Katie Gibbs is running in her first provincial election as the Ontario Liberal Party candidate for Ottawa Centre.
Gibbs has a PhD in biology from the University of Ottawa and co-founded the non-profit Evidence for Democracy, which advocates for transparent and evidence-based government decisions.
She spoke with the Charlatan to discuss health care, climate change, affordable housing and Indigenous relations.
Health care
Gibbs listed fair wages, pay raises and mental health resources for health-care workers as priorities for the Ontario Liberal Party. The party will scrap Bill 124, which suppresses wages for health-care workers, and hire 100,000 new doctors and nurses.
“You can go out and get more beds, but if you don’t have the staff to actually do the work, then you don’t have a functioning system.”
“I think we’ve learned over the past few years that we cannot have strong health care without health-care workers,” Gibbs said. “You can go out and get more beds, but if you don’t have the staff to actually do the work, then you don’t have a functioning system.”
She said the Ontario Liberal Party will forgive student loans for frontline health-care workers employed during the COVID-19 pandemic and make it easier for foreign-trained doctors and nurses to work in Ontario. It will also reduce backlogs for surgeries and give everyone in Ottawa primary care access, she said.
“That’s a big issue for the party and for me locally—to make sure that everyone in Ottawa has access to primary care, whether that’s a doctor or nurse practitioner,” Gibbs said.
She added the Ontario Liberal Party will allocate an additional $3 billion of the provincial budget to addiction treatment, fund harm reduction sites and supplies and introduce supportive housing paired with mental health and addiction supports.
“It’s hard to give people any of the other services and support they need if they don’t have a place to live,” she said.
Climate change
Gibbs said she worries about the future of the world for her daughter, 2, and son, 6. She was one of 13 provincial candidates endorsed by GreenPAC for her climate leadership.
She said the Ontario Liberal Party has set a goal of 50 per cent carbon emission reductions from 2005 levels by 2030 and will pursue this goal through both costing and modelling.
“A big part of any climate plan in Ontario is going to mean looking at getting to a fully clean electricity supply, and we’re aiming to do that as fast as humanly possible,” Gibbs said.
She added the Ontario Liberal Party would offer “generous” rebates for purchasing electric vehicles, including bicycles. It will also fund municipal cycling infrastructure and give all Ontarians $1-per-ride transit until 2024, she said.
“A big part of any climate plan in Ontario is going to mean looking at getting to a fully clean electricity supply, and we’re aiming to do that as fast as humanly possible.”
Gibbs mentioned updating Ontario’s Building Code to make new buildings more energy-efficient and equipped with electric vehicle charging infrastructure. She also mentioned providing funding to homeowners who retrofit their own properties to be more energy-efficient.
She said the Ontario Liberal Party will commit to designating an additional 20 per cent of the province’s land as protected area, planting 800 million trees in the next 10 years and implementing an urban tree strategy.
“We’re losing a lot of those trees, we’re not planting new ones at the same rate and, even when there are sometimes requirements for developers to plant new trees, there are no requirements around maintenance and nurturing the trees,” she said.
Affordable housing
Gibbs said the Ontario Liberal Party will build 1.5 million new homes with the help of the new Ontario Home Building Corp. She said some will be market-rate homes prioritized for first-time buyers, while others will be affordable non-market units for non-profit, co-op and supportive housing initiatives.
The Ontario Liberal Party will also allocate $100 million for co-op housing specifically.
“Co-ops really come with this fantastic community, so they’re a great solution,” said Gibbs, who was once in a student housing co-op herself. “They just haven’t really had much funding for new co-ops in a few decades, so I hope we’re at the point of a bit of a new co-op revolution.”
“The idea is that any homes that are out there should be homes for people.”
She said incentivizing home-building for under-utilized spaces, bringing in a vacancy tax for empty and flipped homes and introducing a levy for investors who don’t use their properties are also priorities.
“We’re trying to make it less attractive for any home to be sitting empty,” Gibbs said. “The idea is that any homes that are out there should be homes for people.”
As well, the Ontario Liberal Party will raise the HST exemption on prepared food from anything under $4 to anything under $20.
“It’s a small amount, but I think it’ll add up, especially for busy people like students who are relying on that prepared food,” she said.
Indigenous relations
Gibbs said the Ontario Liberal Party will appoint a stand-alone minister of truth and reconciliation and introduce a new curriculum that includes teachings on Indigenous history, language and culture and residential schools.
“When I look at the provincial government and what it can do on reconciliation, I think the education piece is so important,” she said. “[Indigenous peoples] have gone through so many years of having their cultures and languages erased, and now I think it’s our job to help support the rebuilding of those languages and cultures.”
“When I look at the provincial government and what it can do on reconciliation, I think the education piece is so important.”
She said coming to terms with “the scale of past atrocities and the way that intergenerational trauma is still impacting communities” shouldn’t be left to individuals. The Ontario Liberal Party will earmark 22,000 new homes for Indigenous communities.
Gibbs said it will also promote pay transparency, preventing companies from hiding what they pay employees, and corporate transparency, encouraging companies to diversify their boards.
For more information on Gibbs, visit her campaign page.
Featured image by Cynthia Münster.
