| Sourced From The Sault Star |
Frank de Jong wants Ontario’s Liberal government to look west when preparing its upcoming provincial budget.
The provincial Green Party leader wants Premier Dalton McGuinty to follow British Columbia’s lead and introduce a consumer-based carbon tax March 26.
The B.C. tax, introduced in February 2008, is charged on almost all fossil fuels.
de Jong, who was in Sault Ste. Marie Sunday, also wants the Ontario government to scrap its proposed $50 billion investment for two nuclear reactors to generate electricity.
“(It) is absolutely the wrongheaded way to go,” said de Jong in a telephone interview from Elliot Lake.
Instead, he wants the Liberals to encourage conservation by removing price caps for electricity. That move, de Jong estimates, could cut Ontario’s energy consumption in half.
“Then we wouldn’t need the nuclear power,” he said.
The Toronto-based politician says the Ontario government could axe $500 million in spending by eliminating the separate school system.
The Green party leader hopes to attract Red Tories who were following recently resigned leader John Tory and New Democrat faithful uncomfortable with new leader Andrea Horwath’s close ties to organized labour.
“A lot of people say we should be careful with our money, but also we want to go green,” said de Jong of disenchanted Tories.
“They have a natural home in the Green Party . . . A lot of non-union people will be alienated from the NDP.”
Tory quit as leader of the official opposition after he lost a byelection earlier this month in the riding of Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock.
de Jong declined to say if he’ll step down if he doesn’t win his Davenport riding in 2011.
“I’m running to win and that’s my goal,” said de Jong.
He finished third in the last election earning 3,061 votes, or 10 per cent of voter support, in Davenport. Liberal Tony Ruprecht won the riding.
“Being the leader of the Green Party already has a certain cache,” said de Jong.
“The knives are out for me all the time and that’s healthy.”
He expects the Green Party could win its first seat in Ontario in 2011 in the riding of Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound.
Green candidate Shane Jolley captured one-third of the vote and placed second to Conservative Bill Murdoch in 2007.
De Jong planned to tour the Hub Trail and Brookfield wind farm in Prince Township in the Sault.
He will briefly visit Wawa today before continuing his Northern Ontario swing with stops in Thunder Bay, Moosonee, Cochrane and North Bay.
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