{"id":20028,"date":"2018-03-07T16:13:01","date_gmt":"2018-03-07T21:13:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=20028"},"modified":"2018-03-07T16:13:01","modified_gmt":"2018-03-07T21:13:01","slug":"we-dont-have-time-for-a-leader-in-training-says-elliott","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/we-dont-have-time-for-a-leader-in-training-says-elliott\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe don\u2019t have time for a leader in training,\u201d says Elliott"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ontarians are going to the polls on June 7, and, if the Progressive Conservatives form government, they \u201cdon\u2019t have time for a leader in training.\u201d
\nSo says Christine Elliott, one of the two leadership frontrunners hoping to take the helm of the Progressive Conservative (PC) party this week after a heated \u2013 and unusually brief \u2013 leadership campaign.
\nMs. Elliott, a former MPP and, most recently, Ontario\u2019s Patients Ombudsman, was in Aurora on Saturday morning to meet with local party faithful to deliver her message of proven experience to take on Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne at the polls.
\n\u201cWe need to elect a Progressive Conservative majority government on June 7,\u201d Ms. Elliott told the packed crowd at Aw, Shucks. \u201cIt is not just because we, as party members, want to win; it\u2019s because Ontario needs us to win. We simply cannot afford another four more years of the Wynne Liberals. It is absolutely unaffordable in Ontario right now and we have to win on June 7.
\n\u201cJust look at what has happened in the 15 years since they came together in 2003: hydro rates are going through the roof, our economy, which was once the envy of Canada, is now faltering, we have business owners who feel they are actually under attack by this government, that people are feeling the Wynne Liberals want them to either fold up their businesses or retire. We can\u2019t have that because what is happening is our students are graduating from our colleges and universities with huge student debt and no jobs to go to.\u201d
\nThis is not Ms. Elliott\u2019s first time running for the PC party\u2019s top job. She ran for the leadership in 2009, coming in third behind Tim Hudak, and Frank Klees, and ran for leadership once again in 2015, coming in just behind Patrick Brown with 38 per cent of the vote.
\nParty members began voting for their preferred leadership candidate on Friday and voting continues through March 8 before the votes are counted and the winner is announced in Markham on Saturday.
\n\u201cThis is a really unusual time, an unusual leadership election because we have a general election in fewer than 100 days,\u201d said Ms. Elliott. \u201cThere is a lot of work we have to do to hold the party together, there is a lot of work that has to be done there, but it is not as bad as some people would say. We have been hearing a lot of negative things in the last couple of weeks, but I do believe we have a firm foundation. We are ready to go and we\u2019re ready to win.\u201d
\nMs. Elliott used Saturday morning\u2019s rally as an opportunity to tout the Progressive Conservative\u2019s party platform, a document drafted with input from the grassroots that she said was \u201cgreat \u2013 with one exception.\u201d
\nThat one exception, she said, was the proposal for a carbon tax contained within the party\u2019s People\u2019s Guarantee. Ms. Elliott said she has heard from many people that a carbon tax would simply be unaffordable and put undue burdens on local families.
\nBut, some of the key tenets of the plan she supports are income tax cuts \u2013 22.5 per cent for middle income earners \u2013 along with increased funding for mental health and addiction. This includes funding for autism, a dementia strategy, addressing the \u201copioid crisis\u201d and helping people with mental health challenges access services for therapy.
\n\u201cI have spoken with several families that have daughters with significant eating disorders and they are being told they have to wait a year for service,\u201d she said. \u201cIf that is the case, we could lose those young people and that is simply not acceptable to me. We also have a problem with lack of long term care beds. I heard a lot about that in my job as Patient Ombudsman.
\n\u201cWe have people in our hospitals: 25 per cent of patients in any given hospital in Ontario at any time that are frail, elderly seniors that can\u2019t go home, but they can\u2019t leave the hospital because there is nowhere else for them to go. We would build 15,000 long term care spaces within the first five years and another 15,000 in the five years thereafter.
\n\u201cIf we can deal with that issue, we can also deal with overcrowding in hospitals. Many hospitals are routinely operating at over 100 per cent capacity. We hear about \u2018hallway medicine\u2019\u2026 and that is because there are no beds for them to move to. If we deal with the long-term care problem we can deal with a lot of hallway medicine issues.\u201d
\nBefore entering politics, Ms. Elliott said she has worked in a number of sectors, including several years as a bank auditor. With that in mind, she said she welcomes the opportunity when Premier to go through each program introduced by the Liberal party line by line and do a \u201cvalue for money audit\u2026through 15 years of Liberal waste and mismanagement.\u201d
\n\u201cI truly believe the taxpayers of Ontario would expect that if a program isn\u2019t providing any value we shouldn\u2019t continue with it,\u201d she said. \u201cWe should then put the money into the programs that we have in our platform that was developed with our grassroots members who have talked to us about what we really need to have. I really would welcome that opportunity to do that line by line analysis. I know one of the other candidates has suggested just cut four cents, six cents, it might even be 10 cents right now, off the dollar, but I really don\u2019t think we can do that because then you might be cutting out programs that do have value. I think you need to take the time to go through the program line by line and decide on each and every program.\u201d
\nBut, before that can take place, and their platform planks can be implemented, they will, of course, have to secure power. They might not be able to implement everything right away (\u201cBecause when we win we\u2019re going to have to see what the economic situation is. As bad as we think it is right now, I imagine we\u2019re going to find out it is a lot worse than that.\u201d), but she says she is more than up for the task.
\n\u201cWe need to make sure that we have somebody who is going to be able to go up and stand up to Kathleen Wynne,\u201d said Ms. Elliott. \u201cWhether you like her or not, you have to admit she is a survivor. She\u2019s a good communicator, she\u2019s very intelligent, and we know the Liberals are going to throw whatever they can out there to make sure they win this election. We need somebody who is going to stand up to her and take her on, and I can tell you I have done that many times at Queen\u2019s Park in the past and I look forward to doing it in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ontarians are going to the polls on June 7, and, if the Progressive Conservatives form government, they \u201cdon\u2019t have time for a leader in training.\u201d
\nSo says Christine Elliott, one of the two leadership frontrunners hoping…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20026,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/2018-03-08-06.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5d2","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-20 18:54:34","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}