Fedeli acclaimed PC candidate for Nipissing

Former mayor Vic Fedeli was acclaimed at the local provincial candidate for the Nipissing Progressive Conservative Association Saturday afternoon at the Best Western.

During his acceptance speech Fedeli didn’t waste any time pointing his finger at the McGuinty Liberals for continuing to make Toronto centric policies like the Ontario's Strong Communities Act that don’t work for northern Ontario.

“North Bay has a beautiful industrial park off Booth Road; paved streets, sewer, water, utility poles, fire hydrants, everything you need to sitting there waiting for business.”

Fedeli said as mayor his council worked to develop the area which as companies like Atlas Copco, Goodyear and others invest millions of dollars and move operations to that end of town.

“Then it all came on day to a crashing halt,” he states.

“Bill 26, oddly enough named the Strong Communities Act was passed this now prevents communities from building on wetlands. Where before you could build and whatever land you used you could create an equal parcel of land elsewhere. It’s a very simple premise we did it for Home Depot. We built Home Depot on two acres of land in a wetland and we built a matching wetland elsewhere in Laurier Woods. All that came to an end that day.”

“So now you have this made in Toronto problem, a very real problem mind you where they have very few wetlands and they need to be protected, but sadly they made a made in Toronto one size fits all solution and directed it all across Ontario,” he notes.

“I say to you where the heck were the MPPs when they should have been saying hold on this is not good for northern Ontario … tell them take a second and fly over northern Ontario all you see are either rocks or wetlands … we build our cities on either rocks or wetlands, so because people were asleep at the switch our city was forced to mothball a $30 million industrial park. It’s done it’s finished -- two thousand yards from here you can no longer build in the Gateway Industrial Park and I figure it must be the only wetland in the entire world that has serviced streets and high speed internet.”

Fedeli contends that as MPP he will be in the room to ensure decisions like the Strong Communities Act will not see the light of day.



On hand to welcome the latest Conservative candidate to the race was party leader Tim Hudak.

“I’ve known Vic for 10 years and one of the strongest mayors I’ve seen preform and definitely one of the most successful mayors in North Bay’s history.

“He’s going to make a great addition to our PC team.”

Hudak also talked about issues like the Harmonized Sales Tax, high costs of heat and hydro for Ontario families and eco taxes but offered no strategy on the issues other than encouraging residents to visit the provincial Conservative website and have their say.

“I want to encourage folks to go to our website ‘Have your say Ontario’ to tell us how best to help. Some of the options we’ve asked families about; abolishing the HST on heat, hydro or gas, cutting the rate of income tax, basically all of these options are on line to hear from families what’s going to help them balance their family budget and have the confidence to win again -- they need a break.”



Hudak did promise that if he is elected premier he will eliminate the Local Health Integration Networks.