Although she has plenty of her own ideas about what should be in the upcoming provincial budget, Andrea Horwath said she planned to close her mouth and open her ears during a visit to Sudbury Jan. 23.
The provincial NDP leader was in town to listen to what citizens have to say about what should be in the provincial budget, which will be presented in March.
“I thought it was important to take the time to listen to what Ontarians have to say before we start having the debate about the budget,” she said, speaking to Northern Life after speaking to people in the food court at the Rainbow Mall.
“Coming to Sudbury is an important part of that process. We're talking to the people in this community about what their concerns are, their hopes are and their priorities are, and what they think Ontario should be doing.”
Besides visiting the mall, Horwath also met with students at Laurentian University and hosted a town hall meeting at St. Andrew's Place in the downtown.
She said she and the party's finance critic, Beaches-East York MPP Michael Prue, will be travelling across the province over the next few weeks to get citizens' input on the provincial budget.
Although it was early in the day when she spoke with Northern Life, Horwath said she'd already spoken to seniors who are worried about the future because the cost of living is going up, but their pensions are staying the same.
Provincial NDP leader Andrea Horwath (right) and Nickel Belt MPP France Gélinas (centre) speak with Jeanne Johnson in the Rainbow Mall food court Jan. 23. Horwath was in Sudbury to hear from citizens about what they think should be in the province's budget. Photo by Marg Seregelyi.
“They're worried about losing their homes and being forced into long-term care facilities early,” she said.
One of the NDP's ideas for making life more affordable is to take the HST off of home heating, something which is especially important in northern Ontario, where there are longer and colder winters, Horwath said.
She also spoke about the need to bring a PET scanner to Health Sciences North and to better maintain northern highways in the wake of the recent deaths of seven teens on highways 17 and 69.
Going into the budget, the province is facing a $16-billion deficit, with an accumulated debt of $232 billion.
Horwath acknowledges this means the government has a “lot of tough choices to make.”
She said if she were the premier, she would save money by cancelling the corporate tax cuts and capping top bureaucrats' salaries at $416,000, or twice the premier's salary.
Corporations don't seem to be investing in their Ontario operations as a result of tax cuts, Horwath said. They're just “expanding their cash reserves,” she said.
“If companies are going to hire people, we can give them a tax credit for that,” Horwath said. “If they're going to invest in their plant, equipment or machinery, we can give them a tax credit for that. That way we're losing a bit of revenue, but we're getting something for it.”
Horwath was accompanied by Nickel Belt NDP MPP France Gélinas, as well as Paul Loewenberg, who ran for the NDP in Sudbury in the last provincial election.
Gélinas said that as the NDP's health critic, she hears a lot from constituents about what's wrong with the province's health system.
The number one issue regarding the health system is that “home care is not meeting the needs of people who need it.”
“I have been saying for a long time that our home care system is broken,” she said. “The easy fix is to get rid of competitive bidding system. Competition in home care does not help us.”
Like Horwath, Gélinas said she's also been hearing a lot about the cost of living, as well as poor winter road maintenance on northern highways.
People are also complaining about gas prices, she said. They don't understand why gas costs more in some communities than in others, especially when these communities are as close as Sudbury and Sturgeon Falls.
The NDP is proposing a weekly cap on gas prices, Gélinas said.
She said the province's $16-billion deficit puts everything that people depend on from the government at risk.
“The finances have to be straightened up,” Gélinas said. She echoes Horwath, saying that the corporate tax cuts should be cancelled to save money.
Although the NDP doesn't hold power in the province, there's a lot better chance the party's ideas will be used now that the Liberals no longer have a majority government, she said.
“Things have changed at Queen's Park,” Gélinas said. “There's an openness that was not there the first four years I was there. The minister of health wants to have a conversation with me.”
Posted by Arron Pickard
