CBC Toronto hosted a “listening election” on Tuesday February 11th 2025. It wanted to hear our voice on what issues matter to us and our community.

As the elections for Ontario is nearing ( Feb 27 2025), the media here is super busy with many activities. For last mayor election, CBC arranged for a public meeting with all the contestants.

This time, CBC had a public meeting with the media team. They asked many questions to us on the issues we face in Mississauga and the possible solutions. Around 30 people attended that meeting. I participated with few HeartComonos team friends. Happy to meet bhuvan, raghul, sean there.

Learned that similar to the India, the issues with state government vs union government, here also many issues with provenience vs federal govt. The funding for many schemes are being dropped.

The team in our table explored the issues with healthcare, ever increasing cost of living, cost of insurance, the scarcity of the skilled healthcare people, cost of education, need of good transport etc.

On a bird eye view, Canada is a first world country. But it has its own problems. There are people who are struggling a lot, with more work, less salary, less savings, more education loans, more insurance to pay, ever increasing rent, the issues of running small business etc. There are many good things like nice library, free school, free healthcare, good water etc. Govt spends more on Police and the good environment.

The journalists heard all of us, took notes and assured that they will bring more attention to these topics on their publications. We asked for a CBC media office and CBC Radio at Mississauga, as there is no or very less coverage for local issues. The CBC Toronto is more focusing on Toronto and other major cites only. If we local media office, public can reach there often and share their voice.

Its good to see that media is hearing to people. Happy to see many people who are giving voice to the place where they live. They are expecting small changes incrementally.

We hope to see the changes. Good to be a small part of a big community which loves local neighborhood.

I should start reading local news and listening to local radios, so that I can learn more about the local issues, schemes implemented and how to government works here. Tuned my radio to listen to english news. Not sure I can subscribe to a newspaper to receive at home. Will explore to read it online and will read it on cooksville library regularly.

Thanks for CBC team for the nice event.