NDP to make housing, public long-term care and minimum wage key issues

The New Democratic Party of Ontario is promising massive investments in housing, a fully public long-term care system and a $20 per hour minimum wage if elected on June 2. Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock candidate Barbara Doyle pointed out that housing costs have skyrocketed.

“Wages have not kept up with the cost of living. Post-secondary education costs are creating a huge burden for our youth. How many of us worry about our parents’ care while also trying to figure out daycare and college funding?” she said in an email to the Advocate.

Doyle plans to make housing and the high cost of living key local issues in the upcoming election.

“Safe, affordable housing is a basic human right and in HKLB it is essential that we get shovels in the ground right away. We need thousands of new units in every riding. We must ensure higher wages, lower costs in utilities and other basic costs such as medical, child care and transportation.”

Doyle promises the NDP “will make it easier to buy a home, while strengthening homebuyers’ protections,” adding the best way to cool the housing market is to take on “billionaires, speculators, flippers and bad developers.” The platform also includes promises to make renting more affordable and give renters more security.

Perhaps the largest and most expensive promise being put forward by Doyle and the NDP is the phase-out of private long-term care facilities within eight years.

“We will transition the whole system to be public and not-for-profit so every dollar spent on home care goes directly to your loved one’s care, and not into the pocket of wealthy investors,” Doyle wrote.

The NDP also promises that these provincially run facilities will have better paid staff and more full-time positions, and that all residents will receive a standard of four hours of care per resident per day “immediately.”

The NDP also plans to make an increase in minimum wage to $20 per hour central to its campaign.

“An NDP government will raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour and tie future increases to inflation,” Doyle said. “We will remove the minimum wage exemptions that allow students and servers to be paid less than every other worker in the province, because minimum means minimum.”

Other NDP priorities include scrapping Bill 124, which limits civil servants’ ability to obtain a raise greater than one per cent, lowering class sizes in publicly funded schools, cancelling mandatory online learning as a graduation requirement, giving households $600 if they install a vehicle charging station and creating a strategy for 100 per cent electric car sales by 2035.

There is no secret formula for defeating long-time incumbent Laurie Scott, Doyle wrote.

“I think there is just a lot of hard work, listening to voters, respecting their concerns and having the integrity to stand by my election promises.”