THE EQUITY had the opportunity to sit down with David Bruce Gottfred, who goes by Bruce, and get to know this relative newcomer to the Pontiac political stage.

Gottfred was educated at McGill and is an electrical engineer by trade. He is semi-retired and is a stay-at-home dad.

He previously worked on the successful campaigns of former Conservative MP Lawrence Cannon. He has lived in Chelsea for the past 25 years, where he lives with his wife, Dr. Michelle Lajzerowicz and their two children Max and Talia.

Gottfred decided to run because he didn’t see anyone else stepping up to the plate in the region. He has had a keen interest in economics for decades and feels that the deficit has run away from the government.

He calls himself a libertarian and believes in small government, which minimally interferes in the public’s daily lives.

As an example, he brings up the community of Wakefield, which has trails built on public land by volunteers. “It doesn’t have the federal government coming down, saying, ‘oh, we’re gonna make a park,’” and getting in the way, he said.

A top priority for Gottfred is the abolition of all COVID-19 restrictions. He feels that restrictions have disproportionally harmed local businesses. “There’s suffering that you don’t see because it’s happening on a low level. It’s happening with individual people are being hurt. It is hurting lives,” he said.

“We have had curfews in this province for six months; people are not allowed to go out of their house; that is unprecedented in this country’s history,” he said.

He is, however, double-vaccinated due to his wife’s work as a doctor.

Wearing masks or taking other preventive measures around COVID should be a choice, he said.

Gottfred is strongly opposed to a vaccine passport system. He called Trudeau’s recent announcement of $1 billion in funding for provinces looking to implement one “A tracking system.”

He fears that now these restrictions are in place, they will not end even after the pandemic is over.

He does not believe it is the government’s job to fund various projects at the local community level. Inevitably he feels that leads to government waste or corrupt practices.

“I don’t like the federal government meddling in the affairs of the riding,” he said.

Money and resources to address housing shortages, for instance, should be handled at the local level rather than be funded by the federal government.

“People are able to find solutions to their own problems. We don’t need some authority to come and solve our problems.

“Sometimes we need help, but if we remove this encompassing blanket of the government helping everybody, people can start looking to each other,” he said.

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