Option To Keep Chocolate Making in Smiths Falls Should Be Pursued - MPP
(Toronto) - In a wide-ranging speech today in the Ontario Legislature, Leeds-Grenville MPP Bob Runciman called on the McGuinty government to lead the way in exploring an option that would see chocolate manufacturing continue at the Smiths Falls plant.
Runciman suggested that provincial, municipal and employee representatives explore opportunities with Hershey for the provision of specific product lines through a new employee-based company operating out of the Smiths Falls facility.
“There are examples across the province where employees have gotten together to create new companies and under contract with their previous employer, provide certain product lines,” the Tory House Leader pointed out.
In his speech Runciman called on the McGuinty government to lead the way in exploring and developing an option that could keep chocolate making a reality at the Smiths Falls location.
“The jobs at Hershey are important to the region but the site as a major tourist attraction is also critical,” he emphasized.
Runciman pointed out that between 400,000-500,000 people visit the plant every year to watch chocolate being made, making the site one of the region’s major tourist attractions.
“People of all ages are interested in seeing how chocolate is made and the loss of the production viewing opportunity means effectively the loss of the tourist attraction,” he stated. “People can buy Hershey products anywhere.”
The Ontario government, through the ministries of Economic Development and Tourism, should spearhead an effort to explore potential opportunities with Hershey and assist employees and the municipality in efforts to develop an entity that can insure the continued production of chocolate in Smiths Falls,” he stressed.
“We can’t let this significant regional asset disappear without exploring every possible opportunity to keep it operating at some scale,” he concluded.
BUDGET MEASURES AND INTERIM
APPROPRIATION ACT, 2007
Mr. Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): For those who may be tuning in on the parliamentary channel, members are allotted 20 minutes during this debate. I could certainly spend much more time than 20 minutes critiquing the latest Liberal budget, but I am going to go quickly over a number of the highlights, or lowlights, as some may describe them, and then talk about some specifics related to my riding of Leeds-Grenville.
Some of the areas that we've discussed over the past couple of weeks that were not dealt with, in our view, in an adequate manner included the fact that Ontario has lost 120,000 high-paying manufacturing jobs over just the last two years. I suspect that number is much higher than that now, because we're seeing on an almost weekly basis new announcements about manufacturing job losses.
Mr. Tim Hudak (Erie-Lincoln): Another 5,000 last month.
Mr. Runciman: Another 5,000 last month, my colleague indicates. We certainly heard one of the NDP members today talking about significant job losses at Stelco in Hamilton being announced last week. That's a concern, and I will get into that in a little more detail later.
Another point: Disposable incomes in Ontario are growing at the slowest rate in the country. Ontario was dead last in economic growth among Canadian provinces in 2006, trailing the next-slowest-growing province, Prince Edward Island, by a substantial 0.6%. Ontario used to be the economic engine of this country, and now it appears under the McGuinty Liberal government that we've become the caboose. In the census which was just recently made public, Ontario reported a net loss of 30,000 people, and that's just in the last year alone. That's a record, with a record loss of almost 15,000 people in the third quarter moving out of this province because of the lack of job prospects and the significant erosion, the hollowing out, of the manufacturing sector in this province.
A couple of quick points: a $22.4-billion increase in annual spending by this Liberal government since taking office. That translates into an understandable number for most Ontarians: a $4,504 increase per year for every Ontario household. That's a staggering almost $750,000 increase in spending for every hour that this government has been in office. Just think of that: $750,000 for every hour they have been in office. It took 136 years, from Confederation until 2003, for the Ontario government's expenditures to reach $68 billion, but Mr. McGuinty and his friends have single-handedly managed to increase spending to $91 billion in the coming fiscal year. We know that program spending is increasing a little over 8% a year under the Liberal government. Economic growth has averaged 4%. So they've increased spending during their time in office by double what the average economic growth has been in the province.
A point which is of interest to us-not necessarily one that's going to grab the interest of the public, but I'll put it on the record anyway: From 2003-04 until the last fiscal year, Mr. McGuinty and his colleagues have spent close to $22 billion more than they promised during the campaign, and they've taken in $10 billion more than they expected to take in.
An estimated 1.2 million, or 10% of Ontarians, are without a family doctor. Despite all of this rapid-fire spending, that hasn't changed. Ontarians living in rural Ontario are particularly underserviced. In 2005, the province suffered a net loss of 14 doctors to other jurisdictions. Contrast that with British Columbia, where they had a net gain of 113 doctors in the same time period.
Homeowners remain unprotected from property tax assessments. We've seen these promises in 2008 and this initiative under the budget, but in fact, like so many of the promises they're now making, which Ontarians are going to have a difficult time believing, they are all being postponed until after the election.
More than 8,300 children are on the waiting list for mental health services, and approximately 2,300 of those kids have been on that waiting list for more than a year.
More than $6,000 in additional long-term-care funding was promised in the last campaign, as well as an additional 20 minutes of care, but those promises are not being met.
Numerous school boards have had to slash budgets and raid other spending envelopes, such as special education, to balance their books. Public education has suffered. Split grades are now common, and there are more portables. I saw that when I visited North Grenville. It's unbelievable, the growth of portables over the life of this government. This is probably because of their botched class size cap promise. We know as well that Ontario schools are less safe, and the principals' council recently reported that safety is being jeopardized because of this government's education failures.
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Air quality is worse. In 2005 there was a record 15 smog advisories covering 53 days. The previous record was 10 smog advisories covering 27 days. In 2005, for the first time in our history, we had a smog alert during the winter.
There's a shortage of justices of the peace, and this is costing most municipalities millions of dollars in uncollected fines as court dates are cancelled and various serious Provincial Offences Act charges are dropped due to lack of available trial times.
The Ministry of Agriculture: To reduce the amount of money for safety net programs, we've reduced their budget again this year by $100 million.
Tourism: Again, when we see the loss of manufacturing jobs, the fact that they're cutting the tourism budget just boggles the mind. If there's one thing we want to do to counter some of these job losses, it's to attract more visitors to our province. Mr. Speaker, you're very familiar with this issue. Last year we had the most significant drop in US visitors since we started recording that number. How do they address that? They're spending close to $5 million on wasted advertising. No one knows what these ads are all about-full-page colour ads no one can comprehend. Instead of addressing the need to attract more visitors from south of our border-and that has to be the most significant market that we should be pursuing-they're not doing it. What they're doing is using this money, I guess, to try to enhance their electoral prospects, because there's certainly nothing there that is going to attract the expenditure of tourism dollars.
In my own riding, we have a number of community health centres. The very successful ones-I sat down recently with Portland Country Roads Community Health Center in the Merrickville district. They're having a great deal of problems in attracting talent, especially nurse practitioners. This is a challenge for them that the government has to take a look at because these are significantly important operations in rural communities, and certainly in my riding they are being impacted by the lack of funding they need to attract these professionals into these areas.
We all know about the problems with COMRIF. I'll use a couple of examples: North Grenville. I was talking to the mayor there, Bill Gooch, and Doug Struthers of Merrickville Wolford, where they've been turned down on three occasions. North Grenville is an example. This is a community that looked after itself in the past, kept their infrastructure in good shape and now they are being penalized through the criteria with COMRIF. This is one of the fastest-growing municipalities in Ontario and they're going to be restricted in terms of their ability to meet those pressures because of a lack of support and assistance. Merrickville Wolford, with their water treatment, their sewage treatment plant, their effluent, is meeting the standards but they've been told that this plant could collapse at any moment. What would that mean to that community and to the Rideau system that could be impacted? Yet again they've been rejected, and we don't get adequate justification for these rejections.
I want to talk a bit about the Brockville Psychiatric Hospital. We had the federal government now encouraged to take a look at one of the soon-to-be-vacant facilities there for perhaps the housing of federal inmates with mental illness. Hopefully, if the federal government has an interest, this will require a commitment from the provincial government through the Ontario Reality Corp. to spend monies to upgrade a building on that site. If you take a look at the secure treatment facility that's operating there now for provincial inmates with mental health challenges, it's been an enormous success. We have the expertise in place there. This would be an enormous economic boost to the area, to the region. Hopefully the provincial government will not once again be the impediment for this going ahead. We know the McGuinty government, despite Mr. McGuinty's promises before the election-on this site, we had three phases: the secure treatment unit and phases 2 and 3, which would have meant well over 300 good jobs to that region. Mr. McGuinty was in the area prior to the election, as the opposition leader-and we have this in writing; it appeared in the Brockville Recorder and Times-and he made a commitment in black and white, "Yes, I'm committed; our party is committed to completing phases 2 and 3 of that project."
What happened after the election? One of the first things they did was cancel phases 2 and 3.
Mr. Hudak: There's a surprise.
Mr. Runciman: Yes, not much of a surprise, but certainly a disappointment to those people who believed that promise that the then leader of the opposition, now the Premier, made.
We may have an opportunity to grow jobs on this site through the federal government, but at the end of the day, this will still depend on the Ontario Realty Corp. I have to say that I'm not terribly optimistic. I sent the minister responsible for ORC, the Minister of Public Infrastructure Renewal-
Mr. Hudak: What did he do?
Mr. Runciman: We toured those buildings, and the grounds of the psych hospital are deteriorating, roofs leaking, heaters shut off even though portable heaters were sitting there. We were told they were just abandoning those buildings. We're talking about heritage properties. I sent the minister over a list of photos that we took of the damage in those buildings. I met with his staff. Nothing happening. We phoned to ask ORC if they were going to do anything. Nothing. There were no RFPs-nothing. So we sent those pictures to the local media. We sent them to the local heritage preservation group. Then all of a sudden there was a front-page story about the damage to these buildings and all of a sudden Minister Caplan says, "Oh, we have an RFP to repair those." We have an RFP responding to a front-page story in the Brockville paper, but of course, everything before that was no, no, no, deny, deny, deny. That's a message we hear from that particular minister on regular occasions.
I'm hoping that in the future we don't have to embarrass the government by going to the media. We tried to work in a very co-operative way. That was our first effort. We tried to work with the minister, with the minister's offices. We provided him with pictures. And then he pulled that one on us. So in any event, we now believe they're going to be protected.
I talked about 120,000 manufacturing jobs. We've seen Domtar in Cornwall close-and I want to talk about eastern Ontario very specifically-Collins and Aikman in Gananoque, Mahle in Gananoque, Nestlé in Chesterville, Siegwerk in Prescott. This is just a few; most recently, the Hershey announcement in Smiths Falls, 500 jobs in a community of 900 people.
The eastern Ontario secretariat-we've had a couple of very positive things happen. We've suggested to this government in a co-operative way an eastern Ontario secretariat, an eastern Ontario prosperity fund. There's nothing in the budget to deal with those. The feds, through FedNor, put about $28 million into eastern Ontario in the last couple of years. That's leveraged another $66 million in investments. We're getting nothing from these folks. In fact, they've cut the tourism budget, they've cut the agricultural budget, and I said they have effectively abandoned eastern Ontario or small town, small city, rural eastern Ontario.
Interjections.
Mr. Runciman: The member from Cornwall does nothing but sit in here and interject. Why isn't he doing something for eastern Ontario in a meaningful way instead of criticizing people who are fighting for that region of the province, like our colleagues are? Why hasn't he brought in an eastern Ontario secretariat? Why doesn't he stand up and fight for that? Why doesn't he talk about an eastern Ontario prosperity fund instead of sitting in here trying to upset my speech when I'm fighting for eastern Ontario and he's not doing the job for those people?
I talked about abandoning-
Interjections.
The Acting Speaker: I would ask the member for Stormont-Dundas-Charlottenburgh to please come to order and allow the member for Leeds-Grenville to make his points. I'll look after you at the end of your speech.
Mr. Runciman: One of the newspapers in my riding talked about this and said, "While we don't necessarily agree with abandoning"-they thought that might be too strong a word. But I think "neglect" is certainly a word that stands up to scrutiny.
I only have four minutes or so left, and I want to talk about Hershey and the impact of that closure in conjunction with the closure of Rideau Regional, which the Liberal government has fast-tracked to close. That's going to have another significant impact. One of the things that I think this government could play a role in, if they really want to do something about helping a small community and that part of eastern Ontario, is talk to the municipality and some of the employees with respect to the possibility of forming a company, and perhaps with government assistance and working with Hershey, see if there's a possibility of fulfilling contracts for specific product lines for Hershey and perhaps other chocolate makers like Cadbury and Nestlé.
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I raise this possibility because I've seen it in my own riding with Black and Decker: Former employees of Black and Decker were able to work out a deal with Black and Decker where they're now providing the Workmate product out of the Brockville plant. They rent space from Black and Decker, and they also bid on other Black and Decker product lines. These are former employees. The equipment was there, they worked out a deal to purchase the equipment and enter into contracts and I think there's a new contract coming up in a short while for the continuation of the Workmate product line.
Phillips Cables, which closed down in my community: A number of the employees were able to locate angel investors and purchase equipment from the Phillips cable company. They now have a firm called Northern Cables, which has taken part of the niche market from the Phillips company and is working with Phillips in a cooperative way. That's the sort of thing I think we should be exploring, because this facility is so important not just to Smiths Falls and the surrounding area, but also to eastern Ontario.
A lot of people don't realize that the Hershey plant has about 400,000 to 500,000 visitors-tourists-who come to that Hershey plant every year on an annual basis. It's a very significant tourist draw, so we should be looking at that. I believe that if we can maintain a chocolate-making operation-now, there's speculation in the paper that they're going to open a chocolate store in Smiths Falls. That's not going to draw anybody other than anybody with a sweet tooth; but people really want to go, they bring school bus tours, all sorts of folks-bus tours-into that site to watch the chocolate-making operation. If we work with Hershey-this is something that should be actively explored. There is, I think, a real role for the provincial government to play here in terms of assisting, not just through economic development but through the tourism ministry as well.
Obviously, I believe there should be a fund similar to what Mr. Sterling has talked about, similar to what the federal government is doing, and we will probably be able to quite successfully tap into that federal fund to assist in this initiative. It's something that should be explored. I am very strong on pursuing this. I'll be talking to the Minister of Economic Development; I'll be talking to the mayor; I've had a brief chat with some of the representatives of the employee groups about this. I haven't fleshed this out, but rather than simply saying, "This is a fait accompli; we throw up our hands"-and I saw a story in the Brockville paper dated April 7: "Hershey Closure Confirmed." I think folks have pretty well accepted that this is a done deal. I don't think we should accept this. We should explore other opportunities. If the provincial government is really committed to helping out this part of the province, this is an opportunity that they should not miss out on.
I want to talk to the Minister of Economic Development. Perhaps she can drive this. Certainly, I think the mayor, Dennis Staples, who is an outstanding community leader, will be interested in pursuing this and exploring it. I suspect most of the employees at Hershey, as well, would be prepared to get engaged and get involved. And I see no reason why Hershey itself would not be interested in exploring the possibilities that might be inherent in this kind of possibility. They're looking for the best product at the best price, and if we can do that through this facility with well-trained employees and excellent equipment already in place, we should be able to accomplish this. That was the primary message.
I want to close off. You're being generous, Mr. Speaker, and I appreciate that. I'm just saying I think more attention has to be paid to my region of the province. Many communities are suffering and I call on the government to take up the slack here, to get off the bench and into the game.
