The race is on. Before you accuse me of being asleep for the last week, I am referring to the race to be the first to capitalize on the job losses announced Thursday at Brampton’s Unilever plant.
Company officials announced Thursday afternoon the plant would be closing, sacrificing 280 jobs. Now, Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne, PC Leader Tim Hudak and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath must try use the bad news to win political points.
Horwath didn’t go to Brampton but she was quick to comment on the job losses.
At a campaign stop in London she went in front of the cameras to say the NDP “is concerned about the news from Unilever” and the jobs being lost in Brampton. She said the key is “to reward companies who create jobs in Ontario.” In London, she then continued to sell her job tax credit plan.
But even before Thursday’s job loss announcement, the opposition parties were out and about, promising nothing but job creation. Week one’s been all about the number one issue in the province; the economy and jobs. The Unilever announcement is yet another loss in the province’s manufacturing sector. In March there were 547,400 Ontarians out of work and more than 150,000 of them are young people under 24 looking for jobs.
Earlier in the day Horwath stopped by a factory in Niagara. Her promise was 170,000 “good paying jobs.” There were no details on how the NDP would fund a “Job Creation Tax credit that will pay 10 per cent of the salary of new employees to a maximum value of $5000 per job.”
Tim Hudak took his plan to create a million jobs (note that is over 8 years) to Vaughan in the morning for a photo op with a group of trades workers. He promised a PC government would create 200,000 new trade jobs. Hudak says one way to do that is to shut down the newly created College of Trades.
It’s important to note the Chair of the College of Trades, Ron Johnson, (who is a long-standing supporter of the PC) says Hudak’s idea to shut it down “stunned” him. The College has been up and running for a year and is managed and paid for by trades industries not the provincial government. Johnson, who is a former PC MPP and was a member of the Harris PC government in the 1990s with Hudak, says abolishing it will cost taxpayers “between 20 and 30 million dollars a year” and will force the government to hire at least 300 people.
The Liberal MPP from Vaughan, Steven Del Luca, pointed out teachers, doctors and nurses self-regulate their professions and said Hudak’s plan shows “disrespect” for people in trades.
Despite the criticism, Hudak maintains the new College of Trades is a bureaucracy that creates red tape.
Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne started her day in the nation’s capital and used the backdrop to attack Prime Minister Stephen Harper for his lack of support for Ontario. She said Ontario has taken an economic hit in the manufacturing sector and the sensibility of the national spirit is that the Federal and Provincial governments should work together.
Wynne then moved on to take on Hudak’s million job promise. She said, “The cornerstone of Hudak’s jobs plan is to cut jobs, cut education and health care and drive wages down. Wynne then made her way to Kingston for afternoon campaign events.
It will be interesting to see how long campaigns keep up the “jobs, jobs, jobs” mantra. Those big promises cost money. We might have to wait for the party platforms to see how they will be paid for.
One thing you can be sure of is that the strategists will all be waiting for the release of the April job numbers Friday morning. The Liberals will be hoping for more job creation while bad news for Ontarians will give the NDP and Tories more ammunition and credence to their claim that they have the answers to fix the economy.
