The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.
Health Minister Deb Matthews isn’t the only Ontario Liberal cabinet minster under siege. Flying under that radar is a storm of pressure on Northern Development and Mines Minister Rick Bartolucci.
The Liberals’ decision in March to sell off the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission has put him in the eye of Hurricane North. The ONTC supplies bus and rail service to northeastern Ontario, and it runs a communications company that provides phone and Internet service.
The century-old agency was founded to facilitate the boom in mining and forestry, but times have changed, and Bartolucci says the $100-million annual subsidy, which means each passenger ride on the Northlander train is subsidized by $400, is no longer feasible when the government faces a $15-billion deficit.
Bus service will be contracted out so transportation to Toronto remains available, which is important for those who need access to health-care facilities in southern Ontario.
Still, the hurricane scenario fits. Howls of protest and calls for his resignation or retirement surround Bartolucci — from North Bay to Timmins and Cochrane. But in the eye of the hurricane is his riding of Sudbury, where the ONTC issue is barely registering. The Northlander train doesn’t come through Sudbury, and private firms can easily pick up the slack when ONTC buses are chopped.
The ONTC employs about 950 people, about a third of them in North Bay, where it has a service shop. The head of the chamber of commerce there, John Strang, wants Bartolucci’s resignation, as do the unions servicing the ONTC. Venerable North Bay Nugget columnist John R. Hunt thinks Bartolucci should be strapped to a cow catcher on an ONTC train.
Timmins Mayor Tom Laughren, who is vice-president of the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities, said the privatization will “have a devastating effect on industrial development in Northern Ontario towns and cities where industrial output is shipped to market by the ONTC.”
Brian Kelly, chair of the General Chairperson’s Association, which represents the ONTC unions, wants Bartolucci to retire.
The minister is having none of it. He insists the North has prospered under the Liberals. Six new hospitals have been built, and Hwy. 11 from Toronto to North Bay has been made into a divided four-lane highway. Construction on Hwy. 69 to four-lane it from Toronto to Sudbury is on pace for completion by 2017.
For the rest of this column, please go to the Sudbury Star website: http://www.thesudburystar.com/2012/08/30/macleod-hurricane-makes-tracks-for-minister