As the October 10 Ontario general election draws closer, the province’s half a million South Asians find themselves in an unprecedented position of influence.

This election will be won or lost in Toronto with its 22 ridings and the Brampton-Mississauga-Oakville district with nine ridings – a 31-riding block that just happens to be where South Asians are settled in their greatest numbers.

Dalton McGuinty’s ruling Liberal Party, John Tory’s Progressive Conservatives and Howard Hampton’s New Democratic Party have been paying careful attention to South Asian voters. The polls are showing the Liberals and Conservatives running neck-and-neck in the 40 per cent support zone, with the ndp trailing in the teens and the Green Party coming close behind. Small vote swings will mean big things on election day, and everyone knows South Asians can deliver those swings. There are going to be some hot chillies in the election sauce this year!

RAMDATH JAGESSAR met the Ontario party leaders in a series of exclusive interviews designed to gauge how the parties were prepared to handle issues dear to the hearts of desis. Desi News is happy to report that all three leaders were keen to talk, that they didn’t shy away from discussing core problems of South Asians, and they were acutely conscious of the stakes in this election.

Premier Dalton MGuinty said his government has come such a long way and made such progress in education, health care, welcoming immi-grants, improving the cities and farming, and strengthening the economy that the Liberals are the obvious vehicle for progress.

Highlights from the interview:

• Smaller classes, higher test scores, higher graduation rates.

• Peace and stability, with no more teachers’ strikes.

• Invested more in public education in the last four years than the previous government in eight.

• Really "put our money where our mouth is" by investing in our children.

• Increased the strength of post-secondary institutions.

• Froze tuition for two years, something that’s never been done in the history of this province.

• Put in place a plan for reasonable and responsible tuition increases. The overwhelming majority of college and university students will not see a tuition fee hike greater than five per cent.

• Doubled student assistance, and put in place a $6.2 billion "Reaching Higher" plan.

• Brought back grants eliminated by the ndp. This September, 120,000 young people got grants to go to college or university that don’t have to be paid back.

"For every dollar we’ve asked families and students to contribute by way of tuition, we’ve put in three dollars."

• 86,000 more young people are going to college and university than under the Conservatives.

• 6,000 more young people are enrolled in apprenticeships than under the Conservatives.

"My responsibility as premier is to continually look for ways to improve our publicly-funded education system in which two million students go to school. I think it’s a bad idea to take half a billion dollars out of the public schools to fund private religious schools. The responsibility of those in government is to ensure that public education flourishes.

"An important part of the foundation for our social cohesion here in Ontario is our public education system. My vision for the future of Ontario’s public education system does not include inviting children in a public school to leave and go to a school based on their faith."

"Every year we are blessed with about 140,000 people from around the world who choose Ontario as their new home. We have a corresponding responsibility to make sure everything is in place to welcome them."

• Passed Bill 124 – Fair Access to Regulating Professions Act – "designed to ensure that we treat foreign-trained professionals fairly when it comes to recognizing their credentials."

• First province to appoint a fairness commissioner responsible for breaking down access barriers and standing up for foreign-trained professionals.

• First government in Ontario to sit down with (then) prime minister Paul Martin and say it is unfair that an immigrant in Quebec gets $3,800, but that same person coming to Ontario gets $800. Prime minister agreed.

• Going to receive $920 mill-ion more over five years from the federal government for esl, settlements services, training opportunities and the like.

• Created a loans program of $5,000 for foreign-trained professionals to cover assessment, training and exam costs, to be repaid only after landing a job.

• Increased esl funding by 25 per cent in schools – esl students have increased only by 5 per cent.

• Increased the number of years a student is eligible for esl to four years from three.

"We have to capitalize on all of our talent regardless of where it’s come from."

• 750 new foreign-trained physicians practising in Ontario since 2003. 301 international medical graduates received li-censes to practise in Ontario in 2006 alone.

• Currently issuing more licenses annually to foreign-trained physicians than to Ontario-trained physicians.

• Rapidly reducing the number of Ontarians who do not have access to a doctor.

"When we came in, we had hospitals being closed, nurses being fired and we weren’t even measuring wait times. Today, we have 100 hospital construction projects either completed or about to begin. Hiring 8,000 nurses."

• Getting wait times down, and measuring and publishing wait times.

• Targeted five specific areas to bring wait times down – mri ct scans, cancer care, cardiac care, cataract care, hips and knees.

"Forty per cent of all the money that goes into healthcare now goes to people over the age of 65, and the number of people over 65 is going to double in the next 20 years. One in three Ontarians develops cancer, one in four Ontarians dies of cancer. Treating cancer can be very expensive. Cost pressures on health care are enormous and they’re only going to go up. That tells me we cannot eliminate our health tax. We cannot take $3 billion out of health care as the Conservatives would do without cutting services."

"We inherited a $5.6 billion deficit and we’ve balanced the budget two years in a row – con-firmed by provincial auditors."

• Passed a new law that the provincial auditor has to take a look at the books before the campaign. Nobody can hide a deficit again.

• Ontarians have worked hard to grow this economy and create 351, 000 new jobs.

• Partnering with business and labour to ease some of the financial pressures

"Cities were treated as lesser entities by the previous government. We see them as real partners. If we’re going to be as strong a province as we all want to be, we’ve got to work with our cities."

• Passed a new law that requires we consult with cities if we want to do things that will affect them. This has never been done before.

• Giving cities one cent of the gas tax, or $1 billion over five years.

• Providing money for investment in public transit.

• Unloading ambulance cost and public health costs from cities.

"We want to make sure rural Ontarians feel included in the province as we move forward. We’ve provided additional funds to support their hospitals."

• Additional special funds for their schools, because they can be more expensive to maintain.

• Provided farmers with $1 billion in special support funds over the last four years.

• Announced special grains and oil seeds management program of $400 million to help compete against the us and the Euro-pean Union that provide subsidies to farmers.

• Running a very aggressive program to encourage Ontarians to opt for Ontario produce.

"Punjabi farmers in bc are very industrious. Some of the most productive farmers in the world, I’ve learned, come from Punjab. It would be good for the Ontario farm culture and economy to be resourced by South Asian farming communities and practices.

"There is a simple choice for Ontarians. Do you want to keep moving forward, to keep making progress on our public schools, public healthcare systems, in the economy, through a government that can bring people together or do you want to turn back?" says premier McGuinty.

"I’m inviting Ontarians to keep moving forward."

Progressive Conservative leader John Tory shared details of his 61-page election manifesto as he launched the official election campaign.

"I feel very strongly that we have to do everything we can to make sure the education system is inclusive and that it is fair. I believe it is reasonable to have a goal that says if there are 53,000 students of faiths other than Catholic who are in schools that are outside of public education entirely, then we should want to invite those people to come into public education as long as they are willing to abide by certain standards. The Ontario curriculum has to be taught, all teachers have to be fully certified and all students have to participate in the testing programs for students in the province. You could bring these schools closer that currently operate outside the provincial education system and make the public education system more diverse than it is today. There is an unfairness in having schools that are funded from one faith (Catholic) and not the others, whether Hindu, Jewish or Muslim, etc. By inviting these schools in, you will have the best of both worlds and also make the public school system more inclusive."

"Governments have to start working together. Different levels of government have been working almost in isolation from each other and the people who are paying the price for this are the immigrants. We have terribly short-changed them.

"They arrive here and are told, ‘Didn’t anyone tell you your qualifications from India or Pakistan or Germany really don’t count for very much here?’

"Then they face a period of five, six or seven years – some-times longer – to get qualified because they can’t find the time to go back to school. I had a ride in a taxi recently and the taxi driver said had he known he had to go back to school, he would have come here, gone to school and then brought his family over. But having come with his family, he had to support them and couldn’t go to school. He was trapped.

"When anyone walks into a Canadian consulate or embassy anywhere in the world they should be told right away – as part of the application process – how their qualifications match up with what we will accept in Canada and what they have to do to get the qualifications where they need to be. They should be told we are going to help you, starting immediately, to do that.

"The other reality is that it takes people two, three or four years to get into the country. This is four years that people are not putting to good use – taking an English course if they need English, or an online course to get, say, their pharmaceutical skills to where they need to be. We waste all that time and then when immigrants arrive in Toronto they are told, ‘Didn’t anybody tell you about taking another course?’

"We have to set in the pharmaceutical, engineering, computer or medical professions what we think is a reasonable time for most people who are foreign-trained to move into jobs in their professions. We have to set a benchmark so people will know what to expect and there will be some accountability for those professions. We know some people will never make it, but the vast majority of people have every right – if they are invited to come to this country by us after a rigorous selection process – to expect that within a period of around two years they are going to be qualified to do what they are trained to do.

"Before I became leader of the pc party, I worked for Career Bridge and we recruited about 70 companies to give internship to skilled immigrants. The success rate of interns finding a full-time job was 90 per cent. This proves that if you engage the corporate sector in creating opportunities and if immigrants get a chance to show what they can do and get a little bit of Canadian experience, 90 per cent of immi-grants are capable of getting a full time job. Instead of creating a few hundred of these positions we must create thousands."