Tories pledge to build roads, restore rail in province’s north
NDP leader says Ford made same vow last election
Doug Ford was in Timmins talking roads and railways, and Andrea Horwath celebrated Mother’s Day in Cambridge with local candidates and their families before heading to Sudbury.
Meanwhile, Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner stayed closed to home with events in his Guelph riding.
Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca took a personal day.
Up north, Ford announced that if re-elected, the Progressive Conservatives would spend $74 million to rebuild the crumbling Highway 101 and another $75 million to restart Northlander train service, two measures that were part of his government’s budget released in late April before the election campaign began.
“We are saying yes to connecting Timmins, saying yes to doing roads and rail for northeastern Ontario,” Ford said at a morning campaign event in the riding the PCs hope to wrestle away from the NDP.
He said the former Liberal government “derailed the Northlander … (and) cut this community off from the rest of the province.”
But Horwath accused Ford of saying the same thing in the last election, and not delivering.
“Ford promised to bring back the Northlander in the last campaign ... it’s not back,” she told reporters. “It was a broken promise. But northerners know that New Democrats have been fighting — we fought against the Liberal decision to shut the Northlander down and our MPPs have been vigorously pushing to try to get the Northlander reinstated again.”
She said the loss of the rail service not only impacted locals, but businesses and tourism as well.
The Tories are hoping to nab the Timmins riding on June 2 with high-profile candidate and Timmins Mayor George Pirie, who has temporarily stepped away from his municipal duties.
Pirie is running against popular NDP incumbent Gilles Bisson, who has been an area MPP since 1990.
The 21-kilometre Highway 101 is considered among the worst in the province, and heavily used by locals and mining and forestry vehicles, and Ford said it is in rough shape with “crater-sized potholes.”
The PCs are promising to resume the Northlander trains that will provide a direct link to the southern end of the province and will also extend service to Cochrane.
Horwath was in Ayr, in the Cambridge area, to celebrate Mother’s Day with local incumbents MPPs Catherine Fife (Waterloo) and Laura Mae Lindo (Kitchener Centre) as well as candidates Marjorie Knight (Cambridge), Karen Meissner (Kitchener-Conestoga) and Joanne Weston (Kitchener South-Hespeler).
While Del Duca had no public events scheduled, his election team sent out a news release saying that Ford had not managed to make any progress on building roads to the mineral-rich Ring of Fire — northeast of Thunder Bay — while in office over the past four years.