Dan McTeague will continue to fight for locals’ battles

“Gas guru” Dan McTeague declared victory in the federal election last Tuesday and will serve the area for the sixth time.

The Pickering-Scarborough East winner polled 49.05 per cent of the votes, ahead of Conservative George Khouri’s 33.32 per cent and Andrea Moffat of the NDP with 10.45 per cent on Oct. 14.

MP Dan McTeague says he will continue working hard for all of the constituents of the Pickering-Scarborough East riding.He was very close to having half the support of the riding, he says, because there has been an affirmation for his work.

Being returned by Ottawa again by his constituents was “a real honour” for the Liberal incumbent.

“When I first ran in 1993 I thought I’d be lucky to win one election,” McTeague said on election night. “But six elections later, I’m still very touched.”

McTeague says he will focus heavily on consumer affairs because there is an overall sense of economic malaise due to factors like higher prices and lower wages.

“We need stronger legislation to protect consumers” he says. “We’ve wound up being laggard in the manufacturing sector.”

Another goal is to get a fair share of funding for transit systems, particularly light rail, so people can travel from Scarborough Town Centre to Oshawa, he says.

“I don’t believe that’s a frill,” McTeague said. “We should be concentrating between Scarborough and Durham Region.”

“The people here are paying taxes and they deserve to have a better transportation and transit system.”

It is one of the top issues for the citizens of this riding, he says, because they don’t want to deal with gridlock and they need to have access to affordable transit options.

He says people have “reasonable expectations that the government will do everything that it can to ensure that we maintain jobs here in Canada and at the same time the question of affordability will continue to be front and centre.”

He adds, inflation is increasing by three or four per cent each year, meanwhile wages are, in real terms, declining.

McTeague says he worked well with the Conservatives before to improve his riding and he knows it won’t be any different this time.

“I have heard a lot of concerns and my job is to take those back to the House of Commons and the Government will have to deal with them,” McTeague says.

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By: Sharmin Hassaniani
Posted: Oct 26 2008 9:54 am
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Filed under: News