On June 2, Ontarians across the province will head to the polls for the Ontario general election to elect Members of Provincial Parliament to serve in the 43rd Parliament of Ontario.
York-Simcoe has been represented in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario since the 2007 provincial election and has seen the candidate for the Ontario PC Party win all four elections the electoral district has existed for.
With the election just a few months away, York-Simcoe incumbent Caroline Mulroney is on the campaign trail as she aims to once again secure the riding for the PC Party.
“I’ve served a full-term and I’ve been honoured to have been given this role by the residents of York-Simcoe,” she said. “I’ve been working hard to deliver on the promises that I made and to respond to the things I heard from people back in 2018. We’ve made a lot of progress on a number of those priorities, like the Bradford Bypass and building capital infrastructure projects, but we had a pandemic in the middle. Not that it slowed us down, but I think there’s a lot of building that still needs to happen and a lot of work I can do on behalf of the residents of York-Simcoe. I’d like to continue to do the job I was given.”
The Minister of Transportation since 2019, Mulroney’s proudest moment during her first term was the resurrection of the Bradford Bypass.
“The big highlight for me early on was Carrot Fest 2019,” she said. “The premier (Doug Ford) came and did some mainstreeting. He didn’t get very far because he was approached by so many people, and we had just announced the day before that we were going to be resuming the environmental assessment for the Bradford Bypass. People in Bradford were very excited, and I was thrilled he had come to Bradford to talk to people about what it means to them and how it would improve lives in Bradford and across York-Simcoe. That was a great day, and it was very exciting for me and the community.”
Though the Bradford Bypass was the seminal moment of her first term, Mulroney is thrilled about a number of other accomplishments over the last four years.
“I was so pleased to be able to announce we were moving ahead with a new south Bradford public school, and just recently I visited the site and saw the construction moving forward,” she said. “I’m also very pleased with the fact we’ve been able to preserve local treasures that we have like the North Gwillimbury Forest. I got to work with Minister (Steve) Clark right at the beginning of my mandate to see how we could go about protecting these 890 acres of green space in Georgina from development forever. We were able to accomplish that and announced last week that the land has now been added permanently to the Greenbelt.”
Now heading into election season, the main pillars of focus for the PC Party’s platform will be helping the province emerge from the pandemic through growth, job opportunity, and cost of living.
“Rebuilding Ontario’s economy and also making sure that we’re getting rid of the red tape and we’re creating the conditions for growth that weren’t there—we’re trying to create greater opportunities for workers,” Mulroney explained. “Obviously building highways and key infrastructure is a key pillar for us and it’s a pillar we can see playing out in Bradford and across York-Simcoe. (We need to be) Keeping costs down, one of the things I hear about regularly at the doors is that the cost of living is going up and the pandemic has exasperated that as well.
Along with working towards recovery, the PC Party is adamant that the province must remain open going forward and the best way to ensure that is through investments in the healthcare sector. Earlier this week Health Minister Christine Elliott announced the province is planning to invest $1 billion over the next three years in home care to help take pressure off of hospitals.
“We also have a plan to stay open, we’ve made critical investments in our hospital capacity and recruitment and training efforts for personnel within the health and human service sector so that we can have the capacity to handle whatever happens in the coming weeks and months ahead so that we can still keep our economy and province open,” she said. “Through this plan, we’ll be building new homes, roads, and highways, we’ll give taxpayers a break and putting more money back in the pockets of Ontarians and creating new and better jobs across Ontario.”
Representing Bradford West Gwillimbury, East Gwillimbury, Georgina, and King as MPP of York-Simcoe, Mulroney says the people of York-Simcoe are the “foundation” of what she does as she works to represent their voices every day at Queens Park.
“Being the minister of transportation has given me tremendous opportunity to travel across Ontario and what I’ve observed in a way is that York-Simcoe is a microcosm of Ontario,” she said. “We have such a diverse population, we’re growing so fast, and York-Simcoe is so welcoming to new residents every day. We have rural communities, we’ve got the marsh, we have beautiful Lake Simcoe, and I find every year it’s becoming more representative of the province. Which means there’s very diverse needs across the riding and that’s why it’s critical to be connected to residents on a regular basis through my constituency office, through door knocking, through events, through just conversations that I have with people about what they’re looking for out of their government.”
While at the recent Khalsa Day flag raising in Bradford, Mulroney referenced Coun. Raj Sandhu’s explanation as to why people come to Bradford as a reason she finds representing the community to be a prestigious honour.
“It’s because our community celebrates different cultures so well and welcomes people from diverse backgrounds,” she said. “That’s reflected in the energy we have in Bradford and that’s why so many people continue to move here. It’s a great place to live and a great place to represent.”
