EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a new Village Media website devoted exclusively to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.
Premier Doug Ford said his government is doing its part in the cost of living crisis and called on Ottawa to step up.
At an unrelated announcement in Hamilton on Thursday, Ford touted his gas tax cut of 5.7 cents/litre (which he called 10 cents/litre to fulfill a campaign promise) and called on Ottawa to do the same.
He also boasted about his government's licence plate sticker rebate, ending tolls on highways 412 and 418, the five-per-cent increase to ODSP payments, and tax breaks for small- and medium-sized businesses.
"So we're doing our fair share," he said. "I just need the federal government to step up and do their fair share. And it'd be nice if they cut 10 or 15 cents off the gas tax."
Global reporter Colin D'Mello noted that these breaks for individuals, taken together, pale in comparison to the $10 billion given to Volkswagen and Stellantis for their plants in Ontario.
Ford said the question was "misleading," since those tax breaks are on a per-battery basis. "There's no big cheque being signed," he said.
The plants will attract jobs and improve the overall economy, Ford said.
"If you go down in southwestern Ontario, before, you could shoot a cannon off in St. Thomas, or down in Windsor, and you wouldn't hit anyone. Now, that area is going to be booming," he said, adding that "if we didn't do this investment, they had a potential of saying, 'See you later, we're going somewhere else.' So I call it investing, not giving money away."
Pushed on why his government isn't pursuing a broad-based tax cut for working people, Ford noted that people making under $30,000/year don't pay any Ontario income tax.
"But ... you help people by getting them a good-paying job," said the premier.
Back at Queen's Park, NDP Leader Marit Stiles said the PCs seemed more interested in "jetting off to Las Vegas" than helping people afford the ever-increasing cost of living.
The government could bring back rent control, find ways to regulate home payments, build more affordable housing, or prevent "price gouging" by corporations "making a massive profit," Stiles said.
"But instead, we see over and over again, they seem to be just obsessed with giving out favours to people who are already wealthy — you know, to their own ministers, for goodness sake," she added.
Ford added again that he disagrees with the Bank of Canada "jacking these interest rates up."
"You know, my heart breaks for the people that have to renew their mortgages," he said.
Stiles agreed, saying the hike will "hit people who are already suffering the most."
Ford was in Hamilton's Heddle Shipyards to tout a $3.7 million spend on a program to improve shipyards and train builders. The goal is to attract more federal shipbuilding contracts — an issue Ford said came into focus at the recent Council of the Federation meeting.
"When I was with the premiers, I noticed billions of dollars is going to B.C., billions of dollars going to Nova Scotia, billions of dollars going to Quebec," he said. "We need to start getting those contracts here in Ontario."
Heddle CEO Sean Padulo said the cash has attracted $150 million in federal contracts.
"Outside of the number you said, Sean, we have got zero new builds — zero new builds in Ontario from the federal government," Ford said.
—With files from Charlie Pinkerton and Aidan Chamandy
