NDP: Still time to make life more affordable for Ontarians

QUEEN’S PARK — With just two weeks left in the current sitting of the Legislature, the Official Opposition NDP is challenging Ford’s Conservatives to implement concrete solutions that would make life more affordable for people in Ontario right away.

“The Ford Conservatives could have used this session to offer people relief from an out-of-control cost of living. To offer hope,” said NDP Leader Marit Stiles.

“Instead, we’re seeing a corrupt government doing damage control for various scandals and the Premier’s obsession with building a $650-million luxury spa.

“People are struggling across Ontario. In places like the North, the costs of everything—basic food, groceries, gas—are even higher.

“The NDP has spent months proposing concrete solutions to make life more affordable; the Ford Conservatives have rejected every single one.”

The Official Opposition NDP is reiterating five solutions the government could implement right now to make people’s lives easier:

Make housing affordable

• Bring back real rent control.
• Pass the NDP’s Rent Stabilization Act to close the loophole whereby landlords can raise the rent on new tenants above the guideline. End the incentive for landlords to unfairly evict tenants so they can jack up the rent.
• Pass the NDP’s Homes Ontario motion to create a public provincial agency to build at least 250,000 new affordable and non-market homes on public land across the province.

Make child care affordable

• Give ECEs a proper raise and raise the wages of non-ECE child care staff.
• Get us to $10-a-day child care province-wide. Without better wages, we will have empty child care rooms with no workers to staff them.

Make home energy affordable

• Help families make their homes more efficient and lower their home heating bills by bringing in the NDP proposal to make heat pumps free.
• Provide grants and zero-interest financing to help people make energy-efficient retrofits.

Make groceries affordable

• Pass NDP legislation to create an independent consumer watchdog to stop people getting ripped off and investigate and fine corporate predators.
• Establish a provincial food strategy that supports agriculture jobs in food processing, transportation, biofuels, and retail, and helps young and first-time farmers.

Double social assistance rates

• Double ODSP and OW rates immediately.
• For the roughly 900,000 Ontarians who live on social assistance, atrociously low rates make it impossible to afford necessities like food, shelter, medicine. Ford’s measly 5 per cent increase doesn't cut it.