By Doug Draper
With one year to go before Ontario face a provincial election, the province’s Conservative leader is following up Thanksgiving with series of television ads and a call to Ontarians for their advice on how his party should “move forward” if it forms the next government.
Ontario Conservative Leader Tim Hudak, his wife Deb and their three-year-old daughter Miller at pumpkin farm in rural Thorold this Oct. 8. Photo by Doug Draper
Over the next 12 months leading up to an Oct. 6, 2011, those ads will focus on at least three major themes– “giving hard-working families a break,” a return to government that is “not spending beyond (its) means,” and creating more jobs, said Hudak during an interview with Niagara At Large while his family was visiting Howell’s Pumpkin Farm in the Short Hills of Thorold this Oct. 8.
Hudak’s invitation to the media to join him at the pumpkin farm for a briefing on the shape his party’s campaign will take in the months ahead came a week after a Toronto Star-Angus Reid poll showed him receiving the support of 41 per cent of the province’s decided voters. Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty, who is hoping to lead his party to a third term in government, trailed with 29 per cent, followed by NDP Leader Andrea Horwath with 22 per cent and Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner with eight per cent.
During a one-on-one interview with NAL, Hudak expressed his determination to do something about what he sees as wasteful and, in some cases, scandalous spending practices (i.e. e-Health) by the McGuinty government and to offer Ontarians tax relief. Asked how he would control or cut government spending and offer tax cuts at the same time without compromising the quality of public services like education and health care, Hudak said he believes there is more than enough money to deliver quality services if the money is spent properly.
“I believe we actually have a spending problem (in Ontario) as opposed to a revenue problem,” he said.
In that spirit, Hudak said if he becomes the next premier, he would immediate order a public inquiry into the e-Health matter that saw the misspending of about a billion tax dollars – a good portion of it on high-priced consultants hired without tender to help set up an electronic system for keeping health records – with little to show for it.
Hudak said he would also scrap the Local Health Integration Networks (including the LHIN for the Niagara and Hamilton areas), which he described as nothing more than unelected boars with little or no accountability to the public, which operate like shields for the McGuinty government to hide behind when controversial decisions about local hospitals and other health services are made.
There are numerous other boards, commissions and agencies, collectively costing hundreds of millions of dollars, Hudak said he would also take a hard look at in terms of what value they to the public.
As for wage-and-benefit contracts with public sector unions, the Conservative leader said public sector contracts “need to reflect (be more in line with) the contracts the private sector is willing to pay “ its workers during a time of economic sluggishness and restraint. The longtime system for approving wage and benefit contracts for police (where police unions can go to provincially appointed arbitrators in Toronto and get a three-per-cent-per year wage settlement approved, even after a regional government – as was the case in Niagara earlier this year – said it can’t afford to pay it) needs to be reviewed and made fairer, he said.
You can access the 54-question survey Hudak and his Conservatives are encouraging Ontario residents to fill out by visiting www.HaveYourSayOntario.ca. It includes questions on everything from education, transportation and the environment to taxes, jobs, the provincial debt and social social programs.
Niagara At Large will also be posting the priorities of the Liberals, NDP and Greens as we enter this provincial election year. In the meantime, we encourage to share your comments below on this post.
(Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to residents in our greater Niagara region.)
Niagara At Large 
We need to renogiate NAFTA this was a lopsided deal pushed by the Chambers of Commerce of Canada and the US never mind that trade between the US and Canada was already 95% duty free. bringing Mexico in on it, with no standards they had to abide by, was loco,(crazy) as Ross Perot said we would hear a giant sucking sound as our jobs fled south.fix it or kill it.
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Mr Hudak perhaps ought to run on a undue Dalton’s mess platform.
Another plank in the platform ought to be a Charter and Bill of rights for Ontario. Enshrining our property rights and protecting our other rights with a promise to protect these rights and not infringe upon them. But I suppose that would be asking too much.
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Watch out, everybody, for the CETA — the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement, aka the Canada – E.U. trade agreement — quietly on its way to you via our federal government. It is going to make NAFTA look like a side-show. The E.U. is insisting on access to sub-national government procurement (provinces and municipalities and their agencies, such as school boards, etc.), for one thing. Although the feds want to see it signed and sealed in 2011, it needs the provinces and territories to sign on. So, what does Mr. Hudak have to say about the CETA? Does he even know what it is?
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Anybody who thinks a Tim Hudak government can cut taxes without cutting services is thinking in technicolour. Our social safety net has been cut to the bone, our health care services have been cut, de-listed and decentralized and so forth. Our education system is asking for more and more money from parents to fund what our taxes used to pay for. I cannot afford a Tim Hudak government. I do not have the money for out-of-pocket payments for medical care. I’ve been doing without a lot of care so far, thanks to McGuinty’s own brand of cuts. I can’t afford anymore. I don’t have the money to pay extra for textbooks, registration, etc. for my kids in classes, while more cuts are on the way, possibly increasing the amount of money I have to pay. I do not have the money to keep taking taxis because a Hudak government will value drivers of private automobiles more than they will provide for more eco-friendly and universal means to travel. Yet Hudak will certainly expect me to continue to foot the bill for more roads, parking, enforcement, etc. while I get even less in return. Hudak as much as promised that he will remove all human rights enforcement in this province and leave everything to the already overpriced and overworked courts. Like his federal counterpart, Hudak will use this change to confirm that Ontario has effectively eliminated discrimination by fiat because nobody will be able to afford to hire a lawyer to go through an extensive, labyrinthian court process to fight their claims. I suppose without the long-form census, and this other change at the provincial level, Hudak can just smile and say everything is fine. Let’s keep him out before he has a chance to weasel himself in to further destroy our social programs, which are already cut to the bone as they are.
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