MacLeod named treasury critic
High-profile job will see her dogging deputy premier on work with unions
As the provincial government nips and tucks and tries to hold the line on its spending, Nepean-Carleton MPP Lisa MacLeod’s job will be to explain how the Liberals are doing it wrong.
The newly re-elected Progressive Conservative got a high-profile job as the party’s critic for the provincial treasury board, itself a body given new prominence under Premier Kathleen Wynne when she named her cabinet. Deputy Premier Deb Matthews, Wynne’s closest lieutenant, was given responsibility for labour negotiations, the province’s Crown corporations, and (above all) meeting the difficult targets Wynne has set for eliminating a $12.5-billion deficit by 2017.
MacLeod got her new assignment — to dog Matthews in and out of the legislature and point out all the problems with her decisions — from interim party leader Jim Wilson on Friday afternoon.
MacLeod was the Tories’ energy critic under Tim Hudak, who resigned this week after leading the party to defeat in the June 12 elec- tion. That gave her a provincewide profile, attacking the Liberals on electricity prices, the Green Energy Act and rural wind farms.
If anything the job of treasury-board critic will be even bigger. Over four years, Matthews is likely to have numerous confrontations with public-sector unions to whom the government insists it can’t give raises.
Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli remains the Tories’ finance critic. Party spokeswoman Christine Bujold said a full list of critic assignments — which is likely to include other Eastern Ontario MPPs, since the Progressive Conservatives have 23 ministries to cover and 29 members to cover them — is due Sunday.
That’ll come after a key meeting of Tory party executives on Saturday, when they’ll decide how to conduct the race to succeed Hudak permanently and when a convention will decide on a new leader. The only declared candidate so far is Whitby- Oshawa MPP Christine Elliott, but MacLeod and Fedeli are rumoured to be interested in the job, too.