(GuelphToday asked each candidate in the Federal election to provide a biography and brief platform statement)
Bio:
Aisha Jahangir is a lifelong provider of compassionate care and a tenacious fighter for workers' rights.
Aisha has been a Guelphite since she was two weeks old. She grew up on Alice Street, and went on to become a graduate of Tytler Public School and Centennial Collegiate Vocational Institute. Aisha and her husband Azam now live in the south end of Guelph with their two children, Noor and Yousaf.
Aisha has been a registered nurse since 1997. As a specialist in in Labour and Delivery, Aisha helped to deliver hundreds of babies at Guelph General Hospital. She went on to receive further training in mental health, and, after several years working at Homewood Health Centre, she is now employed as a mental health nurse at the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre. Aisha Jahangir has been active in the Ontario Public Service Employees Union and the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario — and she is a former president of the nurses’ bargaining unit at Homewood. Aisha speaks English, Urdu, Punjabi, and Hindi. As a nurse, she has been a firsthand witness of many unmet needs in our healthcare and justice systems -- and that is what motivated her to run for Parliament.
Platform statement:
I believe the most important issues in this campaign are healthcare, climate change, and affordable housing – and they are all interrelated. The NDP's platform speaks to a thorough commitment to social and economic justice. A world in which a few multi-billionaires have as much wealth as entire countries is not sustainable, and says a lot about the holes in our public services.
Access to high-quality healthcare and affordable housing must be upheld as basic rights for all Canadians. I will work towards this with my NDP colleagues — but these rights will mean little if we don't prevent runaway global warming.
I am proud to be listed by Leadnow as a Climate Champion in this election. We must work to reach net zero emissions far in advance of 2050. A Jagmeet Singh government will immediately end subsidies for oil and gas companies, among many other measures. We would also establish an independent Climate Accountability Office, which would hold any future government's feet to the fire on science-based climate targets.
As a nurse, I am proud to be a member of the NDP, the party that introduced Medicare to Canada. I want to help to fulfill the Tommy Douglas dream. We have a plan plan to strengthen our healthcare system by expanding it to head-to-toe -- so your health card covers not just doctor's visits but also medication, dental, hearing, vision, and mental health care.
We are going to tell extremely rich Canadians to contribute more, by introducing a 1% wealth tax on individuals with more than $20 million in wealth, closing loopholes, and going after offshore tax havens. That new revenue will be invested in Canadians, in the form of public services and 500,000 new affordable housing units across the country.
The NDP will also strengthen our democracy by reforming our electoral system. We will introduce mixed-member proportional representation -- MMPR -- in our first mandate. We will hold the next two federal elections under the new system, and then allow Canadians to decide via referendum whether they would like to continue under MMPR, rather than First Past the Post.
The NDP and I are in this for you -- and we have the most comprehensive and detailed platform in this election.
