Your Home, Your Vote: Grits lead; Horwath unveils NDP platform

(Update)

Ontario’s NDP came out with a string of promises for the province’s voters Thursday. With just three weeks until the province votes in this election, NDP leader Andrea Horwath released her party platform.

Horwath has been promising the details of her platform and they’re finally here. She says they’d make life more affordable for the average person, while corporations pay more.

Horwath released her platform at an event in Toronto: “Are you ready for a government that respects you? Yeah.”

She’s making a string of promises. Lower auto insurance premiums, lower hydro bills with provincial sales tax removed, a freeze on student tuition fees, a cap on top executive salaries in the public sector, higher taxes for corporations, and balancing the provincial budget by 2017-18: “This is a plan that makes sense for Ontario. This is a plan that will deliver on the priorities of Ontarians. We have listened. We have heard what you have to say. We respect you and we will deliver good government for this province that makes sense and meets your needs.”

While Horwath was releasing her plan, Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne was promoting her proposed Ontario pension plan: “The reward for a lifetime of work and contribution to Ontario’s economy should not be hardship and insecurity in those retirement years.”

With former Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin attacking criticism of the plan: “For the provincial Conservatives to call this a tax demonstrates a complete ignorance of what pension plan investing is all about. This is not a tax and anybody who says it is a tax is either trying to fool people or they just don’t understand what its all about. This is an investment in everybody’s future.”

Campaigning in Ottawa, PC leader Tim Hudak said his government would go ahead with a judicial inquiry into the Liberals gas plant scandal: “That billion dollars that went into the gas plant that could have helped hundreds of thousands of seniors to stay in their home. That’s the choice they made and whenever government gets to the point where they’re putting their own political interest ahead of your interest, its time to change that government.”

Hudak referred to the Gomery inquiry that found that companies were winning contracts based on donations to the federal Liberals. He says a similar inquiry is needed into the Ontario Liberal goverment’s gas plant scandal.

Two new polls show the Liberals leading the election race. One of the polls asked voters who would make the better premier — and the other is based on popular support.

The first poll shows 26 percent of those surveyed think Kathleen Wynne would make the best premier. 20 percent thought PC leader Tim Hudak would be the best fit — while 18 percent preferred NDP leader Andrea Horwath.

A second poll was released Thursday by Forum Research, and the Liberals are taking a big lead. It shows Wynne’s Liberals lead with 41 percent popular support. Hudak trails with 34 percent, Horwath with 20 and the Green party with 4 percent.

“We have seen promise after promise made to get those skyrocketing salaries under control in Ontario, and have we seen it yet? No. New Democrats will deliver that hard cap on CEO salaries across the public sector, because that’s what makes sense to people.”

“You’re the ones paying those bills. You know that it doesn’t make sense to allow those salaries to increase.”

Some highlights of the NDP platform include a new savings minister, cutting ER wait times in half and taking HST off of hydro bills. Horwath says her plan saves more than it spends.