Brown slams Liberals on Northern policyNORTHWEST

THUNDER BAY - Using a local mill as his backdrop, Ontario’s Tory leader blamed a decade of Liberal policy for shedding jobs in Northern Ontario.

Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown returned to Thunder Bay Thursday for the 70th annual Northern Ontario Municipal Association conference.

Prior to the conference, the opposition leader started the day with a tour of Resolute Forest with regard to making the company stronger.

During an interview Brown explained since 2005 the Liberal government policy has helped wipe out the forestry sector with a job loss of 50 per cent.

Resolute Forest Products currently has 500 employees compared to when they had once peaked at 1,500.

“I want to make sure that we retain the existing jobs,” Brown said. “I think it’s important that we have a government in Ontario that takes pride in the forestry sector that takes pride in companies like Resolute Forest.”

Natural Resources and Forestry Minister Bill Mauro responded to Brown’s comments later in the afternoon and said the opposition leader was “wrong.”

Mauro said the forestry downturn is attributed to the collapse of the United States housing market, local competition and the rise of Canadian dollar that surged from 73 cents to around $1.10 US.

For every cent the Canadian dollar rose, it cost forestry companies nearly $4 million.

“If you go across the country and look at the major forest product jurisdictions in Canada you’ll see the top three – (British Columbia), Ontario and Quebec – B.C. and Quebec lost as many or more jobs as Ontario when the 2005 downturn started to occur,” Mauro said.

“I would ask Mr. Brown, how do you explain what happened in B.C. and in Quebec and then ask him how was Ontario different? The answer is we weren’t.”

Despite direct accusations and strong language, Brown was light on specifics as to what policy led to the sector’s downturn. He also failed to mention any PC policy that may have prevented the job losses he attributed to Liberal government rule.

“My solution for employment is one you cut red tape,” he said. “The regulatory burden is intense in Ontario. You look at the terms of reference on the Ring of Fire that’s supposed to take five days but takes three years, the government needs to be more agile.

“You need to build infrastructure to product to market place and you need to have affordable energy prices.”

Brown isn’t the only provincial politician in town for this year’s NOMA conference. The annual meeting will also feature visits from a number of provincial ministers, critics and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.

Once Brown arrives to the conference, he said his goal will be to provide a voice for Northern Ontario at Queen’s Park.

“I think there’s frustration with municipal leaders,” said Brown, explaining that elected officials in Northern Ontario have been defending the governments’ decisions that have hurt Northern Ontario.

“The anti-SLAPP vote, for example, where at Queen’s Park the government was limiting the ability for companies like Resolute to seek defamation to say that campaigns attempted to kill northern jobs.”

The PC leader didn’t arrive in Thunder Bay to talk exclusively about forestry. Even though he held a media conference at a mill, Brown had no central focus for NOMA and instead brought with him a laundry list of issues he hopes to touch on.

Those issues include the Ring of Fire, health care, infrastructure of the district jail and jobs.

--With files from Matt Vis