take transit, the service can be improved without charging higher fares to consumers.

Mahoney also wants to attack problems such as poverty and a lack of jobs by improving the local economy. “We have a diaspora that should be utilized,” he said. “[We need to] take advantage of our diversity to find ways for us to attract foreign investment to our city and find ways where the 54, 000 businesses that exist in my city can sell their products overseas.”

He also plans to grow the number of businesses by the ten thousands. “I’m changing Mississauga from being a suburb to a ‘huburb’. We have to do that, because we can’t tax people out of their home so we need new sources of revenue which will be commercial industrial taxation,” he said. “They’ll think outside the box when I’m their mayor.”

His dream is for Mississaugans not to have to travel every day to Toronto for work. “If they’re new immigrants, I want them to come here, build their family, buy a home, have children, raise their family and stay right in Mississauga. I want them to work there, live there and play there.”

Mahoney has been endorsed by key public employees’ unions in Mississauga. These unions comprise about 5,000 people. Still, a recent Forum Research poll showed Mahoney and Crombie coming really close in the race for mayor.