By Harold Carmichael
Sudbury Star
If the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party gets back into power, look for an end to mining taxes and other natural resource monies generated in the North flowing to Queen’s Park, says the party’s Northern Development and Mines critic.
“It has to stay up here,” said Randy Hillier, in an interview in Greater Sudbury on Saturday, the last stop on a Northern Ontario policy development process tour to get input from businesspeople, academics, community leaders and party members across this part of the province.
“If we want to have a prosperous Northern Ontario, the revenue from resources has to stay up here. We will probably table this before we get into power so that Northerners know what they are voting on.”
Hillier, the MPP for the riding of Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington in the Ottawa Valley, said he found during his tour there is a great disdain by northerners for the Liberal Government treating the North like a colony.
“The No. 1 concern has been the distaste of all the decisions being delegated and imposed by Queen’s Park on the North,” he said.
“They want a change in the governance structure for Northern Ontario. Queen’s Park is always viewing Northern Ontario like it is a colony –a colonial administration. There’s very little input.”
Hillier said the North, with all its natural resource wealth, should be rich and prosperous. Instead, there’s high unemployment and high social costs.
“It’s a recipe for disaster,” he said. “Here, we are sitting on the greatest basket of wealth and revenue- producing opportunities in the world.
“And what do we have to show for it? This is unacceptable.”
What northerners want is to have decisions that affect the North made in the North, said the MPP.
“With the decision making, there is the need to decentralize the decision making out of Queen’s Park and put together a proper system that really represents the concerns of people in the North,” he said.
“We can’t have a bureaucrat in Queen’s Park make the decision on what tree to cut (in the North) and what to pay for it.
“That decision has to be made up here.”
Hillier said he has gone through the province’s Northern Ontario Growth Plan released in November and doesn’t like it.
“There’s not much but fluff and nonsense in it,” he said.
“There’s nothing to hold the government to account anywhere in it. It’s a pile of nothing.”
Hillier said that one way to attract and keep industry in the North is through lower energy costs, something which is not happening right now.
That and reducing the amount of red tape –the province has some 500,000 regulations in place for businesses to follow which are both suffocating and stifling, he said –will encourage businesses to come to the North, put people to work and prosper.
“The cost of energy, it’s a policy being driven by the south,” said Hillier.
“We have a lot of cheap energy here and we aren’t using it. We are penalizing our industry for operating here.
” We have to change it so that the cost of doing business here is competitive. I want, in the North, a low-cost energy policy (for industry).”
Hillier noted that the Kenora Forest Products mill, which has been shut down for a year, could re-open through a proposed $32- million retrofitting, which would make the mill competitive again and also put several hundred people back to work.
“But the revival plan is on hold because there is no guarantee of available wood to supply the mill, he said.
“They don’t want to invest the money because of the inability to get fibre for the mill,” he said.
“We need an (business) environment that is stable and there is opportunity with accessing the resources.
“We don’t have any of that right now.”
Hillier was appointed his party’s Northern Development and Mines critic last September. He ran unsuccessfully for the party’s leadership last spring.
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