GUELPH POLITICAST #353 – Christmas With Lloyd

For the last couple of years, we’ve used the Christmas week episode of the podcast to sit down with an influential Guelphite and talk a little more broadly about life and politics while looking back at some of the year’s highlights. This week’s podcast interview comes to you via a Zoom call from the hallways of Parliament Hill, which was the site of what the Canadian Press calls the Biggest Story of the Year.

Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way: 2022 was the year of the Freedom Convoy. No question. For three weeks earlier this, Downtown Ottawa was ground to a standstill as hundreds of people and dozens of trucks set up residence to protest, well, pick your cause. Guelph MP Lloyd Longfield was one of the members who voted in favour of invoking the Emergencies Act, so how does he feel about that now?

Closer to home, Longfield is one of the members of Mayor Cam Guthrie’s special downtown advisory group, which was set up to find immediate to long-term solutions to homelessness and mental health issues in the core. Now, some major supportive housing projects in Guelph currently under construction have benefited from Federal investment, but just how much can the Federal government do about very local circumstances?

We’ll ask Longfield those and some other questions on this holiday edition of the pod. He will talk about his takeaways from the year that’s coming to an end and his personal experience with the Freedom Convoy earlier this year. He will also talk about working on Guelph issues and getting a new deal for Canada’s cities. Plus we will discuss what’s coming issues-wise in 2023, and what his Chamber of Commerce experience is telling him about the economic outlook in the next year. 

So let's tuck in for Christmas with our local MP on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast!

You can reach out to our area MP at his website, or on social media @lloydlongfield on Twitter, YouTube and Instagram, or @lloyd.longfield on Facebook. Look for Longfield around town over the next month as the House of Commons will not sit again until January 30.

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Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.