THUNDER BAY – Leaders Ledger – The NDP have once again backed-out of a budget deal with our government. Teaming up with Tim Hudak’s PCs, Andrea Horwath and the NDP are now threatening to plunge all of us into a $150 million election–less than a year after the last one.
We need to focus on creating jobs and protecting the gains we’ve made in education and health care. We need to move forward towards a balanced budget so we can maintain our funding for these priorities in the long-run. An election would put that all on hold. What’s potentially worse, the NDP’s partners, the PCs, have made it clear they plan to make massive cuts to public spending.
The PCs were no friends of the North the last time they were in government. They cut health care and education funding, closed government offices throughout the North, slashed public sector jobs, turned-off the tap on mass transit funding which meant jobs at our Bombardier plant, they downloaded costs on to the municipalities and provincial infrastructure funding dried up.
Tim Hudak has been clear: he wants to return to these types of policies. That means an election would put at risk future Bombardier contracts, the coal plant conversions, our new Long-Term Care facility, funding for Northern Highways, massive public sector cuts–and the list goes on. This is what’s at stake.
It is my hope that the NDP will do what’s right for Thunder Bay and the North—and keep their promise to support the compromise budget we all agreed to.
Bill Mauro MP