THUNDER BAY – Ontario’s Green Party has unveiled its Northern Ontario platform, as it looks to pick up more support in the region ahead of the June 2 provincial election.
At a press event held in North Bay on Tuesday hours before the city hosts the first of four leaders’ debates, long-time Green leader Mike Schreiner said the natural beauty of the north is accompanied by too many challenges in accessing essentials like health care, housing, mental health and addictions services, internet, and transportation.
The leaders’ debate, which will include a regional focus, will be live-streamed online beginning at 1 p.m. Tuesday.
The Guelph MPP emphasized his party’s vision to support more sustainable mining and forestry in the north, expand partnerships and resource sharing with First Nations and municipalities, and confront the opioid crisis.
The party released a document outlining those priorities and others relevant to Northern Ontario on Tuesday.
It includes commitments to build thousands of affordable homes in the north, make broadband an essential service, double the Northern and Rural Recruitment and Retention Initiative and the Northern Physicians Retention Initiative to recruit 230 doctors and specialists to the north, and spend $1 billion to support First Nations in establishing Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas.
The party has identified a handful of ridings in the Muskoka and Toronto areas where it believes it has a chance of electing a second MPP to join Schreiner at Queens’ Park.
The Greens have struggled to find a foothold in the northwest, however, with candidates receiving under 3 per cent of the vote in Thunder Bay’s two ridings in 2018.
“We know that we have work to do in the north,” Schreiner acknowledged, “but we’re incredibly excited.”
“Today will be a historic day – it’ll be the first time that a fourth party has participated in a leaders’ debate [in Ontario], and for many northerners, it’ll be the first opportunity they’ll have to see what the Green Party’s vision is, and how connected that vision is to northern values.”
His party’s vision for provincial prosperity is focused on transforming – not restraining – the northern resource economy for the 21st century, he added.
“I’ll speak directly to any southern environmentalist who’s watching right now, that we can develop critical and rare earth mining in the north in a way that’s environmentally sustainable, that advances the reconciliation process, and helps Ontario to be a global leader in the new climate economy,” he said. “When we think of things like renewable energy, battery storage, electric vehicles – those metals and minerals have to come from somewhere, and they’re abundant in Northern Ontario.”
The party’s platform promises to “increase sustainable, circular, and Indigenous-led access to critical minerals and metals while fully adhering to principles of UNDRIP,” the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Addressing the transition to electric vehicles, Schreiner acknowledged northern winters will shorten the vehicles’ range, but argued with proper investments in charging infrastructure, there’s no reason the north should lag behind in electrification.
Schreiner also touched on the crisis at Laurentian University that prompted the Northern Ontario School of Medicine’s move to independence, saying no provincial government should ever again allow a public university to go bankrupt, pointing to lost jobs and academic programs.
The party’s focus on combating climate change is also key for the north, Schreiner said, noting the escalating threat of forest fires, which has been linked to climate change, forced six Northern Ontario First Nations to evacuate their communities last year.
The party has promised to release a fully-costed platform on Thursday, which Schreiner pledged would be free of “election gimmicks” he said other parties have offered, and which he said cost the provincial treasury billions of dollars.
The NDP released its northern platform last week. Premier Doug Ford, meanwhile, became the first leader to visit the northwest with a stop last week in Thunder Bay.
