| MPP
Arnott again raises jobs issue at Queen’s Park
Responding to today’s Statistics Canada report that
Ontario’s manufacturing jobs are continuing to disappear
by the thousands, Waterloo-Wellington MPP Ted Arnott
is calling upon the Chair of the Ontario Legislature’s
Finance Committee to immediately schedule public hearings
to try and stop the job losses.
“Today,
our Party’s Critic for Economic Development, Ted Chudleigh,
MPP, informed us that in the month of March 2007, the
Province of Ontario lost another 5,100 manufacturing
jobs, bringing the total loss of manufacturing jobs
since the beginning of 2005 to 124,400,” Mr. Arnott
wrote in his letter to Mr. Pat Hoy, MPP, the Finance
Committee Chairman. “The Waterloo-Wellington area has
been particularly hard hit by the loss of these good-paying
jobs,” he added.
The
Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs,
in its Pre-Budget Report to the Minister of Finance,
expressed support for Mr. Arnott’s Private Member’s
Resolution. That Resolution was passed by the Legislature
on November 30th, 2006. Mr. Arnott has been calling
attention to the issue of lost factory jobs since May
of 2005.
“These
hearings should have commenced three weeks ago when
the House convened for our Spring sitting,” Mr. Arnott
stated.
Two
weeks ago in their 2007 Provincial Budget, the McGuinty
Liberal Government finally acknowledged the competitiveness
challenges that Ontario’s manufacturers are facing.
They announced a plan to create an Ontario Manufacturing
Council.
“They
say they will set up this Council, but they provided
no details, no timelines, no objectives, no names of
who would serve. I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes
them five months to set it up, and they’ll spend at
least a million dollars on it,” he predicted.
“This
is work that MPPs could be doing, in a public forum
through the Finance Committee. It’s work that we should
have been doing two years ago, before we lost all those
jobs,” Mr. Arnott continued. “And by doing it through
the Finance Committee, it wouldn’t cost the taxpayers
a nickel.”
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