THUNDER BAY – Conservative candidate Joshua Taylor has pegged his campaign on core issues of community safety and affordability, hoping to make history in the Thunder Bay-Superior North riding.
The riding representing the city’s north end hasn’t gone Conservative in about 90 years, but Taylor is hopeful a strategy based in part on engaging smaller outlying communities could change that.
The 28-year-old grew up in Geraldton before earning an undergraduate degree in criminology and a master’s in kinesiology from Western University in London, Ontario.
He moved back to northern Ontario in 2018, working with the Geraldton municipal government. His experience also includes working with Indigenous friendship centres in Geraldton and Thunder Bay and, most recently, for the Thunder Bay District Health Unit as a youth engagement facilitator on anti-tobacco campaigns.
He currently resides in Thunder Bay.
The closest thing he had to political campaigning experience was running for a chair position with a fraternity at Western, he said (he won).
However, he noted he’s always been interested in politics, and was inspired to put himself forward due to frustration with the current government.
“I felt like somebody needed to step up in this area to really make this riding as good as it can be,” he said.
He defined the three main issues he’s running on as crime reduction, affordability, and rural representation, an issue close to his heart given his upbringing in a smaller community.
“As we’ve been going around the riding, what I’ve been hearing from virtually everybody is that there isn’t adequate representation,” he said. “A lot of people have always felt like the political representatives are only coming around during election season. I didn’t like that when I was growing up in Geraldton, and I’d like to be the difference I think this riding needs.”
He’d like to see the federal government crack down on violent crimes and gang activity, saying that would go a long way to ensuring Thunder Bay loses its oft-held distinction as the “murder capital” of Canada.
“I think a lot of that stems from the gang presence we have in the city, where people from southern Ontario… are bringing massive amounts of drugs and exploiting the most vulnerable populations,” Taylor said.
Asked what he’d like to see the federal government do to address issues of crime, he said he supports mandatory minimum sentences for some offences, citing domestic violence as one example.
On affordability, Taylor touted his party’s plan to boost new home builds and bar foreign buyers from purchasing residential properties for two years.
“We need to make sure people aren’t laundering money through homes – basically, foreign buyers need to be barred from our markets until Canadians actually have a sustainable place to live,” he said.
While his relative youth might not always help him be taken seriously on the campaign trail, he said it may have given him an edge with “arguably the most robust social media presence” among local candidates.
“I think overall, people are receptive – they like seeing the people are invested in the future of this riding,” he said, noting he plans to live his life in the region.
Liberal incumbent Patty Hajdu took the riding with 42.9 per cent of the vote in 2019, with Conservative Frank Pullia placing second, with 25.6 per cent.
