Name: Lawrence Woo
Party: Liberals
Profession: Chartered accountant
Education: B.Sc., CA
Achievements: Queenís diamond jubilee medal; community service award
Theme Song: We Can Work it Out by The Beatles
Three Priorities: 1. Repeal citizenship law Bill C24. 2. Revert OAS/GIS age from 67 back to 65. 3. Promote dialogue and mutual understanding.
Sure, he’s up against two respected educators and an ambitious student, but Lawrence Woo, an accountant, can count well.
And for Woo, voting for the Conservative’s social policies or the NDP’s untested economic plan, just doesn’t add up.
Woo says he is a “middle-of-the-road” kind of guy.
“I don’t believe we should give handouts for those that ask. Like the old saying I’d rather teach someone to fish than give them a fish. That’s the main difference between us and the NDP,” says Woo, who is a founding member of S.U.C.C.E.S.S, a charitable organization for immigrant settlement services that is also funded by the government.
Naturally, running in Richmond where the vast majority of citizens are new immigrants, one of Woo’s focuses will be on improving settlement services.
“How are we going to treat all these new immigrants after they come in? I think that’s more important. When I was with S.U.C.C.E.S.S we found this to be a very big problem. …The so-called ‘after sales product’ has been ignored,” says Woo.
He says the highly scrutinized, now defunct, Immigrant Investor Program isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if it’s done properly.
“It brought in a lot of investments and a lot of talent. But there were shortcomings, so we need to address those, like whether the investment was being invested in a proper manner and how it can it bring better returns to the country,” says Woo.
He notes slapping taxes/restrictions on foreign investment in real estate could be heavy handed before fully understanding the issue.
His Liberals have said they will return the mandatory long-forum census (something Woo was unsure about in July) and improve data collection.
