The Green Party of Ontario became the second party to issue a Northern Ontario platform for the Feb. 27 provincial election, issuing a six-point plan on Friday.
This follows a Sudbury campaign stop by Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles the previous day, during which she launched her party’s Northern Ontario platform.
“The Ford government has abandoned Northern Ontario,” Green Party of Ontario leader Mike Schreiner said in a media release.
“He’s more focused on spending billions on tunnels, wasteful highways and a mega spa in downtown Toronto than addressing the real housing, healthcare and affordability challenges facing Northern communities.”
Called “The Green Plan for Northern Ontario,” the Northern platform’s six pillars are as follows:
- Tackle the housing and homelessness crises in Northern communities
- Build 36,000 affordable homes in North Ontario, including 6,000 supportive homes with wraparound mental health and addiction supports, 15,000 affordable community rental homes and 15,000 Indigenous-led affordable homes. This is part of their plan to build 332,000 affordable homes across the province.
- Remove fees and taxes for first-time home buyers and increase the availability of new homes by legalizing fourplexes.
- Upload community housing and shelter costs to the province that had been “unfairly downloaded” onto municipalities.
- Address the crisis of caring
- Recruit 350 doctors specifically for the North, as part of their plan to recruit 3,500 doctors to Ontario so everyone has access to a family doctor in the next three to four years.
- Provide equal pay for nurses, doctors and PSWs across all communities and healthcare settings in Ontario to increase capacity in Northern communities, and compensate healthcare workers fairly for their travel to treat patients at home. Increase support and incentives to attract healthcare professionals to the North.
- Take a care and evidence-based approach in expanding access to supervised consumption and treatment sites, including those closed by the Ford government, prioritizing areas with high drug poisoning deaths in the North
- Reduce mental health wait times to 30 days or less for children and youth by immediately making investments in frontline mental health workers.
- Protect the places we love
- Work with the federal 2030 Nature Strategy to protect and restore biodiversity in Canada by protecting 30 per cent of Ontario’s land and waters by 2030 and restoring 30 per cent of all degraded ecosystems, in addition to the targets in the Ontario Biodiversity Strategy.
- Support the Mushkegowuk National Marine Conservation Area proposal to protect the Hudson Bay Lowlands to conserve biodiversity and mitigate climate change while supporting Indigenous self-determination.
- Amend provincial legislation to recognize and permanently protect Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas and appropriately support other Indigenous-led conservation and climate efforts.
- Make the North more affordable
- Cut taxes for people making under $65,000 and families under $100,000, saving people up to $1,700 per year.
- Provide a free heat pump for households with incomes under $100,000 and zero interest loans for households over $100,000.
- Implement a $10,000 grant and upfront zero interest loan programs for energy efficiency building retrofits for households with incomes under $100,000 and zero interest loan program for energy efficiency building retrofits for households with incomes over $100,000.
- Create good, green jobs
- Increase sustainable, circular and Indigenous-led access to critical minerals and metals while fully adhering to principles of UNDRIP.
- Maximize job and economic benefits for Northern communities by removing barriers to mass timber building and increasing investments in the Forest Biomass Program.
- Raise the minimum wage to $20, rising with inflation.
- Improve transportation and infrastructure
- Implement a $2 billion per year Climate Adaptation Fund to help municipalities make their infrastructure more resilient to the impacts of climate change.
- Create a new long-term and predictable municipal funding transfer for rural and Northern communities to improve local roads, bridges and other infrastructure.
- Improve road safety and make improvements to Highways 11 and 17.
For all local and provincial election news, please visit Sudbury.com’s Ontario Votes election page.