Muslim Link Interview with Ottawa-South Liberal MPP John Fraser

Muslim Link: Many Muslim Canadians we interviewed have noted disappointment with the Ontario Public Education System in terms of its low academic standards and are concerned that the system will not prepare their children to compete in an increasingly globalized workforce. What are your thoughts on this?

Let's back up again. We got to go back to 2003 and think of where we were at with the schools. First of all we did not have peace in the schools.  We had fewer teachers; we had larger class sizes. We had fewer resource teachers. Our school system was not being invested in. Our government in the last 10 years has invested more in education and post-secondary education than any other government in a generation. So if you fast forward to now, we have more students graduating; we have smaller class sizes; we have full day learning which is going to help prepare our children earlier so that they can excel because in the new economy the most valuable commodity is going to be people. So I would say our investment in education is paying off but we continually need to do work on this. But we haven't achieved all that we can achieve so we have to continue to improve and work with parents and teachers and our public service to make it better.

Muslim Link: According to the Simon Fraser Institute, several elementary and secondary schools in the riding, such as Charles H. Hulse Public School, Hawthorne Public School, Ridgemont High School and St. Patrick's High School, are under-performing. What immediate steps would you take to address this matter if you were elected?

It's a leadership thing. The leader in the school is the principal and vice-principal and they are the drivers of that change for the staff and for the students. So, that's the key thing for everybody to remember. It's also a partnership with the school board. So if we have a challenge with a certain school we have to ask ourselves why do we have a challenge. Is it because we don't have enough resources for children who have language problems? Or do we need to have more physical activity or activities to build up things like confidence? Schools are living breathing organisms and they are all different and it's a partnership. That's why we have parents involved in the education system. As a representative of the people, I think it is incumbent on one when one is elected to represent the people that you do your best to participate in the solution in terms of bringing people together. It's not just one person. Schools are about community so that's how I see it.

Muslim Link:  In 1975, Dalton McGuinty had to work for a sum of only 6.4 weeks in the summer to pay off his undergraduate tuition fees. In 2006, students would have had to work for 16.6 weeks in order to finance only 1 year of undergraduate tuition fees. Over the past 15 years, tuition fees in Ontario have increased by over 200%. How do you propose students pay off their debt, especially with growing unemployment and underemployment of post-secondary graduates?

I will answer that in two parts. There are 200,000 more students going to post-secondary education. We said if there is a child who wants to go to post-secondary education they are going to have the tools and support they need to have to get there. If you are now coming out of high school we have a 30% tuition tax credit for families.  We also have more student grants, more access to loans. And we have invested more in the institutions themselves. Students understand the importance of investing in their education. So we need to do a better job making sure that they find their first job, making sure that they find a good job that helps them so they can start to pay off that investment. So if you look at the things I talk about on my website, in my nomination speech, youth jobs is priority. By youth jobs I don't mean 18 to 19, I mean 18 to 30. We did something to address that in the budget, we invested $295 million over two years to create 30,000 jobs. But reality is that again it is a partnership. How do we help students to be more employment ready? How do we connect them out of our post-secondary institutions to jobs? You will find that sometimes people will go to university and get a degree and then they will go to college to get another degree because sometimes the college system is better adapted to connect you to a job. So it's a partnership between educators and business. On the flip side, I've been in business and sometimes you are looking for someone with the skills but you can't find them. Sometimes it's not that they don't exist, it's just that you can't find them because you can't make that connection. So it's a challenge but it's a community partnership. You need to know what is the economy, what do businesses need.  The people who are educators need to know that; the students need to know that. You can invest money and the money is an important resource but if you don't invest the right effort you won't get the solution that you want. But you have to have a good economy so that there are jobs so we have to manage our fiscal circumstances in a way that keeps business investment happening in Ontario. {sidebar id=13}

Muslim Link: Some Muslim Canadians refrain from taking student loans on religious grounds. Has your party ever considered creating alternatives to student loans for financing post-secondary education?

It's the first time it's been raised and I can understand now because I do know that there are some Muslims who have a different approach to borrowing and financing.  To find a solution to that, I would need to understand more about how it works in the community to know how to make that something that is more accessible. It may be something that has been considered by people other than myself but it is the first time the issue has ever come to me so I need to understand it more. It's like the Sadaqa Food Bank. I've worked with food and food banks but I had never considered it from the perspective of people's spiritual needs. So when I learned more about that, I developed an understanding so now I understand why and how we as a community can serve that need. That's what you get from talking to people.

Muslim Link: According to research conducted at York University, Muslims have the second highest unemployment rate in Canada with 14.4% of the population being unemployed as compared to 7.4% of the general population. This may be due to racism. This also may be due to the fact that some Muslim Canadians are newcomers and newcomers to Ontario face many barriers to finding gainful employment. What actions, if any, does your party propose to take to address unemployment amongst racialized Canadians and newcomers to Ontario?

One of the things we have worked on for a period of time is access to trades and professions. It's a challenge that comes to mind immediately. I've spent 20 years in business and 14 years working in the community office, and over those years, I've hired people in stores who were exceptionally qualified people who could be practicing in a profession. Could be nursing, could be teaching, could be an engineer, or a tradesperson that had a skill and too many times they can't use them because there is a lack of access to the profession, there is a language barrier. So it is incumbent upon us as a government to give people the tools that they need to practice those things that they learned at no cost to our government, they learned them somewhere else. It's not just the right thing to do from a human point of view but it just makes economic sense if you can take the skills that someone has acquired and help them to be able to use that here by giving them access to that trade or profession or helping them reach those qualifications or have better language skills so that they can participate fully in the economy. {sidebar id=14}

Muslim Link: Many Muslim Canadians we interviewed complained about difficulties finding a family doctor. How does your party plan to address the lack of family doctors in Ontario cities?

One of the markers we set for ourselves was expanding primary care; making sure people had access to doctors. Now we do have Health Care Connect with is a line you can call to find a family doctor. I know that we have a least three Family Health Teams that are open here in Ottawa-South. There's the Riverside Family Health Team. About a million more Ontarians have found a family doctor because of these Family Health Teams. I will go back to what I said about community. Sometimes it is hard to find what you need because you don't know where to look. So we've done some things t help connect people like Health Care Connect. But there are also these Family Health Teams that provide primary care in a multidisciplinary way which means you may have in that Family Health Team a physician, a nurse practitioner, a dietician, a physiotherapist, you may in some cases have someone who is performing social work. But you always need to work hard to connect people. We don't always know what is happening three doors down from us.  Maybe 30 years ago access was easier because it was simpler, now we live in a busy complex world that is really connected but in some ways we don't know what's happening around the corner. I see being a representative, I have to connect to people and I have to help connect people to what they need, even if it is not a provincially provided service. I have been living here my whole life, I've been working solely in the community for 14 years, and I still find out new things every week. That's one of the big reasons why I am running. I have accumlated a lot of knowledge and experience working in the riding; I've built partnerships so those are a lot of useful tools that could be helpful to people.  {sidebar id=15}

Muslim Link: According to Statistics Canada's 2001 Census, Ottawa has the fourth largest Muslim population in Canada, with the riding of Ottawa South having the highest concentration of Muslims. Taking that into consideration, how have you attempted to engage with Ottawa-South's ethno-culturally diverse Muslim Canadian community during your campaign?

I have visited Assalam and Dar Assunnah mosques. I plan to go where people are, just to introduce myself, not to campaign but just to say this is who I am and why I am here and I am available. And I am going to continue in this season to gather with people when they are gathering and when it is appropriate. Just in terms of knocking on doors, I tell the people with me that we need to understand that people are fasting so we need to make sure that we respect the sanctity, and that's a term I use as a Roman Catholic, of their devotion.

Muslim Link: The head of The Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre, Asfia Sultan, claimed that she was fired due to Islamophobia. Although the case has now been settled without a public hearing, she, among others, such as members of the Canadian Somali Canadian Mothers' Association, have raised concerns about systematic discrimination against Muslims in Ontario detention centres, in which Muslims are often under-represented among ministry employees ”“and over-represented among the inmate population. What are your thoughts on how issues of discrimination and abuse of inmates can be addressed in Ontario?  How can Ontario detention centres become centres of rehabilitation and reintegration, particularly for young offenders, as opposed to the current situation where, according to many Muslim Canadians we interviewed, young people come out of prison worse off than when they went in?

My father was involved with the corrections system and had worked in and out of correctional facilities so I have some understanding of how correctional facilities work and what you try to achieve to make sure you respect human dignity and maintain calm and order and try to help people change their lives.  I know that the Ombudsman's report is out. The most important thing I remember my dad saying is that in a prison you need calm. So if there is perceived unfairness that works against calm. Fairness is about respect. It's about treating people with dignity. It's about making sure they have what they need. I know that the Muslim community works to make sure that their members who have to be incarcerated have the religious tools that they need so that they can help to rehabilitate themselves. I am not sure about the overrepresentation. I am not sure what the numbers are. But I think we have to back up and ask what are we doing in community development? What are we doing in schools? What are we doing in recreation? What are we doing to make sure that young children see their face in society and see themselves as fitting in and fully engaged in society? That's a community development issue. That's schools. That's community service centres. It's one thing to talk about what's happening once they arrive and that's serious and important and we have to do our best. As my dad used to say ”˜People can and will change. Any effort to help them do so is worthwhile.' How do we slow this down if it is higher than it should be? It's like building treatment beds for young people with addiction. You can build those beds and you can keep filling them if you don't look at the front end. I really think it comes down to community development. And often people live close together so you can see it in a geographical location. I lived in Herongate for 22 years; we had all of our children there. What are we doing in those communities? What are we doing so they are close to having recreational activities, so they have the resources to help them in school or an opportunity to see their face in someone who is there to help them, whether it be a teacher, whether it be a community police officer, whether it be a community developer. Ottawa-South is a pretty unique community, people come from about 72 countries and 140 languages and we all live here and we all get along pretty well. We have community development we need to work on but we have the tools we need to do it here.  

To learn more about John Fraser visit his website