Tory leader says he’ll uphold LRT pledge
If elected premier, Queen’s Park will respect council’s decision: Brown
MILLGROVE — Ontario Opposition Leader Patrick Brown says he’ll carry through with a provincial pledge of $1 billion for Hamilton’s controversial light rail transit system.
The Conservative party leader told a Flamborough Chamber of Commerce meeting Monday if he’s elected premier, he’ll back whatever transit option Hamilton councillors decide they want.
“Being a former city councillor myself, I respect the autonomy of municipalities. If the mayor and council have stated very clearly that’s where they want the provincial partnership to be, that’s where it will be,” he said after a wideranging question-and-answer session with local businesspeople. “If the mayor and council say they want that investment to be in another transportation project, then it’s incumbent on the province to be flexible on what is the clear municipal will.”
Brown was elected party leader after a disastrous 2014 election that saw the Tories lose nine seats while Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals gained 10 seats and formed a majority government.
He told Monday’s audience that election was lost after a “foolish” promise by then-leader Tim Hudak to fire 100,000 public servants as a first step to creating 1 million new jobs.
“The issue that defined my predecessor in the last election was 100,000 job cuts. I think any other issue that might have merited attention got lost in a promise and a commitment that was foolish,” Brown said.
“That dominated the election. Frankly, there were good issues that Tim raised on special education but the election became a referendum on 100,000 job cuts — just like the previous election was a referendum on faith-based education.”
(Former Conservative leader John Tory is widely believed to have lost the 2007 election after promising full public funding for faith-based schools.)
Brown said while the Conservative platform is still being hammered together, economic issues will be high on his list — especially questions of red-tape reduction, infrastructure funding, energy pricing and education.
On all of those files, he said, Wynne’s record has been a failure: energy prices are soaring because Ontario buys electricity it doesn’t need and then sells it at a discount; the Liberals have made more than $130 billion in infrastructure promises but have no plan to pay for them; they have no clear plan to reduce 380,000 regulations Brown claims choke business growth and pour money into educating teachers and political science majors the economy doesn’t need.
“We don’t need more political science graduates, we need more engineers,” he said.
“What incentives do we have that encourage people into a career path that will lead to a job? It’s almost criminal that we have subsidized 9,000 teaching diplomas when we know only 5,000 of them are going to get jobs,” he added. “It’s inherently dishonest to tell young people this investment of time and money is going to lead to employment in their area. There is a lot we need to do to evolve our education system to meet the needs of today.”
Brown also promised transit investments to ease traffic congestion and said he’d be willing to look again at the idea of a mid-peninsula highway from Fort Erie to the 403 near Hamilton airport. The idea has long been a battle line between business and environmental groups and was shelved by a previous Liberal government.
“That idea might make sense and is something our party would look at very closely,” he said.
With that program, Brown added, he’s confident the Tories can take back the Ancaster-DundasFlamborough riding they lost more than 15 years ago over the issue of municipal amalgamation.
“I definitely think this is a riding we can win in two years. Our own tracking suggests that. We’re going to invest time here because this is one of the ridings that we fully intend on picking up.”