MPPs heading back to Queen’s Park for fall session
Politicians will be busy debating labour changes — including the push toward a $15 minimum wage — policing reforms, the new pharmacare program, electricity pricing, and other issues.

TheStar.com
Sept. 6, 2017
Robert Benzie

Summer is not just over for students — MPPs will be back at their desks too.

With a provincial election exactly nine months away, the penultimate session of the legislature before the campaign promises to be a hot one.

Starting Monday, politicians will be busy debating labour changes — including the push toward a $15 minimum wage — policing reforms, the new pharmacare program, electricity pricing, and a slew of other issues.

Premier Kathleen Wynne, who trails Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath in polls, insisted Wednesday that boosting her own political fortunes is not a priority this fall.

“It’s not about my personal popularity,” Wynne told CBC Radio’s Matt Galloway on Metro MorningMetro Morning.

“It’s about whether kids have access to education. It’s about whether seniors are getting the care that they need. It’s about . . . starting in January, every child from 0 to their 25th birthday will have access to free medication,” she said.

Speaking to reporters later in the day at Lawrence Park Collegiate Institute, where she announced plans to revamp the school curriculum to improve student achievement, Wynne heralded the importance of labour laws that will raise the $11.40-an-hour minimum wage to $14 in January and $15 in 2019.

“My job is to implement our plan to make sure that we do everything we can to make this a fair place to live,” the premier said.

At a caucus retreat in Chatham, Horwath said “Kathleen Wynne has let people down — she’s been showing people that she’s in it for herself and her party.”

Horwath also took a swipe at the Tories, predicting that if they win the next election they would cut and privatize as their predecessors at Queen’s Park and in Ottawa have done.

“With Brown offering only more cuts, only New Democrats have a plan to improve public services and put people at the heart of government,” she said.

Tory deputy leader Steve Clark said his party “will be hitting the ground running in the legislature next week, holding the government accountable for Ontario’s hydro crisis, cuts to front-line health care services, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs.”

But Clark warned that “Premier Wynne will be absent or distracted, preparing to testify in a court trial involving her most senior operatives.”

That’s a reference to the Sudbury byelection bribery trial beginning Thursday. Wynne will testify next Wednesday.

Her former deputy chief of staff, Patricia Sorbara, and Sudbury Liberal activist Gerry Lougheed face Elections Act charges related to a February 2005 byelection. They deny any wrongdoing.

Next Monday in Toronto, a separate trial of two top aides to former premier Dalton McGuinty will begin in an Old City Hall courtroom.

David Livingston, McGuinty’s last chief of staff in 2013, and deputy chief Laura Miller are accused of breach of trust, mischief in relation to data, and misuse of a computer system. They maintain they did nothing wrong.

McGuinty, who co-operated with police in that probe, was not under investigation.