Today, the Ontario NDP released their election party platform, highlighting commitments for the tourism industry, healthcare, environment, housing and the economy.
Key Tourism Commitments:
- Provide a second round of the Tourism Recovery Program to help businesses recover and hire staff.
- Extend the Staycation Tax Credit: To encourage Ontarians to travel within the province and support local tourism by extending the Staycation Tax Credit for another two years. The success of the program will be evaluated after two years and a decision will be made on whether to make it permanent.
- Launch a Tourism Workforce Strategy in partnership with tourism operators, workers, and post-secondary institutions, to ensure the sector’s labour shortage is addressed.
- Over the past months, TIAO has advocated for these tourism recovery supports in our meetings and correspondence with the NDP, and we thank the NDP for their collaboration and commitment to the rebuild of Ontario’s tourism industry.
Key Health Care Commitments:
- Begin working immediately on universal pharmacare for Ontario and, strengthen and accelerate the expansion of dental care
- Hire 10,000 personal support workers, give them a raise; hire 30,000 nurses, expedite recognition of nursing credentials of 15,000 internationally trained nurses; scrap Bill 124, which limits public sector compensation increases.
- Hire 300 doctors in northern Ontario, including 100 specialists and 40 mental health practitioners; fund travel accommodations for medical residents to take elective rotations in rural and northern communities; create more residency rotation positions to help retain doctors in the north.
- End health-care user fees, such as doctors’ notes.
- Build a new public and non-profit home and community care and long-term care system; build 50,000 new and modern beds.
- Establish universal, publicly funded mental-health care; invest $130M over three years for children’s mental health.
Key Environment Commitments:
- Create a zero-emissions vehicles strategy, with a goal of 100 per cent of all new auto sales being ZEVs by 2035; offer up to $10,000 incentives for ZEVs, excluding luxury vehicles.
- Reduce Ontario’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 and achieve net zero emissions by 2050; establish a new cap-and-trade system.
- Expand the Greenbelt; plant one billion trees by 2030; ban non-medical single-use plastics by 2024.
- Introduce an energy efficient building retrofit program to help families and businesses with the cost of retrofitting their homes and lowering electricity bills.
Other Commitments:
- Housing:
- End exclusionary zoning and increase the supply of affordable housing options
- Bring back rent control: and
- Create a portable housing benefit.
- Raise the minimum wage to $20 in 2026, with $1-an-hour increases annually; legislate 10 permanent personal emergency leave days.
- Implement a four-day work week pilot project.
To read the entire NDP plan, please visit here.