CORNWALL, Ontario – In an interview with Seaway News incumbent Stormont, Dundas and South Glengarry MPP Jim McDonell of the Progressive Conservative Party gave his vision for the future of the riding and his stance on a few of the major issues of the 2018 campaign.
Education is an issue for a large riding like SD&SG with many small towns dotted across its landscape. In 2016, both the public and Catholic English language school boards in the region went through their Pupil Accommodation Reviews. Early drafts of those plans would have seen schools in the riding like Char-Lan, Seaway District, CCVS and others closed and consolidated.
As the representative for SD&SG, Jim McDonell said he tabled two bills in the legislature to address the school closure issue, but both died after the legislature was prorogued.
McDonell said that he wanted to see better funding for rural education. He responded to the Ontario NDP’s plan to have a one-year moratorium on school closures as a band aid solution.
“Moratoriums are easy,” he said. “You really have to look at how we are providing education.”
McDonell also responded to another NDP plan. The Ontario NDP want to see Hydro One entirely publicly owned again, but McDonell said that that plan is not as easy as it sounds.
“I think we favoured keeping it public,” he said. “But now the Liberals have made it really hard to buy back.”
McDonell said that his party, if elected would dismantle the Green Energy Act, which was supported by the Ontario NDP, and McDonell says that the act is forcing Hydro to buy electricity at much higher prices.
“We will reverse any policy that we can that forces Hydro to buy power at higher prices,” he said.
McDonell also said that locally, his party wanted to create a better environment for municipalities by providing better sources of municipal funding.
“We need to get rid of a lot of red tape,” he said. “And we need to look to providing more sources of income.”
He pointed to the Liberal government’s decision to remove $24 million a year for four years from the Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund as an example of the Province increasing the provincial burden.
“There is an issue of having an open and transparent government,” he said. “You need to see where the money is going.”
In SD&SG McDonell is competing against Marc Benoit of the Ontario NDP and Heather Megill of the Ontario Liberal Party.
The province heads to the polls on Thursday, June 7.
