Gilles and Rick duke it out

Here is an exchange which took place in the Ontario legislature during Question Period Tuesday between Timmins-James Bay NDP MPP Gilles Bisson and Northern Development and Mines Minister Rick Bartolucci:

"Prior to the provincial election, your leader in North Bay promised the community and workers at the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission that should he form the government, not one job would be lost at the ONTC. Now, after the election, your government announces that the size of the workforce at the ONTC is going to be reduced from 600 to 400 jobs by way of early retirement, and hardly any of those jobs are going to be replaced with new workers."

"My question is this: Why did your government break your promise to the community of North Bay and to the workers at the ONTC?"

Hon Rick Bartolucci (Minister of Northern Development and Mines): "I'm very, very proud that this was another promise kept by Dalton McGuinty and the Ontario Liberals. The Tories' plan to privatize the ONTC was a failure. We made a commitment to end that privatization plan, and we delivered on that promise. We are very proud of what we have been able to accomplish in this short time in office. What we've allowed to happen -- because we believed in the people of North Bay, we believed in the people along the Highway 11 corridor, we believed that the ONTC should not have been privatized. People believed it and that's why they voted they way they voted, and we lived up to that commitment."

Mr Bisson: "Minister, you have a funny way of keeping your commitments and your promises. Yes, the promise you made was that you would not privatize; fine. But you also promised, and I quote the Premier when he was touring through North Bay -- boy, I need glasses these days -- "We've got a declining population here in North Bay. You take away those 600 jobs or a percentage of them and the spinoff jobs that will be lost is just not the right thing to do. That's the kind of things that we as Liberals fight against." Two hundred jobs are going to be lost in North Bay under your watch, Minister. My question, simply put, is this -- and please answer: Why did you break your promise to the workers and to the community of North Bay?"

Hon Mr Bartolucci: "It's amazing how only the NDP can try to turn a good-news story into something bad. We lived up to the commitment to end the privatization plan with the ONTC, as planned by the Tories. We did that because we trusted the people of North Bay to come up with the solution. We appreciate the ideas that they came back to us with. And so, on March 4, I was very happy to announce a strategic alliance between ON Telcom and Telus. I was pleased to announce that there would be a voluntary -- voluntary -- retirement package offered to the employees at the ONTC. I was pleased to announce that we directed the ONTC board to ensure that there was a long-term strategy attached so that we'll never have the uncertainty that was present over the course of the last eight years along the Highway 11 corridor."