Ford will cost Ontarians

Axing cap and trade will cost millions

Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath issued the following statement:

"I believe big polluters should pay for the damage they're doing -- and that we should use that money to support Ontario families and trade-exposed industries. And Ontarians aren't buying Ford's bogus idea that cancelling cap and trade would cause big gas companies to lower their prices at the pump.

The province brings in revenue from cap and trade. My platform commits at least 25 per cent of that revenue to communities and individuals who today are carrying more than their fair share of the burden — like northern, rural, and low-income Ontarians, as well as trade-exposed industries. And, I'm going to dedicate $50 million in cap-and- trade revenues to create a new no-interest, on-bill home-efficiency retrofit program, so people can improve the energy efficiency of their home. I'll target the program to those facing the greatest financial barriers to lowering their energy use.

Kathleen Wynne let us down when it came to cap and trade -- she failed to make it transparent and failed to ensure it was everyday Ontario people that benefited from it. But Doug Ford's promise to axe cap and trade will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. His cuts -- here and across the board -- will mean higher costs, even worse health care and fewer programs for Ontario families.

And it certainly won't save drivers any money. Ontarians don't buy that oil companies will voluntarily lower their prices in exchange for being let out of pollution cap obligations.

The good news is that we don't have to choose between Wynne's failure to implement a fair and transparent cap and trade system -- and Ford's threats to take millions of dollars away from Ontarians and give it to big oil companies. We can make June's change in government a change for the better."