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HomeNewsHaliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock Provincial Candidates Coverage-Laurie Scott, Conservative

Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock Provincial Candidates Coverage-Laurie Scott, Conservative

KAWARTHA LAKES-The provincial election is coming up on June 2, 2022. We asked each candidate the same questions and are printing their answers in full in the order received.

Bio provided by the candidate

Laurie Scott was born and raised in the riding of Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock and was inspired to enter public service by her late father, Bill Scott, who served as MP for 28 years.

For more than fifteen years, Laurie has been a strong advocate for issues facing rural Ontario. Bringing more women into the skilled trades and building a strong workforce is a passion of Laurie’s and over the last 18 months, she is proud the PC government was able to add more than 300,000 jobs after companies had packed up and left the province because it was too expensive to do business. Now, Ontario has recovered and added tens of thousands more jobs than it lost during the pandemic.

Before entering politics, Laurie was a nurse for 20 years and she continues to be a strong advocate for local health care and has brought long overdue health and long-term care investments to the riding including 300 new and 436 redeveloped long-term care beds under the PC government’s $6.4 billion commitment to build more than 30,000 net new beds by 2028.

Laurie Scott and the PC party have a plan to create new and better jobs, a plan to stay open and put more money in your pocket.

What are the three top local issues in your opinion?

Many constituents are concerned about our economic recovery, the escalating cost of living and how we can ensure we are better prepared for any future healthcare crisis.

What is your stance on those issues and your proposed solutions?

  1. Rebuilding our economy

Supported by a plan to stay open, our PC team is building Ontario. Our plan will seize the opportunities in critical minerals, batteries and electric and hybrid vehicle manufacturing, help deliver better jobs and bigger paycheques for workers, help keep costs down for families, and get shovels in the ground for highways, transit, hospitals and other key infrastructure.

Ontario’s Plan to Build has five pillars:

  • Rebuilding Ontario’s Economy
  • Working for Workers
  • Building Highways and Key Infrastructure
  • Keeping Costs Down
  • A Plan to Stay Open
  1. Cost of living

When costs go up, it has a direct impact on families, seniors, workers and the economy. That’s why the Ontario PCs have a plan to help keep costs down by increasing housing supply, making it less expensive to drive or take transit, and providing targeted tax relief and making it less expensive to drive by eliminating and refunding licence plate renewal fees for passenger vehicles, light-duty trucks, motorcycles and mopeds.

We’re also committing to temporarily cutting the gas tax by 5.7 cents per litre and the fuel tax by 5.3 cents per litre for six months, beginning July 1, 2022 and proposing to provide an additional $300 in Personal Income Tax (PIT) relief, on average, to about 1.1 million taxpayers by enhancing the Low-income Individuals and Families Tax Credit.

These are real cost savings for families and why we are lowering child care fees for parents and securing a fair deal for Ontario by signing a $13.2 billion agreement with the federal government in an important step towards achieving an average of $10-a-day child care by September 2025.

  1. Plan to Stay Open

After years of frozen budgets and neglect by the Del Duca-Wynne Liberals, Ontario’s health care system was stretched to a breaking point. That’s why Doug Ford and the Ontario PCs have a plan to stay open and are investing billions to ramp up hospital beds and support and recruit more frontline health care workers.

We are getting it done by providing Ontario nurses with a retention bonus of up to $5,000 and making the wage increase permanent for more than 158,000 personal support workers.

We’re also getting it done in the long-term care sector with more than 31,000 new and over 28,000 upgraded beds in the works, including 300 new and 436 upgraded beds in Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock within five new long-term care homes.

We’re also investing $40 billion to fund more than 50 hospital projects that will add 3,000 new beds over the next 10 years.

Locally, we’ve been expanding beds at Ross Memorial Hospital with an over $2.6 million investment to create 12 new patient beds and committing to funding them annually. Ross Memorial Hospital also received funding through the Surgical Innovation Fund which allowed them to create a new operating room as well as an additional $1.9 million in operating funding starting in 2022/23, which represents an increase of 2.4 per cent to funding last fiscal.

 

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Pamela Vanmeer
Pamela Vanmeerhttps://www.kawartha411.ca/
Pamela VanMeer is a two time winner of the prestigious Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) Award. Her investigative reports on abuse in Long Term Care Homes garnered international attention for the issue and won the Ron Laidlaw Award. She is a former reporter and anchor at CHEX News, now Global Peterborough and helped launch the New CHEX Daily, a daily half hour talk show. While at CHCH News in Hamilton she covered some of the biggest news stories of the day.

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