PC leader lays out his 100-day plan

Hudak’s immediate goals include wage, hiring freezes, gas-plant scandal probe

Tory Leader Tim Hudak says he has a lot to cram into the first 100 days of a Progressive Conservative government, from freezing hiring and wages to calling for a judicial inquiry into the gas plants scandal.

“We will begin to deliver long-overdue change in the first 100 days in office,” Hudak told the Mississauga Board of Trade Friday.

“We can and we will act decisively to put Ontario on the path to job creation,” said Hudak, whose election platform calls for creating one million jobs over eight years.

Hudak said to begin with he would reduce his cabinet to 16 ministers from the current 27 under the Liberals and then make each one of them sign oath to Ontario that will bind them to a certain performance level or face having their pay docked.

And he said, “We will open the curtain at Queen’s Park and shine daylight on the secrecy and cover-ups that have been the Liberal operating procedure for too long.”

His to-do list would inclued, among other items:

Providing a full accounting of the province’s finances.

Winding down the Ontario College of Trades.

Calling a judicial inquiry into the gas plants scandal.

Freezing government hiring for non-essential posts, invoking a twoyear wage freeze and start the plan to cut 100,000 public sector jobs. Cutting corporate taxes. Meeting with western premiers to negotiate Ontario’s entry into an interprovincial free-trade zone. With files from Rob Ferguson