Rob Merrifield makes stop in Barrhead

Barrhead residents had the chance to meet with Yellowhead MP Rob Merrifield on Jan. 23 when he came to town for a pre-budget consultation at the Seniors Drop In Centre.

After giving a speech about his role as the area MP and a question and answer session, Merrifield went around the room talking to the small crowd of 30 and whoever wanted to stay and chat, in order to get a better idea of what his constituents want from the federal government.

“I use these sessions as a sounding board,” he said. “I want to know what the people think and what they have to say.”

He said getting out into the communities in the riding and talking to the people helps him become a better representative, because that way he hears from them directly and in person.

“Face to face communication is better than phone calls and letters, because a lot of communication is non-verbal,” he said. “People like to see me do that, and I like to see their faces too.”

In his speech, Merrifield spoke about how Canada is the greatest country in the world because of meetings like Monday’s — they allow the electorate to give their representatives ideas that can be taken back to Ottawa and the House of Commons and turned into laws.

As is the case in many circles across the country and around the globe, the economy was a major talking point.

The Canadian economy is doing well, Merrifield said, and has been strong enough not to be dragged down by the U.S. economy as much as it would have been in the past.

However, he sounded some caution over the situation in Europe. What if the E.U. were to collapse, he asked. Although Canada is not overly exposed economically, an E.U. collapse would inevitably create a domino effect that would lead to other countries’ economies collapsing and the markets for Canadian goods could dry up.

That being said, Merrifield said he’s confident the U.S. and the E.U. will “grind through” their problems and get out of trouble on their own.

When speaking of the two major oil pipelines being proposed – the Keystone XL and the Northern Gateway – Merrifield had strong opinions.

He said he thinks President Barack Obama made the wrong choice in rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline.

As for the Northern Gateway, he said it’s a good idea to pursue that avenue because Canada doesn’t want to be locked into a single buyer for its oil.

He added the Canadian forestry sector is also strong thanks to China buying more Canadian lumber.

When the question and answer session started, the audience members’ questions covered a range of topics, some of which Merrifield had not addressed in his speech.

One of those questions dealt with the apparent contradiction between the Tories’ crime legislation reforms and desire to build more prisons when the national crime rate is going down.

Merrifield said when the topic came up in Ottawa, the bureaucracy claimed the number of convicts under the new legislation would go up dramatically. However, what he said has happened is the number of convicts has indeed gone up, but with the “catch and release” handling of criminals ending, the increase is significantly lower than predicted. Furthermore, he said it’s too early to know what the numbers will look like in the future.

Another member of the audience stated a desire to see capital punishment – i.e. the death penalty – brought back.

To that, Merrifield said it won’t happen because there have been serious mistakes made in the justice system, and there is not enough confidence in the certainty of guilt to bring back the death penalty. Without 100 per cent certainty of guilt, he said he didn’t think the electorate would see capital punishment as appropriate.

As the questions continued to come, the conversation inevitably returned to the economy, with a question about the federal expenditure and the size of the deficit.

Merrifield said he didn’t have the numbers on hand about the federal expenditure, but repeated what Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has been saying: that the federal government will return to a balanced budget by 2015/2016. In fact, Merrifield said he’s confident Canada can be back to balanced budgets earlier than Flaherty’s target, barring a major financial catastrophe internationally.

After he wrapped up the question and answer session, Merrifield thanked the audience for coming out to listen and letting their thoughts be known about the direction they want to see the government go in the coming months.