The Liberal government is to blame for the urban-rural divide plaguing Ontario

A letter to the editor of the Owen Sound Times, by Meaford's Jim Brunow, catalogs many of the issues where the Liberal government has negatively impacted his region.

The Liberal government is to blame for the urban-rural divide plaguing Ontario - Owen Sound Sun Times - Ontario, CA:

The provincial government continues to cause great harm to rural Ontario. The recent provincial election demonstrated there is a serious rural-urban divide and the government has done precious little to acknowledge or address it. Perhaps they are punishing rural communities for not voting Liberal.

The opposition parties need to be more effective in dealing with this divide. The Liberal party and the people of urban Ontario need to be put on notice that this issue is so important and so offensive that the Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats are prepared to bring the government down if it is not addressed. A communication strategy and network is needed to keep the issue in the spotlight.

Examples of what is happening include:

• Closing the jails in Owen Sound and Walkerton without proper due diligence, then saying that we need to build new jails.
• Promising to fund court security costs, then deducting the funding from provincial transfers.
• Decimating local school bus companies through new rules favouring foreign multinationals.
• Freezing conservation authority budgets for 11 years and dumping their costs on municipalities that are already struggling financially.
• Forcing industrial wind turbines on communities that don't want them due to negative impacts on health, property values, tourism, new home construction and the economic and social fabric of the community.
• More than 500 Bruce-Grey families needed grants from the United Way in the last 13 months to heat their homes, with the majority of grants for hydro.
• Pushing for the closure of coal plants to justify the Green Energy Act, then encouraging garbage incinerators that produce emissions that are harmful to human health and burn items that should be recycled.

Read the full letter at the Owen Sound Sun Times site