In the Fall Economic Statement, Doug Ford and his Conservatives have cut more than $3.2 billion, including the Transportation operating budget by $305 million.<\/p>\n
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\u201cNortherners are already affected by poor road maintenance, winter and summer.\u00a0 We can\u2019t afford more cuts when our highways are closed for days after floods or snowstorms,\u201d said NDP MPP Micheal Mantha.\u00a0 \u201cPeople in Northern Ontario rely on roads to get to medical appointments, to school or to work, and shouldn\u2019t have to worry for their safety.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Ford also announced that his government was abolishing the Children and Youth Advocate, the Environmental Commissioner and the French Language Commissioner.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt is a sad time for Ontario.\u00a0 When the government reduces the oversight over itself, nothing good can come out of it\u201d said Mantha.\u00a0 \u201cWe need independent Legislative Officers to keep the government in check.\u00a0 The Conservatives are demonstrating that they have little interest in youth, Francophones or the environment, for that matter.\u201d<\/p>\n
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There are not many options for children and youth across Algoma-Manitoulin to access representation or assistance as our resources and services are much lower that than of families in urban centres. If a child were to experience homelessness, there are not many shelters throughout the riding that will have the funding or the space to assist them; especially if they are not with an adult. We also can\u2019t forget that since Indigenous children are overrepresented in the child welfare system, the loss of the Child Advocate will make it increasingly more difficult to navigate these systemic issues.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt is troubling to see Ford\u2019s Conservatives attacking every single environmental safeguard we add in Ontario, especially after seeing the massive forest fires from this summer or the rapid floods of this fall.\u00a0 Ontario will not be safe from climate change, but Ford\u2019s Conservatives refuse to act like leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The Ford government is also cancelling the new French-language University.\u00a0 Algoma-Manitoulin is a very bilingual riding yet post-secondary students, who already have to leave the riding for their education, will continue to be denied the opportunity to study in their first language at the university level.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a Franco-Ontarian myself, representing many Francophone communities across Algoma-Manitoulin, I am very upset to see this government rolling back on decades of progress that our community has made to preserve our language and access services in French.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the Fall Economic Statement, Doug Ford and his Conservatives have cut more than $3.2 billion, including the Transportation operating budget by $305 million. \u201cNortherners are already affected by poor road maintenance, winter and summer.\u00a0 We can\u2019t afford more cuts when our highways are closed for days after floods or snowstorms,\u201d said NDP MPP …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":4519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[1018],"class_list":["post-16850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorials","tag-mike-mantha"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-30 07:07:55","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16851,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16850\/revisions\/16851"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}