With the deadline to vote in this year’s provincial election tomorrow, we finish up our series of questions with the candidates asking about our economic future. We ask:

What is your assessment of the region’s economic health and how will you impact that to create a more prosperous future for all northwestern residents?

Sarah Campbell

New Democratic Party

Sarah Campbell, NDP

Right now the economic health in our region is poor, due to the mismanagement of the economy by successive Liberal and Conservative governments.

It is not right that pulp produced in Dryden, or minerals mined in our region, can be shipped elsewhere to be processed. It’s shameful that Dryden had to turn away a value-added forest products producer who was planning to bring 30-100 jobs to our community, because he could not secure the wood allocation he needed.

Unlike the Conservatives and Liberals, the NDP has a plan to right these wrongs to create a more prosperous future for all of our communities.

The first step is to bring hydro prices under control. The NDP is committed to the price of hydro reflecting the cost of generation, which is less than three cents, as opposed to the nearly ten cents we are currently paying. This will lower the cost of production for companies in our region and allow value-added products to be once again produced here.

Step two is requiring that minerals extracted in the north are processed in the north. The NDP will do just that. Our resources can provide northerners with well-paying jobs. We need to keep these jobs here in our communities, rather than having them go to other provinces or U.S. states.

The third step is fixing our wood tenure rules, by giving communities and not companies control over the wood supply. This would allow our communities to use their resources to attract new employers, rather than watch these resources get shipped out of town. Had the NDP’s proposed wood tenure rules been in place, Dryden would have an Aspenware plant in its Norwill Industrial Park.

For the NDP creating jobs is the top priority and our plan will do that.

Rod McKay

Progressive Conservative

Rod McKay Photo courtesy Fort Frances Times

Our region has pockets of strong economic health and in Red Lake mining is doing well.

However in many other areas, the economy is faltering or has completely crashed. For example, resource-based communities that rely on the forestry industry to provide stable and secure employment, have been decimated by the McGuinty government’s policies towards resource development. People who have lived in towns for years have been forced to leave their communities and their families and move to other provinces to find employment because jobs at sawmills have been lost. And, while those forestry companies were struggling and shutting down, the McGuinty government had no hesitation to bail out and assist southern Ontario automobile industries, providing loans and support to prop up and ultimately protect jobs in southern Ontario; all the while, the McGuinty government completely and utterly ignored the pleas of Northerners to help with the crash of the forest industry. Northern Ontario was once the economic engine for the rest of Ontario. We provided a skilled, trained workforce that worked in resource industries, including mining and forestry, as well as a strong service sector, including tourism.

A Tim Hudak Progressive Conservative government would return the north to a strong economic position by reducing taxes on families and workers, providing more affordable energy prices and expanding college and university places – these are all critical aspects of a climate that creates good jobs. A Tim Hudak government will introduce a Small Business Bill of Rights and reduce red tape by 30%; a Tim Hudak government would provide fast, efficient, customer-friendly service standards for small business to deal with government and provide more opportunities to bid on government contracts.

All of these strategies will go a long way to putting Northern Ontario on the map again as an economic leader and provider of good jobs for the citizens who live and make their homes in northern Ontario.

Anthony Leek

Liberal Party of Ontario

Anthony Leek

Over the last 25 years we have been fairly stagnant overall while we have had minor lips of growth in certain areas we have not been able to enjoy an overall impact of economic expansion. We need to make sure that we maintain what we currently have and find ways to develop strong sustainable growth in the long term. We start this by getting infrastructure investment into communities that need to prepare for the potential mining projects in the region and to maintain our current economic situation. It comes down to making sure we have the proper avenues for investment, have private industry work together with municipal and provincial government and prepare an educated workforce that will help us to experience positive change. I am dedicated to finding ways that will benefit our hardworking families and our businesses. The liberal Northern platform gives us realistic and achievable goals.

In order for us to do the best for our children we must move forward together.

Charmaine Romaniuk

Northern Ontario Heritage Party

Charmaine Romaniuk, Northern Ontario Heritage Party

They say, leave it up to experts, well in my mind the experts are the people that are closest to our natural resources and they should be the people that make the decisions on how our natural resources are developed in Northern Ontario.  We have a negative economic growth in Northern Ontario because of the government’s economic policies are not working.

Example, the policy in place ships our natural resources out of Northern Ontario in the raw form.  The question is how much better off would we be in Northern Ontario if $2 trillion of our natural resources reserves were processed- refined - smelted and manufactured products right here in Northern Ontario? I support value added manufacturing in Northern Ontario which will create jobs. Jobs, that is what we need to ensure that we are more prosperous for future generations.

Ed’s note: Green Party candidate Jojo Holliday did not submit a response for the final question of the series.

Answers compiled by Jennifer Thurbide Northern Sun News