Two days remain before Ontario’s provincial election and candidates are making their last efforts to get communities’ votes.
Tuesday, Ontario New Democratic Party leader Andrea Horwath visited with Prince Edward County supporters at Bermuda PEC at 275 Main St., Bloomfield, alongside Bay of Quinte riding candidate Alison Kelly and Hastings-Lennox and Addington candidate Eric DePoe.
Andrea Horwath is looking to become the first NDP Premier of Ontario since Bob Rae in 1995. (Photo: Andrew Clarke / Quinte News)
During the rally, Horwath said the NDP is focused on stopping cuts with a priority on cuts to nurses and healthcare services.
Audio Player“Nurses are the backbone of our healthcare system. And in fact, the last couple of days I’ve been having press conferences with nurses because they’re sounding the alarm bells. They’re very worried about the state of health care in Ontario and we know that more Conservative cuts are just going to hurt even more. And what what we’ve done is we’ve worked with them to come up with a plan that brings 30,000 more nurses on line in Ontario, so hire 30,000 more nurses, 10,000 more PSWs, and the way we do that is by obviously recruitment, but also retention.”
Horwath says an elected NDP will scrap Bill 124, hire additional nurses and PSWs, and will create mentorship and training programs with experienced nurses for those beginning their career.
(Photo: Andrew Clarke / Quinte News)
Along with a focus on reducing cuts to healthcare, the NDP is focused on ensuring affordable housing.
Audio Player“So we have a plan not only to help with making sure that young people have hope again, to buy their first home, by helping with down payments, by helping municipalities find the way forward to bring more starter home type of homes into communities. So things like duplexes, triplexes, semis, the kind of housing that is your foot in the door, if you will, to the housing market, but also to actually build more affordable housing.”
Alison Kelly, NDP’s Bay of Quinte riding candidate. (Photo: Andrew Clarke / Quinte News)
With Ontario’s new Premier to be elected June 2, Horwath encourages those who have been unhappy with Ontario’s Conservative government to vote NDP.
Audio Player“The focus is that six out of ten Ontarians don’t want to see Doug Ford reelected as premier of this province.So we’re asking folks to come together behind the NDP, behind candidates like Alison, and we’ll be able to achieve that goal and then start to fix the things that matter most. So stop the cuts that come with Conservatives and start to fix the things that matter to people and candidates like Alison at Queen’s Park will help us do exactly that.”
