Duane Hicks
“Northern Ontario will have a voice in an Ontario PC government.”
That’s a pledge party leader Patrick Brown has been driving home as he tours the region this week.
“This is my 21st trip to Northern Ontario since I announced my run for the PC leadership two years ago, and I’m showing up again and again because I believe Northern Ontario isn’t being listened to; that Queen’s Park is oblivious to the concerns in Northern Ontario,” Brown told the Times on Monday after meeting with Fort Frances Mayor Roy Avis and the rest of town council, as well as other municipal reps.
“Many people in the north feel that they’re being treated as second-class citizens; it’s not right,” he stressed.
“There’s a crisis with energy prices that the government has failed to recognize,” Brown noted.
“In terms of health care, the physician shortages are particularly acute in Northern Ontario.
“The state of the hospitals are in desperate need of help,” he added.
Brown also said there are “huge infrastructure deficits” in Northern Ontario.
“I think that got illustrated with the whole debate over the ‘Ring of Fire,’ where it just seems to be like ‘Groundhog Day,’” he charged.
“Re-announcement after re-announcement after re-announcement but nothing ever gets done, and they keep on kicking back the infrastructure projects that are needed,” he argued.
“The ‘Connecting Links’ funding is inadequate in the north,” added Brown. “It covers a much broader geographical area.
“I am concerned that we have a government that is not serving the best interests of Northern Ontario.”
Brown noted the mining sector has slipped from being “the best jurisdiction in the world to now struggling” while the forestry sector has lost 50 percent of its jobs.
“If Premier Wynne is not going to stand up for Northern Ontario, then our official opposition is willing to,” he pledged.
“I can tell you I get up in the legislature every week, asking questions about Northern Ontario,” Brown noted.
“Vic Fedeli, our MPP from North Bay—a passionate northerner—gets up as well every week in the legislature,” he added.
“We challenge the government to take note.”
Brown said earlier this year, in the middle of winter, he took a driving trip through 15 Northern Ontario communities.
Unlike flying over the area, if you drive through it in the middle of winter, “you see where the infrastructure is missing, you can see where the broadband access is missing—then you really get a sense of what’s going wrong,” said Brown.
“It’s nice for the premier to fly up once a year but I think we have to do better,” he stressed.
“And I think rather than simply playing lip service once a summer, what I’d like to see is real government action to address some of these inequalities.”
Brown kicked off his tour Monday in Kakabeka Falls, where he met with the owner of Odena Foods, a local business affected by skyrocketing hydro rates.
Later in the day, he participated in round-table discussions on northern issues with the Atikokan Economic Development Corp., which highlighted that businesses are choosing not to invest in Atikokan because they can’t afford to operate.
Brown then met with Fort Frances council and several other municipal reps, who stressed their concerns regarding the increasing difficulty to find quality health care in the area.
Talk centered around the shortage of doctors in Fort Frances and how the Liberals’ decision to cut 50 residency positions is making the situation even more worrisome.
To end the day, Brown met with Couchiching Chief Brian Perreault to discuss the history and legacy of residential schools.
Brown then continued his tour yesterday, visiting the sturgeon hatchery at Rainy River First Nations, followed by a stop at the Fort Frances Fire Hall and then New Gold’s Rainy River Project north of Barwick.
In related news, the PCs have launched a website called forontario.ca to gather input from Ontarians to help build their platform for the next provincial election.
Brown said the PC party is not going have its platform built by a small few at Queen’s Park.
“I actually want to open how we build our policy platform to be reflective of the entire province,” he remarked.
“Anyone here in Fort Frances who has an idea of what make Ontario more competitive, log on forontario.ca,” Brown added.
“I would love [to hear] their ideas.”
