Member's Update: Provincial Election Watch

Today, AMO is sharing our updated AMO Provincial Elections webpage. The webpage now includes a review and analysis of the four major parties’ platforms and other campaign announcements. We encourage you to visit the webpage to see how the parties’ commitments compare with AMO’s 2022 Provincial Election Strategy.

This resource provides an overview of public commitments on topics of municipal interest. This is not intended to be a full list of commitments made by each party. AMO encourages you to consult each party’s platforms and local candidate communications for the full party commitments that align with your local community’s priorities.

Highlights from the Platforms

AMO is pleased to see many commitments that align with our eight-point plan, including:

·       Commitments from all four parties to invest in social, physical, and transportation infrastructure, including plans to improve the resilience of Ontario’s infrastructure in the face of climate change.

·       Commitments from three of the four parties to connect all regions of the province with broadband internet.

·       Commitments related to the provision of health and human services, including long-term care and mental health and addictions supports.

·       Recognition from all four parties that Ontario is facing a housing affordability and homelessness crisis. There are many ideas to improve housing affordability for current and potential homeowners and rental, and three of the four parties have committed to ending chronic homelessness.

Provincial Leaders Debate Held at FONOM

On May 10th, the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities hosted the first Provincial Leaders Debate, focusing on northern issues. The debate was moderated by the CBC North’s Markus Schwabe and featured the PC, NDP, Liberal and Green leaders. Questions covered a broad range of topics relevant to northern municipal governments including municipal revenue tools; making life more affordable; short term rentals’ housing affordability; highway maintenance; firefighter certification; the pandemic response; calls for a Northern Centre of Excellence for homelessness, mental health and addictions; and healthcare.

In addition to speaking to their platform commitments made to date, the following new commitments of municipal interest were made during the debate:

·      Green Party leader Mike Schreiner promised to upload 50% of housing and transit costs; remove the wage restraint on healthcare workers; and build 1.5 million new homes, including missing middle housing and deeply affordable homes.

·       Liberal leader Steven Del Duca reiterated commitments made in the recently released Liberal platform.

·       NDP leader Andrea Horwath committed to uploading some municipal services to the provincial government and licensing short-term rentals.

·       Progressive Conservative leader Doug Ford promised to continue the current approach to firefighter training and certification to meet community needs.

Please make use of our election resources in your local municipality:

·       Provide local candidates with a copy of AMO’s 2022 Provincial Election Strategy: Advancing Ontario’s Prosperity; and

·       Share the AMO Provincial Elections webpage with your social media networks.