What exactly has Doug Ford done for Northern Ontario?
I know we all hate Doug Ford but I feel like what he's done to my neck of the woods goes under the radar. So I'll give you my perspective (and the perspective of a lot of people i talk with) on just how awful Doug the slug has been for this amazing region:
Highway 11. I don't know how many of you have driven this Highway but it is a full blown death trap which I only drive if i absolutely have to. 116 people have died on this Highway in the last 5 years and there has been nearly 11,000 crashes. His PC government voted against truck inspection checks and winter maintenance (which is when a lot of crashes happen). He promised to make the lanes wider and expand it to a 2 lane but that has yet to happen. And of course the 3 Ridings this Highway goes through (including mine, Timiskaming-Cochrane) did not vote for him so we believe we are being punished for it this way. I knew people personally that have died on this fuckin road. Everything i said about failed 2 lane expansion can be applied for Highway 17 as well (albeit less sketchy than Highway 11 but still far from ideal).
The fuckin wildfire budget. This moron was told by everyone the northwest was gonna have a huge fire season. But this fkn asshole would rather remove protections on our public lands for a spa then invest in the fires. And look at the result. Whole first nations communities were evacuated and the sheer amount of land that burned was fuckin embarrassing.
The pulp mill in Terrace Bay. For those of you that dont know Terrace Bay is an isolated community on Lake Superior in between Wawa and Thunder Bay (I used to work on the railway in my younger days for a couple summers nearby in Schreiber). One night a couple years back now, the mill that powered Terrace Bay went idle and that killed 400 jobs or over 25 percent of the towns population. The following winter the town pleaded with the government to keep their mill heated but Ford refused. Now 2 harsh winters later and the mill has more than likely seen its final days and the town has a perilous and uncertain economic future. Its a real shame because those are some good folks around there and a stark reminder that, although mining is a much more stable industry, the gold mine i work at in Kirkland Lake could close in the future and there aren't much in the way of backup plans up here. We almost saw the same thing recently in Kapuskasing and by helping out ford gives 300k for a golf course to an elite🤦 These are 2 towns that voted majority left wing last year and are being punished for it (and Kapuskasing is French majority and doug ford hates Franco-Ontarians and did not want to fund a French university)
There are many more examples such as the ring of fire disaster which has not led to more development,
Or cutting funding to colleges that has left my daughter scared about her future.
There's not some massive conservative shift like some from other places talk about when discussing Northern Ontario. Timmins and Kenora are lost causes but I wouldnt worry about the rest of the north voting for Ford. He's shown us exactly what he thinks about us this third term