Coteau pushing green agenda in race for Ontario Liberal leadership

Liberal MPP Michael Coteau is pushing a green agenda in his drive for the leadership of the party as it struggles to make a comeback in the 2022 provincial election.

The former cabinet minister released an economic plan Wednesday pledging to make stronger action on climate change a focus if he’s elected leader at a convention next March 7, with expanded electric vehicle charging networks, restoring rebates for zero-emission vehicles and a fund to fuel green start-up companies.

“A green Ontario is not only an environmental imperative, it is a massive building block for constructing our future prosperity,” Coteau (Don Valley

East) wrote in a 13-page paper that comes as Premier Doug Ford’s government is under fire for cancelling 750 renewable energy projects.

The plan also talks about raising the minimum wage to $15 and indexing it to inflation but doesn’t set a date. Any such move must be made “at a pace that is fair, reasonable, and workable for both workers and employees,” said Coteau, who would also move toward providing free public transit and a “large-scale” retrofit program to make public buildings more energy efficient.

Critics have questioned how transit can be properly funded without at least some contribution from the fare box at a time of tightened government finances.

The Liberal leadership race will come into tighter focus Thursday night as candidates gather in downtown Toronto at the Chestnut Convention Centre for what the party is billing as a “showcase” of its candidates, who will make brief speeches outlining their ideas and casting for support.

A total of six candidates have now committed to the $100,000 entry fee for the contest — which surpasses by one the number of Liberal MPPs who now have seats in the legislature.

Aside from Coteau, the hopefuls include former cabinet minister Steven Del Duca, who lost his Vaughan-Woodbridge riding to a Conservative in the June 2018 provincial election that reduced former premier

Kathleen Wynne’s party to seven MPPs, shy of official party status.

Two have since left to pursue other careers, although the Liberals are expected to hold their Ottawa-area ridings when Ford calls byelections in them.

Del Duca leads the candidates in fundraising, having amassed more than $227,000, leading some to consider him the frontrunner.

Also seeking the leadership are Scarborough-Guildwood MPP and former cabinet minister Mitzie Hunter, defeated 2018 London candidate Kate Graham, Alvin Tedjo, the runner-up in Oakville-Burlington North in last year’s election, and last-minute entrant Brenda Hollingsworth, an Ottawa personal injury lawyer and newcomer to Ontario politics. She is awaiting clearance from the party to proceed in the race. Tedjo made headlines a month ago for promising to end Catholic school funding with a proposal to merge the four public and separate school systems into English and French boards, saving an estimated $1.6 billion a year.

“For students, this change means the convenience of attending their closest school, less time on the bus and access to an optional religious curriculum,” Tedjo told the Star’s Robert Benzie.

Candidates have until Monday to sell $20 party memberships to activists who will elect delegates to the leadership convention in Mississauga from all 124 Ontario ridings.