Wynne ‘more optimistic’ after talk with Harper
Premier in Ottawa for Ring of Fire meeting, fundraiser
A year ago, Kathleen Wynne attended a pricey Liberal party gala at the Ottawa Convention Centre as an enthusiastic leadership hopeful, determined to succeed the man of the hour, former premier Dalton McGuinty.
On Thursday night, she was back, but this time, all eyes were on her as she rhymed off highlights from her first 10 months as premier.
They included forging labour peace with public school teachers, launching a new strategy for the horse racing industry and getting a budget through the provincial legislature.
“We showed Ontario what was possible and I plan to keep doing that,” Wynne told several hundred guests at the $600-a-plate fundraiser.
The 20-minute speech capped the premier’s busy day in Ottawa, which also saw her meet Prime Minister Stephen Harper to discuss the Ring of Fire mineral development project and tour a renovated library at Carleton University. The province contributed $16 million to the project.
“We don’t agree on everything, but certainly it was a good opportunity for me to engage with him,” she said of her meeting with Harper.
Wynne said she emerged “more optimistic than I was before I went in,” suggesting some progress was made during the half-hour meeting.
“He and I agree that this is a very important project. He and I also agree that infrastructure is critical, and infrastructure that will be directly associated with the development of the Ring of Fire but also infrastructure that will serve the needs of First Nations and other communities in the north.”
Speaking to reporters before she met the prime minister, Wynne said the Ring of Fire was too good an opportunity to pass up.
“Make no mistake, we are going to work to develop the Ring of Fire,” she said, suggesting Ontario would work with private industry, First Nations and northern municipalities to make it happen.
“We are going to move ahead but it will be difficult if the federal government does not take part.”
The province says the total capital investment for industrial infrastructure in the Ring of Fire could be in the range of $800 million to $1 billion, with an additional $1.25 billion needed to connect Ring of Fire communities to all-season access roads.
“Ontario is prepared to make a substantial contribution to the infrastructure needed to access the resource,” Wynne wrote Harper in a Nov. 8 letter. “We expect your government to come to the table with matching funds.”
But she played down that dollar demand Thursday, saying it’s important all sides work together.
“I’m not coming with a list of demands,” the premier said before the meeting.
Complicating matters is the recent decision by U.S. mining company Cliffs Natural Resources to suspend its operations in the area — a development that has prompted heaps of criticism from Ontario’s opposition parties.
Meanwhile, Conservative MP Greg Rickford criticized the provincial government for not consulting with its federal counterpart before announcing plans to create a development corporation in the north last month.
“We’ve had a couple of announcements that we weren’t apprised of that I felt, if they were going to implicate us, we would have liked to know a little bit more about. That is not consistent with the nature of the relationship that I’ve had with (Ontario Northern Development and Mines) Minister Michael Gravelle in the past,” he said. WITH FILES FROM THE CANADIAN PRESS