Ontario Liberals launch northern platform

Home health care, highway safety and a gas price watchdog are among the priorities for the Ontario Liberals if they form a government after June's provincial election, the party announced Friday.

The priorities were outlined Friday as the party represented by Bill Mauro, Liberal candidate for Thunder Bay-Atikokan,and Michael Gravelle, Liberal candidate for Thunder Bay-Superior North announced its Northern Platform.

The platform includes:

• Adding 5,500 personal support worker jobs in northern and remote communities;
• Creating an independent gas price watchdog to "ensure there is no price fixing on transportation fuels anywhere in our province";
• Improving access to the Ring of Fire by building a year-round access road and making improvements to existing highways and bridges;
• Twin Highway 69 between Parry Sound and Sudbury, and continue to four-lane the Trans-Canada Highway through Ontario until it's completed;
• Increase Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation funding to $150 million over the next three years, and expand it to better support infrastructure projects and "large-scale investment opportunities."

Mauro said details regarding the gas price watchdog haven't yet been worked out; it's unclear how much power the watchdog will actually have.

"People feel like there is an inequity in how we are treated here in Northern Ontario when it comes to gasoline, and diesel as well," Mauro told CBC News. "We've seen where regulation has not really proven to keep prices lower. A number of other provinces have been regulating their fuels for some time, and the evidence does not seem to be there that it does anything to lower gas prices."

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Mauro said the personal support worker jobs are needed, as the province has added long-term care beds, but there aren't enough personal support workers to staff them.

The platform also includes $500 million over three years to boost broadband in northern communities, as well asfurther funding for cardiac surgery at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre, which is expected to be up and running by 2020, Mauro said.

The Ontario election will take place June 7.