PC Leader Hudak commits to Vaughan hospital project

Yorkregion.com
May 9, 2014
By Adam Martin-Robbins

The Progressive Conservatives are committed to slashing government spending, but that doesn’t mean scrapping major infrastructure projects such as the Vaughan hospital, Tory leader Tim Hudak said during a campaign stop here Thursday morning.

But Liberals say Mr. Hudak’s math doesn’t add up and the $1-billion hospital, for which construction is slated to begin next year, would be at risk under a Tory government.

“I’m tired of the Liberals making promises, year in and year out, that they’re going to build a hospital when nothing happens,” said Mr. Hudak while visiting an Arista Homes construction site, with local PC candidate Peter Meffe.

“If you want to see the Vaughan hospital get built, look for a party who’s going to freeze wages (for provincial government employees) so we can free money up and get people working again in our province so we have the capacity to put a hospital in Vaughan.”

Mr. Hudak pledged to cut government spending, not raise taxes, in order to balance the budget books.

Finance Minister Charles Sousa, who showed up just outside the construction site with Vaughan Liberal candidate Steven Del Duca, said the Conservative‘s fiscal plan is unrealistic and would put the hospital in jeopardy.

"We have actually cut year over year. We have beaten our targets five years running and we’re the leanest government in Canada because of the initiatives that we’ve taken,” Mr. Sousa said. “Mr. Hudak is now going to say to you that he’s going to be able to cut even more, putting at risk the very hospitals, the very things that are important to these communities, and balance the books more quickly? ... These extreme views that are coming to us from the right and the left are harmful and reckless to our (economic) recovery.”

Mr. Hudak was in Vaughan to tout the first plank in the Tory’s Million Jobs Plan.

His speech, made inside a home under construction, focused on ”eliminating restrictions on the skilled trades,” which he says will create 200,000 jobs over four years.

He said a PC government would change rules, put in place in decades ago, to allow more young people to train as apprentices so they can land good-paying jobs - as masons, plumbers or electricians - while helping address the shortage of workers in the skilled trades.

“Allow each journeyman to mentor and train an apprentice, one each, that’ll help create 200,000 positions,” he said, noting that under the current rules many trades have ratios of four or five journeymen to one apprentice, which greatly limits the number of apprenticeship positions.

Mr. Hudak also vowed to abolish the College of Trades, established by the Liberals as a self-regulating body for the skilled trades, and put the focus on trades training through community colleges.

“I think the College of Trades has to go,” he said, addressing a group made up of construction workers, Arista Homes president Michael DeGasperis and East Woodbridge Councillor Rosanna DeFrancesca, among others.

“I think it’s nothing more than a tax grab. It’s a new bureaucracy that’s going to stand in the way of (a skilled trades worker) getting a good job.”

Mr. Del Duca responded by saying the Liberals have taken “a very aggressive approach since 2003 to invest heavily in massively expanding the number of apprentices that we have in the province of Ontario.”

He said the College of Trades was set up, in part, as a signal of trust that the trades sector is mature and responsible enough to govern itself, just as doctors, lawyers and teachers do.

He added that, to date, the College of Trades has reduced the required ratio of journeymen to apprentices in 14 trades, of which there more than 150.

“Ratios are dropping, but most importantly it’s the trades themselves because this is a self-governing exercise, that actually have the final word with respect to whether or not ratios should drop,” he said. “Who knows better, a politician at Queen’s Park or the people who are actually working in the trades? Our government has faith in those who work in the trades, it appears Mr. Hudak does not.”

Mr. Sousa said Mr. Hudak’s real aim is to swell the labour force in order to drive down wages and increase profits for wealthy business owners.

“His jobs plan is more about a millionaire’s plan,” said Mr. Sousa, peering out toward the million-dollar homes in the neighbourhood next to the site where Mr. Hudak made his announcement. “It’s about cutting wages. ... It’s about hurting the middle class in order for him to provide for some others.”

Voters go to the polls across the province June 12.