Donald Trump’s escalating trade war and threats to our economy should be a wake-up call for Ontario’s Conservative government to bring a robust economic plan that puts Ontario and Canada first. Doug Ford didn’t give us that.
Ontarians want to do their part and support our country and province, and we need to make it easy for them to do so. But instead of a real strategy, the Conservatives proposed to recognize the last Friday of each June as "Buy Ontario, Buy Canadian Day."
Every day should be "Buy Ontario, Buy Canadian Day," not just one day. That’s why the Ontario NDP introduced a law to mandate the labelling of Canadian-made products, including food, so Ontarians can visit the supermarket and choose to buy Canadian products, supporting local businesses and local job creation. The Conservatives put politics ahead of patriotism and voted our motion down.
The moment we are in calls for unity of purpose, to take good ideas from all sides of the political spectrum, so we can put our province first.
What a missed opportunity. According to Bank of Montreal economist Robert Kavcic, even a modest shift in consumer spending toward Canadian goods could add $10 billion in value to the economy alone.
This legislative session, Ontario should have flexed its hefty purchasing muscle and made firm commitments to buy, build and invest in local projects, products and services.
Ontario is investing $200 billion in infrastructure projects, including hospitals, highways, transit, schools and child-care spots. These investments should be allocated to public agencies, and Ontario and Canadian businesses first, not foreign companies. The government should also mandate conditions to maximize these investments, such as requiring projects to use resources from our most trade-impacted sectors, such as steel, aluminum and lumber.
Ensuring more government dollars go to Canadian and Ontario businesses and workers has huge economic value. Every year, the Ontario government buys $29 billion in goods and services, but only $3 billion goes to Ontario-based businesses. That number should be much higher.
Over the past few months, trade associations, unions and businesses have been providing examples to the government on how exactly Ontario can support specific workers, public institutions and business sectors.
The Ontario Federation of Agriculture recommended Ontario require institutions, like schools, hospitals and prisons, to prioritize buying locally grown food because it would help Ontario farms and strengthen local supply chains.
What the Conservatives have proposed instead is a new $35-million Ontario grape program to encourage wine producers to use Ontario-grown grapes. While support for our wine sector is welcome, our entire agricultural sector needs support to withstand the impact of the tariff war, not just the wine sector.
Canada’s largest private sector union, Unifor, joined our call for governments to harness our lumber resources and build affordable housing to fix our national housing crisis. This plan should include manufacturing housing in Ontario factories to create jobs, speed up housing construction and lower construction costs.
Unifor also called on Ontario to contract with Canadian companies to build new transit lines and increase the Canadian-content requirements for municipal and provincial purchases of streetcars, subway cars and buses, especially electric vehicles. Ontario has transit vehicle manufacturing plants in Thunder Bay and Kingston that are operating below capacity.
In Ontario, the standard requirement is that transit vehicles purchased with provincial funding must have at least 25 per cent Canadian content. The Conservatives relaxed this rule and allowed the massive Ontario Line subway project to be built by a U.S. company that was given the flexibility to meet a lower Canadian-content requirement of 10 per cent. That wasn’t a good move then, and it looks even worse now.
Ontarians want the Ontario government to have their back during this economically challenging time. Strong "buy local" and "build local" policies will help Ontario keep jobs in our province, keep small- and medium-sized businesses afloat, and help trade-impacted industries, like our manufacturing sector, weather Trump’s economic storm. What are we waiting for?
Jessica Bell is the MPP for University–Rosedale and the NDP's finance critic.
