Making such promises as lowering hydro costs by 30 per cent, regulating gas prices and a moratorium on school closures, the provincial NDP's Northern Ontario platform touches on a number of bones of contention for northerners.
As the party's leader, Andrea Horwath, touted the platform at an event in Thunder Bay Friday morning, the NDP's two local candidates, Nickel Belt's France Gélinas and Sudbury's Jamie West, held their own event.
“We know that during the last 15 years, a lot of the decisions that were made by the government had a huge detrimental affect on the north,” Gélinas told reporters at the May 4 press conference, held at West's campaign office.
“We just talked about rural schools, gas prices, the lack of public transit, the cancelling of the Ontario Northland. This affected the north, and they didn't care ...
“It is important to us, it speaks to our core values that everyone matters, that we look at equity. We know people in Northern Ontario have had it tougher. Now it's time to bring equity.”
Here's a round-up of the promises included in the NDP's northern platform:
- Protect and invest in northern health care, so people can get the care they need close to home – including $19 billion in new health care facilities, repairs and upgrades. Hospital funding would increase immediately by 5.3 per cent, further layoffs of front-line health workers would be stopped and home care funding would be increased by $300 million.
- Make travel safer by improving winter road maintenance, and making it public again, and bringing back the Northlander passenger service.
- Create good jobs across the resource development sector – the kind of jobs young people can raise a family on. That includes lighting the Ring of Fire with a $1 billion investment.
- Make life more affordable by ending price gouging at the pumps (the party says it will end unpredictable gas price spikes), and lowering hydro costs by about 30 per cent – including ending higher rural and northern delivery costs.
- Keep northern and rural schools open – the party is promising a moratorium on school closures until the provincial funding formula is fixed.
- Establish a true government-to-government relationship with First Nations based on the principles of reconciliation. The NDP promises to fix issues such as access to clean drinking water and working with First Nations and the federal government to ensure high-quality education.
West said Northern Ontario has typically been a stronghold for the provincial NDP, and so the party has played a strong role in pushing these kinds of issues at Queen's Park.
“It's not that the south isn't important, but we speak for the north very effectively, and we're not afraid to speak for the north,” he said.
While Gélinas is an incumbent who has served her riding for 11 years, West, a local labour leader, is trying to win it away from Liberal Glenn Thibeault, the province's energy minister.
Thibeault, formerly an NDP MP, famously switched parties and won the riding in 2015 in a byelection called after the NDP's Joe Cimino stepped down for personal reasons just months after taking the seat.
West said he's confident he can win the election. “I'm in it to win it,” he said. “I wouldn't be here if I didn't think I could. I think that people are fed up with Kathleen Wynne and they're fed up with our local MPP.”
You can read the NDP's Northern Ontario platform in its entirety at ontariondp.ca/northernplatform.
