Keep the Ontario economy growing: that’s the message longtime Progressive Conservative MPP Todd Smith has been hearing at the doors of Bay of Quinte riding constituents in the past several weeks of the provincial election campaign.
And that, said Smith, is what will be the collective focus of the Ford government if it’s re-elected to another four-year term at Queen’s Park.
“Well, certainly what I’ve been hearing at the door as I’ve talked to literally thousands of people at the door in this riding over the past few weeks that emerging from the pandemic is making sure our economy grows again,” said Smith in a wide-ranging interview.
Moreover, Smith said people are talking about the need for more ‘health human resources’, which will include the training and hiring of more nurses “so we never have to see ourselves in the situations we’ve been in for the past two years. We’re committed to training more nurses, preparing them for all the long-term care homes that we’re building.”
Smith has served as a staunch ally for his mostly rural-based riding since he was first elected as the MPP in 2011 for first the Prince Edward-Hastings provincial riding and in 2018 for the newly created Bay of Quinte riding.
In fact, Smith said it was the lack of advocacy for the riding from the then-Liberal MPP and education minister Leona Dombrowsky that prompted him to leave his role as a radio news director at Quinte Broadcasting to run for the PCs in the 2011.
“In 2011 it seemed like Liberals were really leaving rural Ontario behind and that included Quinte region and Hastings County. We had a cabinet minister at the time who didn’t seem to be advocating all that much for the local region, she was advocating for (then-Premier) Dalton McGuinty,” said Smith who was encouraged by then-PC party leader Tim Hudak to run in the 2011 election.”
Since his re-election in 2018, Smith has taken on numerous ministerial portfolios in the Ford government during that time, including government house leader, minister of government and consumer services, minister of economic development, job creation and trade, and minister of children, community and social services and minister of energy for the past year.
Smith has lived in the Bay of Quinte area for the past 30 years, the past 20 in Oak Hills where he lives with his wife, an elementary school principal, and two daughters.
Also on the campaign trail, Smith is hearing a lot about the lack of affordability in terms of housing and the overall cost of living. In response to that, a Ford government will cut the provincial gas tax 5.7 cents per litre on July 1 for a six-month period.
As well, he said the Ford government has done away with car license sticker fees and has flattened any double-digit hikes to hydro bills, which will bring some certainly to household budgets.
“We’ve been able to flatten electricity hikes that we saw under previous government, and bring back some predictability and affordability to not just homeowners and farmers, but for business owners and industry as well,” said Smith. “As a result of that, we’re starting to see manufacturing jobs, particularly in the auto sector, coming back to the province.”
In terms of growing the health human resources in the riding, Smith said a stand-alone nursing school at Loyalist College has been added, training 300 nurses locally during the four-year program, and the accelerated support worker program will ensure there are PSWs (Personal Support Workers) at long-term care facilities and more spaces for doctors at universities, including Queen’s in Kingston, to deal with the primary care shortage in the region.
Smith also mentions long wait lists for long-term care in Hastings County as a local issue in need of attention, and he notes commitments have been made to build new long-term care facilities in the riding.
“Ensuring that people have access to long-term care, at the same time, access to home care and primary care is really the No. 1 issue I’ve been hearing at the door,” said Smith.
The housing crisis, with lack of affordable housing, is also uppermost in the minds of his constituents as housing has become unaffordable across Ontario and in the Bay of Quinte region. Smith said, quite simply, the government is committed to increasing the housing supply, including affordable housing, in the province and in the region.
“We put a lot of steps in place with eight difference pieces of legislation that my colleague, the minister of Housing had brought forward Steve Clark to help deal with the housing crisis that we have. As a result of all those pieces of legislation, we did see a record 100,000 new housing starts last year and that was in the midst of
a pandemic started in Ontario. We’re well on our way to getting to where we need to go to building the housing supply of all types of housing so our young people can afford to buy a house.”
If there’s a central message to Smith’s re-election campaign, is that a lot has been accomplished in the past four years, although more needs to be done in the Bay of Quinte riding. He mentioned the establishment of a new funding formula that essentially saved Trenton Memorial Hospital from closure, and the plan to build a new Prince Edward County hospital, investing in infrastructure, including repairs to roads and bridges, widening Hwy. 401 to six lanes through the Bay of Quinte region and establishing a new 401 interchange on east side of Belleville.
“We will have new manufacturing jobs coming to the area, so we will have more jobs, we will have bigger paycheques for the people in Quinte to go to work each day and buy a home in the future and just live a great life here in the Bay of Quinte region,” he said.
(Written by: Alan Rivett)
