THUNDER BAY — Ontario Liberal Party Candidate for Thunder Bay-Superior North Brian Hamilton wants to invest in infrastructure, healthcare and social services.
Hamilton said “aging infrastructure is expensive, and I don't just mean on roads and bridges. I mean, even on housing. We talk about building new houses and getting new units out the door, but we are an old district. Most of our housing stock is 40, 50 years old, and we got to develop a plan to rehabilitate that housing stock.
He also said he's concerned about the state of healthcare the province and the impact on not only mental health and addictions but the aging population.
“We're going to be looking at an absolute tsunami of age-related illnesses like dementia that are really going to have a toll and are going to require a different tact,” said Hamilton.
Hamilton said the “trigger point” for him entering the provincial election was the $3 billion Premier Doug Ford spent on giving everyone their HST rebate checks right in time for the election.
“That's problematic for me. I think the public needs to be aware of what that would look like if we looked at a different country. We would look at that, we would probably have a special word for that,” said Hamilton.
“So, here we are, we're in the middle of an election, I'm going to be talking about ideas and policies. I know that the PCs want to make this about an anti-Trump kind of campaign, but ultimately we've got to remember that the PCs have a record.
“They've been in power for 6 years and there's certain things that they are delivering and there's certain things that are not. I'm here, and through this campaign, going to be reminding you of ways that we could deliver better for Northwestern Ontario to serve the people of this region.
Hamilton is in is second term as a Thunder Bay city councillor, on leave for the duration of the provincial campaign.
“Another big trigger point for me was certainly when we had to drain our renewed Thunder Bay fund, which is actually for building this community, and we had to look at this temporary village, putting in $5 million of our own money because the province wasn't at the table and to be fair, we didn't get much commitments from any level of government, but here we are,” said Hamilton.
“Our backs are against the wall as a city. We are paying for housing and mental health issues with emergency service dollars and crisis management is extremely expensive. This government likes to talk about being fiscal stewards, but that shows me that it's simply not the case.”
Hamilton was recently the target of a conservative attack campaign that called attention to sexist tweets he posted roughly a decade ago. Hamilton has apologized for those statements.
