Algoma Manitoulin NDP MPP Michael Mantha said that the short operating hours of Service Ontario and Drive Test locations throughout the north are making it difficult for families and businesses to get the services that they need.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe Service Ontario location in the town of Wawa, Ontario, is only open four hours a day, four days a week,\u201d said Mantha. \u201cWithin that short time, residents often wait an hour to get basic services.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThese inadequate operating hours not only hurt individual residents, but also small businesses that directly rely on Service Ontario.\u201d Mantha said that these long waits hurt northern businesses and frustrate families. For businesses like power sports dealerships that rely on licensing before finalizing transitions, the situation is even worse. Customers are forced to make two trips to the dealership to finalize a purchase.<\/p>\n
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Mantha said that northerners should not be forced to settle for fewer government services just because of where they live and do business.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIn addition to poor Service Ontario operating hours, community members from Wawa and Chapleau are forced to wait months to book a drive test,\u201d said Mantha. \u201cThen after waiting for months, they arrive for their appointment only to be told that there are no staff members available to conduct exams for special DZ licences. \u201cThese licenses are necessary to drive vehicles such as dump trucks, cement trucks, garbage trucks and rescue, fire trucks and snow plows.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cWhy is this Conservative government forcing northern families and businesses to settle for less?\u201d asked Mantha.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Algoma Manitoulin NDP MPP Michael Mantha said that the short operating hours of Service Ontario and Drive Test locations throughout the north are making it difficult for families and businesses to get the services that they need. \u201cThe Service Ontario location in the town of Wawa, Ontario, is only open four hours a day, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":1036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[1842,1103],"class_list":["post-17249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-service-ontario","tag-wawa"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-27 23:30:11","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\/17249","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=17249"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17250,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17249\/revisions\/17250"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}