Just more than a year ago, Ontario elected Premier Doug Ford, ending 15 years of Liberal government. Here in Bradford West Gwilimbury, Caroline Mulroney replaced the late Julia Munro as York-Simcoe MPP.
A year later, it is worth taking stock of what Bradford West Gwillimbury needs from a provincial government in order for our town to thrive.
Now, full disclosure: I worked for the former Liberal premier and I also consulted for the town to get the Highway 400-404 Link back on the province’s growth plan, so you should know I have been involved firsthand, in some ways, with what I am about to outline.
That said, I am not here to make some partisan digs or promote a political agenda, but rather to simply lay out what I believe our town needs and how it will require the provincial government working in tandem to deliver these critical projects.
So here goes.
First and foremost: Bradford West Gwillimbury needs new schools. Our elementary schools in particular are overcrowded; we need at least three new elementary schools built, and quite frankly we needed them built yesterday. We are also on the cusp of needing a second public high school. We also drastically need more child-care spaces.
Schools are expensive; an elementary school is at least $11 million. We know the Ford government has a mandate to reduce the deficit, and everyone knows Doug Ford is essentially allergic to big spending. But here’s the reality: it costs more not to build new schools than it does to build ‘em.
I’m not speaking in some rhetorical sense about the missed opportunity costs of failing to invest in children. I’m speaking instead about the actual facility and maintenance costs that pile up when schools are not repaired, and schools that are overcrowded run up their maintenance costs far faster than schools that operate at a sensible capacity. As the adage goes, sometimes you have to spend money to make money.
Secondly, Bradford West Gwillimbury and Innisfil will soon need their own hospital. There are preliminary plans to open a new campus of Barrie’s Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre in Innisfil. Bradford and Innisfil will continue to grow, and it will soon become impractical to travel to Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket. The Ford government can work to support this project and do good public planning to move it forward.
Furthermore, we all know far too well that we need to fix traffic congestion. That means continuing to do the work to expand GO trains to all-day service to and from Union Station. It also means more parking spaces at the station. This is an area the Ford government seems to want to move on, and it cannot come soon enough.
It also means moving forward with the Highway 400-404 Link, as promised. Mulroney has rightly identified this as a top priority project.
I think we are all sensible people and know you cannot build a highway overnight. But what you can do is get started. Minister Mulroney can start to deliver funding for the various engineering and environmental studies, and create momentum around the project by slowly but surely getting things going. Momentum on an infrastructure project is hard to stop once started, but getting started can be hard. But you can also start small: how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
Schools, health care and transportation infrastructure are vital public services any government needs to get right. If Mulroney and Ford can deliver these projects to our town, our town will be the better for it. I wish them well and look forward to seeing what they deliver.
Jonathan Scott is a public affairs consultant and writer, who has managed election campaigns for several politicians around Ontario, including BWG Mayor Rob Keffer.
