Sudbury Conservative Party candidate Troy Crowder issued a statement on Feb. 12 in the wake of Kathleen Wynne's visit to Sudbury, where she stopped at the city's three post-secondary schools.
"Kathleen Wynne finally comes back to Sudbury — but makes no time for media. Odds are she doesn't want to answer important local questions about how her government has waged war on Sudbury's small business owners, why Collège Boréal just laid off and cut programs, why Sudbury's doctors are unhappy and the state of funding for children's mental health."
The premier did however hold a 10 minute scrum following her talk at Cambrian College and fielded a question about program cuts at Collège Boréal.
"My understanding is that have been some changes, there have been some new programs that are starting at Collège Boréal," said Wynne. "Those are decisions that colleges make all the time based on enrollment and based on demand. Colleges are intended to be nimble, colleges are inteded to respond to the labour market and so I think that's a large part of what's going on."
Crowder said in his statement that he hoped Wynne was stopping at the schools for more than just a courtesy visit, pointing to the strike involving Ontario college faculty that went on for more than a month last fall.
"I hope she brings more than a courtesy visit. If she actually cared about the students, administrators and excellent faculty who attend Ontario's colleges and make them great - she'd bring a cheque to make up for the war on colleges her government has declared," said Crowder.
"The Wynne Liberals kept professors on the picket line longer, and now Bill 148 is bankrupting institutions, specifically in northern Ontario. How naïve does Kathleen Wynne think the people of Sudbury are?"
Crowder says that businesses are losing confidence in Wynne’s management of the province's economy, stating that in 2012, 47 per cent of businesses reported they were confident in Ontario’s economic outlook, and that today that has been halved to 23 per cent.
“It was nice of Kathleen Wynne to come back to Sudbury - it'd be nicer if she'd venture outside of a place like Laurentian and talk with some small business owners who are barely keeping above water because of her reckless policies," said Crowder in his statement.
"It’s no secret that life’s harder under the Liberals. A new report from the Ontario Chamber of Commerce says that 77 per cent of Ontario businesses say access to talent remains the largest impact on their competitiveness and nearly half report a lack of confidence in the province’s economy."
Crowder pointed to the Wynne government's previous election promises that Sudbury would have a seat at the table and that in the years that followed Sudburians have been given "a wasteful government that's been kicking the can down the road with hollow promises about a PET Scanner that seems to be taking years since being approved".
"NEOKids is caught up in so much red tape and bureaucracy that no one knows where that is going," said Crowder.
"Everyone is paying the price for her government's scandals, blunders and mistakes - and she comes here on a listening tour and a photo-shoot. People are tired of the Wynne Liberals."
