Ontario is interested in listening to the city about its proposed events centre.
Premier Dalton McGuinty, who made a brief stop in the city, touring both the Thunder Bay Regional Research Institute and the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, said the province plans to set aside plenty of money to help communities pay for infrastructure projects over the next several years.
While he made no promises, he said he’d listen to whatever the city has to say, should a proposal eventually come forward.
“I don’t believe that we in our government have received a formal proposal from the city yet, but were we to receive such a proposal, obviously we would have a responsibility to give that careful consideration,” McGuinty said.
“I can say that even in these difficult economic times, we will maintain in place a very active infrastructure plan. Our commitment is to invest about $35 billion over the course of the next three years, which is a very significant investment to lay the foundation for growth, prosperity and enhance the quality of life.”
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The city has already been rejected once by Ottawa under the P3 funding banner, but has been told to reapply for the next round, using the convention centre portion of the project as the basis for their federal government ask.
The project is expected to cost between $80 million and $100 million adn the ciity has said it will cover up to half the cost.
Responding to a question about the future of the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation, which some in the city have called into question after reading Don Drummond’s austerity report, McGuinty said northerners have little to fear.
Some critics of the Drummond Report, released last month, questioned whether the called for end to business support programs might also mean the death of the NOHFC and its annual $100-million budget.
McGuinty said not to worry.
“We remain strong champions of the fund. But in terms of the specifics of its future, I’ll leave that to the budget. But northerners have every reason to remain optimistic about the future of this fund.”
The premier also addressed the growing concern, in Northern Ontario in particular, surrounding the delisting of OxyContin, which is no longer being manufactured and will be replaced by a new painkiller, OxyNeo.
McGuinty admitted the drug is posing a challenge in Ontario, but is confident the replacement drug will both help those in need of it legitimately while keeping a powerful narcotic out of the hands of addicts. That's especially good news in this region, he added, with so many First Nations communities devastated by community-wide addiction.
"We want to work with our communiites, especially our First Nations to make sure that we get it right," he said. We know that withdrawal can be very difficult. There might be a desire on their part to resort to some other type of drug. That other drug might be addictive as well, so we have a responsibility to work together."
