Politics

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has written to premiers asking them to scrap the provincial sales tax on daily essentials and monthly bills, matching his pledge to scrap the federal GST on home heating, internet and mobile bills, diapers, kids’ clothes and grab-and-go grocery items. “Working people are being gouged every time they pay their cell phone bill or stop at ...

Michael Mantha, MPP for Algoma-Manitoulin, has introduced legislation to end private, third-party contracts for driver examinations in Ontario. The Safer Driving Tests Act (Ending the Privatization Failure), 2024 will require that all driver examinations in Ontario are carried out by the Ministry of Transportation, and not third-party contractors.   “It’s become clear that operating driver examinations through a for-profit company ...

J’utilise régulièrement cette chronique pour parler des problèmes de viande et de pommes de terre qui touchent les gens d’Algoma-Manitoulin. Des questions comme la crise des soins de santé, la nécessité d’améliorer l’entretien des routes dans le Nord, notre réseau scolaire surpeuplé ou le manque de logements abordables dans notre province sont ce que j’entends le plus de la part ...

I regularly use this column to speak about the meat-and-potatoes issues that affect people in Algoma-Manitoulin. Issues like the healthcare crisis, the need for better highway and road maintenance in the North, our crowded school system, or the lack of affordable housing in our province are what I hear about most from people I meet with day-to-day and are top ...

CBC’s The Fifth Estate recently broke the news that the Canada Revenue Agency had discovered that hackers had managed to obtain confidential data on taxpayers used by private tax firm H&R Block. Fraudsters then used the confidential information, including H&R Block’s confidential credentials to log into the personal CRA accounts of thousands of individuals. What does this mean for most ...

Depuis plusieurs années, les Ontariennes et Ontariens vivent des troubles et des douleurs sur plusieurs fronts : l’accès à un logement abordable, l’accès aux soins de santé, la pénurie de médecins, l’inflation et le coût de la vie, le soutien de l’aide sociale incroyablement faible et l’accès en temps opportun aux programmes pour les enfants autistes, pour ne citer que ...

For several years, Ontarians have been experiencing turmoil and pain on several fronts: access to affordable housing, access to health care, shortage of physicians, inflation and cost of living, impossibly low social assistance support, and timely access to programming for children with Autism, to name but a few of the burdensome issues. Most of the way through his second term, ...

From the early days before Confederation, Canada’s earliest settler leaders treated Indigenous peoples as others. They created systems that were designed to assimilate Indigenous peoples and strip them of their identity and their culture. One of the most widely recognized parts of this systemic discrimination was the development of residential schools. Supported by Canada’s first Prime Minister, John A. MacDonald, ...

On Thursday, Canada’s NDP leader Jagmeet Singh laid out a plan to ban renovictions to make rent more affordable across the country. Singh’s NDP is proposing federal incentives to force municipalities to legislate a renoviction ban. Hamilton is the first city in Ontario to adopt such a ban and London may soon be the second. Singh was in London Thursday ...

The Northern Ontario Women’s (NOW) Caucus members have elected their inaugural Executive Committee. Executive Committee: Cheryl Fort – President at Large (Hornepayne) Lindsay Koch – Vice-President, NOMA Region (Kenora) Wendy Landry – Vice-President, NOMA Region (Shuniah) Michelle Boileau – Vice-President, FONOM Region (Timmins) Melanie Pilon – Vice-President, FONOM Region (Wawa) Johanne Baril – Vice-President, Communities Under 2,500 (Val Rita-Harty) Catherine ...

Ontario NDP leader Marit Stiles responded to Infrastructure Ontario posting a “Request for Proposal” for an interim Science Centre: “No one is buying Ford’s excuses for permanently closing our Science Centre; we all know it’s about sweetening the deal for his luxury spa at Ontario Place. Now we see the government planning to build an interim Science Centre for a ...

Wildfires are raging in Ontario, and the province is short-staffed by 25%, but Doug Ford and his government are backing away from an earlier commitment to reclassify Wildland Firefighters to Firefighters. “It’s peak wildfire season and the province doesn’t have enough forest firefighters to send to each burning location. That means we are choosing which fires to put out and ...

Algoma Public Health (APH) has declared an outbreak of COVID-19 at Isabel Fletcher Public School. As per provincial Ministry of Education guidance, an outbreak is declared in a school once it has been determined that within a 14-day period, two individuals tested positive for COVID-19 and: at least one case could have reasonably acquired their infection in the school setting; ...

Well, as of June 21st, with the onset of the summer solstice, we can finally say that summer is officially here.  My colleagues in Queen’s Park said they thought it had already set in, but then Premier Ford announced an emergency recall of MPPs to attend to what he said was an urgent matter.  So urgent, in fact, that the ...

Eh bien, depuis le 21 juin, avec le début du solstice d’été, nous pouvons enfin dire que l’été est officiellement là. Mes collègues de Queen’s Park ont ​​dit qu’ils pensaient que cela s’était déjà commencé, mais le premier ministre Ford a ensuite annoncé un rappel d’urgence des députés pour s’occuper de ce qu’il a dit être une affaire urgente. Si ...