Provincial Election Questionnaire Response

City of London Candidate Questionnaire

General Provincial Election

June 12, 2014

Jeff Yurek, Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, Elgin-Middlesex-London

Background

London has been hit hard by the economic downturn and the City is doing its part to invest in jobs to help revitalization the region. London is determined to recover, to leverage its strengths and proven economic development strategies to create new jobs, to grow the economy and to successfully rebuild its historic strength as a regional hub of economic activity. What is needed now more than ever is increased intergovernmental cooperation to achieve success. The City is calling on all parties in this election to support job creation initiatives; enhanced fiscal sustainability through continued uploads and other policy changes; long-term strategic infrastructure investments in transit and transportation to attract investment and programs for those still struggling from the economic downturn. Intergovernmental cooperation is needed so that London can revitalize, regain and renew.

Fostering Job Creation

1. How will you and your Party work with municipalities to create jobs and support local economic development initiatives?

Our Million Jobs Plan stimulates job creation by replacing corporate welfare programs that benefit only a few firms with a business tax reduction that treats all businesses equally. We will reduce Ontario’s business taxes by 30%-making them the lowest in North America. We can afford to lower taxes for all employees by ending the confusing array of government handouts that favour well-connected businesses and cost taxpayers up to $2B per year. For example, the Liberals have sunk millions into Kellogg, a company that made $2B in operating profits last year. In 2007, the Liberal government gave Kellogg $2.4 M to buy processing and packaging equipment. A year later the government awarded Kellogg a $9.7M low-interest loan. Last December 2013, Kellogg said it is closing the plant that employs 565 people in London.

We have a responsibility to live within our means. We will balance the budget in 2 years. Ontario’s debt has gone from $139 B in 2003 to $289 B in 2014. As we get deeper into the debt spiral, the outlook gets even worse because investors and credit rating agencies start to associate a greater risk to our debt, meaning we have to pay higher premiums in order to borrow money. All three major credit rating agencies have downgraded Ontario’s debt.

We will do away with the cumbersome and outdated apprenticeship rules that limit the number of job opportunities in the trades, like other provinces who have already modernized their apprenticeship ratios. We will abolish the College of Trades, a new bureaucracy that creates red tape and new taxes that actually stop many young people from joining the trades and we will make trades training a community college course like any other.

Ontario has a total of 386,251 regulations that cost businesses about $11B annually. The Ontario PCs would eliminate rules and regulations that don’t benefit consumers, workers or employers, reducing the total by 1/3 over 3 years. Government regulation should focus on priorities like environment, public safety and consumer protection

Our Million Jobs Plan will reduce the number of ministries, and the number of cabinet positions at the swearing in of a PC government from 27 to 16. A smaller, more effective government starts at the top. In addition, we will ties ministers’ salaries to specific performance goals, like reducing the regulatory burden on job creators and meeting budget targets.

Abolish the practice of closed tendering across Ontario’s municipal; and broader public sector.

We will expand Free Trade with other provinces whose archaic barriers are costing Ontario $6B a year in economic activity.

1.1 How will you and your Party work with the City of London to support London’s “Unlocking Prosperity” initiative to service new industrial (employment) lands in the vicinity of London’s Highway 401 corridor?

What’s needed is a new partnership between cities and the provincial government, one with big ambitions, shared goals and specific, measurable plans to achieve real results. The Ontario government has adequate revenue to provide the services that people in London expect, but every year the province’s ability to do so is weakened by growing debt and interest payments that increase by hundreds of millions of dollars each year. We need to protect taxpayers through competitive, open tendering and public-private partnerships that bring in public sector money and cost controls so that projects finish on time and on budget. The province should remove any barrier to commercializing the land along the transportation corridors for commercial and residential real estate.

1.2 How will you and your Party ensure that energy prices in Ontario are competitive with the North American market?

Industrial energy rates have gone from below the U.S. average to the highest in North America, which is driving business out of the province. The Green Energy Act will add $681 a year to household energy bills. Our Million Jobs Plan will stop expensive and counterproductive power subsidies, pare down costly and unnecessary bureaucracy, import hydro from Quebec and other jurisdictions as required and take advantage of cheap and abundant natural gas. Ontario already has the highest energy prices for industry in North America, and higher prices are and will drive businesses out of Ontario. We will get electricity prices under control and reclaim one of Ontario’s traditional economic strengths, affordable energy.

The background documents and links listed below can be found on our website at www.london.ca/ontarioelection under the heading “Questions Posed to Candidates”. For background on jobs and local economic development initiatives, see City of London 2014 Ontario Pre-Budget Consultation: Unlocking Prosperity: Creating Jobs in London and Southwestern Ontario. For background on industrial lands see Industrial Land Development Strategy Brochure. For background on competitive Energy prices see City of London Energy brief.

Providing Municipal Governments Fiscal Room to Invest Locally

2. How will you and your Party support the scheduled uploading of funding from municipalities to the province as implemented through the Provincial-Municipal Fiscal and Service Delivery Review (PMFSDR) as a measure to restore the provincial-municipal financial imbalance in a fair and sustainable manner?

We will continue with the upload schedule for 2014 and work with our municipal partners on a plan to best facilitate this transition.

2.1 Will you and your Party commit to further upload service funding that more properly falls under provincial responsibility such as Public Health, Social Services and Land Ambulance?

We will reduced costs by merging and streamlining social assistance programs like Ontario Works and ODSP. We understand that the shared responsibility of social program costs has been a contentious issue. This change needs to be done in a way that does not negatively impact the municipal sector, which is grappling with its own fiscal challenges.

2.2 Recognizing that the current interest arbitration system for emergency services is broken and requires a complete overhaul, will you and your Party change the interest arbitration system in a way that favours the taxpayers, considers the economic health of the community in arbitration decisions and provides transparent and accountable decisions?

The Ontario PC Caucus brought forward the Ability to Pay Act that would have addressed these issues in a comprehensive way. Unfortunately, that legislation came to a grinding halt with the prorogation of the Legislature. Cities supported it because they realize that government can’t control its spending in the long run with out a better arbitration system.

Taxpayers deserve to know why they’re being asked to pay more for government compensation costs. Nor arbitrator should consider that the ability to tax gives government and infinite ability to pay. For all public sector cases, independent arbitrators should be required to issue written decisions within tight timelines that explain their reasoning. These decisions should be made public in a central, online location.

To ensure arbitration decisions reflect local economic and budgetary conditions, independent arbitrators should be required to compare the pay and benefits of the government workers with those in the privates sector in the same geographical area, not to other government workers in other parts of the province. Factors like the local unemployment rate, changes in the employer’s tax base or the fiscal mandate of the province should also be taken into account.

Salaries and benefits for government workers are the single biggest expense in the provincial budget. Ontario’s public sector workers earn 327 percent more than their counterparts in the private sector. We would implement a temporary 2-year pay freeze, by legislation, if necessary, that will apply to all public servants, including MPPs, senior civil servants, and the more than 4000 collective bargaining agreements across the entire public sector payroll as part of our comprehensive plan to control government spending. It would include the broadest possible definition of the public sector including all municipalities, hospitals and school boards.

183.1 Will you and your Party work to revise the Development Charges Act to remove barriers to full funding of growth related costs and to explicitly ensure that municipal taxpayers benefit from new sources of revenue?

Funds collected by cities through development charges should be transparent. Cities should be required to demonstrate that these funds have been used for their intended purpose. For new infrastructure projects receiving provincial funding, we should require that long-term plans are in place that will endure the infrastructure asset is properly maintained. This is the same principle that condo owners rely on to make sure their investments remain sound. Taxpayers shouldn’t expect any less when government invests their tax dollars in roads, sewers, bridges and transit.

Cities should decide for themselves where their future growth will go. The intensification demands of provincial planning policy should not override local decision-making

The background documents and links listed below can be found on our website at www.london.ca/ontarioelection under the heading “Questions Posed to Candidates”. For background on the Provincial-Municipal Fiscal and Service Delivery Review, see Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing as well as the City of London 2014 Ontario Pre-Budget Consultation: Unlocking Prosperity: Creating Jobs in London and Southwestern Ontario. For background on interest arbitration, see AMO’s policy on Interest Arbitration. For background on Development Charges, see the City of London Development Charges Brief.

Improving Economic Competitiveness by Investing in Strategic Infrastructure

3. What are you and your Party prepared to do to support and enhance sustained and long-term provincial and federal investment in municipal infrastructure?

The Ontario PCs will allow Ontario and Canadian pension plans to invest in government-owned business like the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCB0), Hydro One and Ontario Power Generation to raise the billions of dollars we need to improve and expand Ontario’s subways and highways. The pension plans of our teachers, municipal, energy and health care workers, for example, invest in businesses like these all over the world. The government should sell off its extra land and unused buildings and move some government departments and agencies out of downtown Toronto. We will use the money we raise to solve urban and rural Ontario’s pressing transportation needs through an Ontario Transportation Trust that will clearly show what money comes in and where it goes.

3.1 How will you and your Party ensure that the province commits to a fair distribution of provincial and federal infrastructure investments?

See below.

3.2 How will you and your Party support public transit? i.e. Do you and your Party support the continued dedication of Provincial Gas Tax funding for transit? Do you support the application of new revenue tools as outlined in the Metrolinx report to regions outside the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area?

See below

3.3 How will you or your Party work with London to support Bus Rapid Transit and London’s Transportation Master Plan?

We believe that transit expansion must be funded not with some kind of sin tax on driving but by re-examining the priorities within government’s existing budget. Fixing gridlock is a priority for us. Ontario already spends $12 B per year on capital projects so a fixed portion of existing, long-term capital funds should be earmarked for new transit priorities. The Ontario Transportation Trust will be set up and get funds from selling surplus lands and excess provincial buildings by moving government operations out of downtown Toronto.

We should raise additional funds for transportation infrastructure by encouraging Ontario and Canadian pension funds to invest in government-owned businesses. This partial ownership of pension funds would raise billions of dollars necessary to improve and expand subways, highways, light rail transit, roads, and

Bridges.

As the economy grows we propose to invest about $2B per year in breaking traffic gridlock. All of that money goes into the Ontario Transportation Trust and should be clearly identified along with the projects it supports. Money set aside for transportation should be used for transportation-no matter which party is in government. We must maximize private sector dollars in building stations-every station is a potential hub for development . To get the best deal for taxpayers, we should use competitive, open tenders for performance-based contracts. We will make a priority of reducing gridlock and we will do it without raising taxes.

Bridges.