With new StatsCan numbers showing Ontario’s unemployment rate higher than the national average for the 63rd consecutive month – and no job creation plan in the budget, Cambridge MPP Rob Leone met with community and business leaders to seek their ideas to kick-start job creation.

 “The lack of jobs plan, in the McGuinty Liberal budget, has led me to engage local entrepreneurs, job creators and community leaders for their ideas to help build upon Tim Hudak’s plan for private sector job growth.”

Despite the urgent need for job creation, the 2012 Ontario Budget forecasts that only 59,000 net new jobs will be created across the province this year. This is half the number of new jobs that the 2011 budget predicted, added Leone.

The Ontario PC plan to create a dynamic economy that creates jobs includes:

• Balance the budget to give businesses confidence that the province can afford the things they need to expand, invest and create jobs – like lower taxes and good infrastructure,
• Lower businesses taxes to create a more competitive business environment,
• Permanently reduce Ontario’s 386,251 pieces of regulation by at least a third,
• Treat affordable energy as a cornerstone of economic growth; and,
• Create more skilled trades jobs by modernizing the apprenticeship system

“I have said before, and I continue to say that Dalton McGuinty’s budget was a surprisingly weak response to a looming $30-billion deficit,” Leone said. “Failing to tackle deficits and debt puts a further damper on job creation because it erodes business confidence inOntarioas a good place to invest, expand and create jobs.”

And given that the Liberals actively deter job creation through higher business taxes, which will take $1.5-billion out of the economy just when it’s most needed, “we must join with business leaders in charting a new course, toward a more dynamic economy that again creates good jobs,” Leone added.

“The Liberal budget took virtually no action on that front – especially with the total absence of a legislated public sector wage freeze. An Ontario PC government will,” Leone concluded.