I have always strongly believed in accountability. One reason I first ran for city council was my frustration with our local city hall creating requirements that raised costs for small businesses making minor renovations. Despite numerous calls to City Hall, there was no accountability, as no one would return these calls to explain or justify the policy.
 
I maintain a 24/7, year-round answering service and make every effort to return calls at times convenient for citizens. I strongly believe that citizens deserve to be heard and that elected officials must be accountable.
 
One concern I've been hearing lately is that some citizens find themselves cut off from various federal benefit programs such as the Guaranteed Income Supplement or Canada Child Benefit.

In many of these situations, the cause is often that personal income tax returns for 2023 have either not yet been filed or were filed late. As both of these programs are means tested, someone dependent on either program could see their benefits stopped if they have not submitted their tax return so that the government knows how much income they had in the previous year, regardless of their immediate needs.

This can be a challenging situation when you depend on this funding to help pay rent or put food on the table. While there can be a number of scenarios where even when someone has done their taxes, they may discover they are receiving a lower or no benefit, due to for example being out of country for six months or more.
 
If you or someone you know is in this situation, please do not hesitate to call my office at the toll-free number below and we will try to assist however we can. Often, this involves identifying how the specific issue arose and outlining any options a constituent might have.
 
Another local concern I am hearing is the ongoing frustration with the aftereffects of the Liberal Government implementing Bill C-18.
 
Bill C-18, known as “an act respecting online communications platforms that make news content available to people in Canada,” requires online companies like Facebook (Meta) to pay eligible Canadian media organizations whenever a link to their online content is shared on the social media platform.
 
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, was always clear they would not be financially penalized for users sharing specific news content on their platform. As a result, news link sharing has been banned on the platform.
 
This is a timely topic locally due to the recent forest fire activity caused by thunderstorms earlier this week. Many families and friends are blocked from sharing important information about the wildfire activity on the online media platform.
 
This also negatively impacts independent local media. Many local news organizations depended on Facebook to share their news content online. Facebook was highly effective at this and available to them as a free service.
 
With the loss of free access, many of these companies rely on their own websites and have reported a significant drop in viewer numbers, which typically translates into a loss of advertising revenue.
 
The Trudeau Liberal government was warned this would happen, ignored the warnings, and after one year of the ongoing news link sharing ban, still refuses to amend the legislation to restore news link sharing, which would help independent local media.
 
If you raise this issue with the Prime Minister (as the Official Opposition has multiple times in question period), you will be accused of rallying "around the web giants, regurgitating their arguments and rushing to help American billionaires attack local news."
 
To date, every local news organization I have heard from has made it clear that Bill C-18 has done far more harm to local news. It resulted in the loss of the ability to freely distribute local news content in many areas online.
 
My questions for you this week: Do you believe Bill C-18 has helped or harmed our local news industry? Why or why not?

I can be reached at [email protected] or call toll-free at 1-800-665-8711.