Media Release for September 10, 2007

NDP candidate Felicite Stairs says that all today's families deserve a fair deal

RENFREW: NDP candidate Felicite Stairs launched her second provincial election campaign in Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke this weekend with a booth at the Renfrew Fair. At her booth, volunteers gave hundreds of helium-filled orange balloons to children and talked with their parents about education, health care and other issues on their minds.

Ms. Stairs is a legal clinic lawyer and anti-child-poverty activist who has worked closely with hundreds of Renfrew County families and has a reputation for hard work and achievement on behalf of social justice for families and children.

“I work every day with families in Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke,” she says. “It’s time they got a fair deal. Often, they don’t, and every day of my working life is dedicated to getting them fair treatment. I want to take my work to Queen's Park.”

In her first campaign in 2003, Ms. Stairs nearly tripled the NDP vote in Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke. In the end, she says, many potential supporters voted Liberal because they wanted so much to get rid of the Harris/Eaves Conservatives.

“Now, these same people are disappointed,” she says. “Through my community and professional work, I know many people who have been hurt by the broken promises of Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals. They have failed to fix what the Conservatives’ did to public services—in education, health care, natural resources, environmental protection, and more.”

Her campaign emphasizes the NDP’s commitment to an immediate increase in the minimum wage to $10 per hour, which Liberals and Conservatives oppose. She contrasts this with the “huge” MPPs’ pay increases these parties supported.

“It isn’t a fair deal when the Premier gets a $40,000 raise, and MPPs get an average raise of $22,000, and ordinary working people can’t earn a living wage.” She takes her opponent MPP John Yakabuski to task for supporting the MPP pay raise.

“I’m proud to stand with the NDP leader Howard Hampton, who is donating his entire raise to charity,” says Stairs. “He comes from a working family. He cares and understands. The others are seriously out of touch.”

Felicite Stairs is emphasizing seven main points in her campaign.

1. increasing the minimum wage to $10/hr. NOW. “This will be a blessing to families, and also a boon to the economy,” she says. “Where the minimum wage has gone up, business has improved because families have more to spend.”
2. fixing the Harris/McGuinty school funding formula—putting money back into our kids’ education. She says “We need to restore funds to public schools so parents can spend time with their kids instead of fundraising, and kids don’t have to do without needed services like special education, libraries, physical education and the arts.”
3. fair Hydro rates. She says high rates threaten jobs and “Ontario needs lower rates for companies that guarantee good jobs.”
4. reforming unfair property taxes. She advocates the NDP’s “freeze ’til sale” assessment plan so property owners don’t pay taxes based on speculation prices.
5. ending McGuinty’s “private hospital scheme.” Stair says “We need to support public health care, not undermine it.”
6. enabling all Ontarians to live in energy-efficient homes and safe environments—regardless of income. “The NDP has plans to help low- and middle-income families improve their homes and the safety of their neighbourhoods .”
7. protecting good jobs in forestry, agriculture and manufacturing. “Ontario has lost 190,000 good-paying jobs under Dalton McGuinty, many in Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke. We need to focus on keeping and creating good jobs,” she says.

Stairs is a staff lawyer at the Renfrew County Legal Clinic. Before being called to the Bar in 1991, she taught elementary school, worked in a women's centre, and earned a doctorate in Plant Ecology at the University of Western Ontario.

She is a founding member of the Renfrew County Child Poverty Action Network, and has worked with low-income families to develop the Families in Need Directory (FIND), and the Renfrew County Coalition Against Poverty (RCCAP). She was recently elected to Renfrew Food Bank Board of Directors. She is President of the Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke (Provincial) NDP and Women’s Representative on the Federal Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke NDP executive.

She is active with other community organizations including the Renfrew Food Bank and the Trinity St. Andrew's United Church in Renfrew. With the church, she is a Council member, Chair of Christian Education and Faith Formation, a member of the Social Action and Outreach Committee, an organizer of the Dances for Universal Peace, and an organizers of community forums on the environment and other current issues.

At Trinity St. Andrew’s, she helped launch the Renfrew Community Supper, bringing together two of her passions, “feeding people and building community”

Felicite Stairs has lived in Burnstown since 1992, and traces her roots here back to Valley ancestor Philomen Wright. Her husband, Dan McCarthy, is a lawyer and Director of Research and Special Projects for the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America.

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