It’s an election year, so Premier Kathleen Wynne has started showing up in Northern Ontario again, or as the Liberals prefer to call it: “no man’s land.”
But, Northerners won’t be fooled again by Liberal tricks. Voters know this Liberal Government has ignored Northern Ontario for far too long.
Here are some highlights from the Wynne Liberals’ disastrous record on Northern Ontario:
- Cancelling the Northlander passenger train.
- A decade of inaction on the Ring of Fire, including no mention of the project in the most recent Throne Speech or budget.
- In the early 2000’s, Ontario was the most competitive mining jurisdiction in the world, but under Kathleen Wynne and the Liberals, our province has slipped as low as 23rd.
- $70 million in cuts to the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines in the 2017 budget.
- Cuts at the Atikokan General Hospital, Espanola Regional Hospital and Health Centre, Lake-of-the-Woods Hospital, Temiskaming Hospital, North Bay Regional Health Centre, Sault Area Hospital, Health Sciences North, Sudbury and District Health Unit, North Bay Regional Health Centre’s Sudbury satellite mental health centre, St. Joseph’s Care Group’s site in Thunder Bay, and the Timmins and District Hospital.
- Eight out of ten forestry mills in Ontario have closed.
- A Wynne Liberal Thunder Bay MPP and cabinet minister referred to Northern representation on a board that deals with OMB issues as neither “good, bad, or indifferent,” and said that OMB issues only affect “Toronto and larger municipalities in southern Ontario.”
- The Far North Act has shut off half of Northern Ontario to exploration.
- High electricity prices forced Xstrata to shut down their smelter in Timmins and move to Quebec.
- The Ontario government paid $6.5 Million to consultants over the sale of Ontera, and in the end up selling the crown agency for only $6 Million. In total, they sold the company for a loss of $61 million
- Hiking the aviation fuel tax by 148 per cent. This hits remote Northern communities dependent on air for the transportation of goods the hardest.
While life is getting harder, Liberal insiders in downtown Toronto boardrooms have gotten rich on the backs of Northerners.