The Ontario Election And Seniors: a PC Party Response
With the Ontario provincial election coming up, we asked the four political parties (Green, Liberal, NDP and PC) to respond to several questions of concern to seniors and their families.QUESTIONS:
- How do you plan to promote positive aging in Ontario and how will you make Ontario a more age-friendly province?
- What specific things will you do to make health care more accessible and affordable to seniors?
- What will you do to increase seniors' economic well-being including: employment access, adequate pensions, increased affordability of prescription drugs and care, and affordable housing?
- How will you create supportive infrastructure for seniors in Ontario? Will you establish a cabinet committee on aging and provide financial incentives so that service hubs for seniors can be developed where required?
As each party leader sends their answers, we will share them with you. The second response we received was from the PCs.
PC PARTY OF ONTARIO, Tim Hudak:
1. How do you plan to promote positive aging in Ontario and how will you make Ontario a more age-friendly province?
Seniors spent their lives working hard, paying taxes, and playing by the rules. They deserve a government that delivers the best health care in the country and ensures they can afford to live their retirement years in dignity and security.
During my time as Ontario PC Leader, I’ve had the opportunity to travel around the province and, in every city and town I visit, I speak to seniors about what an Ontario PC Government can do to make life easier. Whether I’m in Toronto, Windsor, North Bay, or Ottawa, the two things I hear again and again are seniors are struggling to pay their skyrocketing hydro bills, and they’re worried health care services won’t be there when they need them.
Here are two ways an Ontario PC government will provide relief and comfort for seniors on these issues.
Increased annual investments in health care
First, we will put patients at the centre of our public health care system. We will increase annual investments in health care by $6.1 billion by the end of our first term, while rooting out the fraud, waste, and needless bureaucracy that diverts hundreds of millions of health care dollars from the frontlines every year.
Remove HST from hydro and home heating bills
Second, we will provide immediate home energy bill relief by taking the HST off hydro and home heating bills, and the Debt Retirement Charge off hydro bills, too. These three measures alone will give the average household $275 in relief every year, but we’re not stopping there. Dalton McGuinty’s mandatory smart meters place an unfair burden on seniors, forcing them to pay even more on their hydro bills. We will make those mandatory tax machines optional, and let you decide what kind of energy pricing works best for you and your household.
2. What specific things will you do to make health care more accessible and affordable to seniors?
For the amount of tax dollars Ontario’s seniors put into the system, they should receive the highest quality health care services in the country, but sadly, that’s not the case. Care in Ontario today is too focused on forms, processes, long lines, and bureaucracy, when it should be built from the patient out.
An Ontario PC government will make the patient – not bureaucracies, not administrators – the focus of our health care system. We will grow annual health care funding by $6.1 billion by the end of our first term.
Under Dalton McGuinty, we’ve seen too many health care dollars go to waste on scandals like the $1 billion eHealth boondoggle, or to needless bureaucracy like the LHINs. We will root out the fraud, waste and needless bureaucracy that divert hundreds of millions of health care dollars from the frontlines every year – and invest that money in patient care. We’ll start by eliminating the unelected, unaccountable LHINs.
Double the caregiver tax credit
We will also double the Caregiver Tax Credit for those who care for an elderly or critically ill family member. Families that choose to care for a loved one in their own homes make a significant sacrifice and bear a financial burden. We will double the tax credit for everyone who takes on these important responsibilities, providing them with up to $425 in tax relief on their tax return.
And when the time comes when a family makes the decision for their loved one to move into a long-term care home – we want to give them the peace of mind they deserve.
Expanding long-term care
We will support our seniors and free up hospital beds by expanding long-term care with 5,000 new long-term care beds by the end of our first mandate. We will target these new beds in communities where they will do the most good relieving pressure on our healthcare system.
We will renovate an additional 35,000 long-term care beds over the next ten years to give more seniors additional privacy and dignity. This also means shorter wait times and less worry about receiving appropriate and comfortable care for an aging parent.
These measures taken together will allow seniors to access health care with more dignity, more flexibility, and more say in determining who they acquire for these important services.
3. What will you do to increase seniors' economic well-being including: employment access, adequate pensions, increased affordability of prescription drugs and care, and affordable housing?
I will work to protect the economic well-being of Ontario seniors by making life more affordable and putting more money back in their pockets.
Seniors are on fixed incomes, making it difficult to cope with skyrocketing expenses of any kind. It would seem the only one that doesn’t get it is Dalton McGuinty, who brought in new, unexpected taxes and increased hydro bills with energy experiments like his mandatory smart meters.
Here are three ways an Ontario PC government would provide relief:
One, we will remove the HST off hydro and home heating bills, and the Debt Retirement Charge off hydro bills, too. These three measures alone will give the average household $275 in relief every year.
Two, we will unplug Dalton McGuinty’s mandatory smart meters that place an unfair burden on seniors, forcing them to pay even more on their hydro bills. We will make those mandatory tax machines optional, and let you decide what kind of energy pricing works best for you and your household.
And three, we will let senior couples reduce their taxable income through income sharing. We will change the tax system to allow all couples to share up to $50,000 of their income for tax purposes. A senior couple, who together have an annual income of $70,000, could save almost $1,400 per year in taxable income.
These measures, in addition to our income tax cuts, and initiatives like cancelling the eco taxes on everyday items, will help keep more money in the pockets of Ontario seniors.
4. How will you create supportive infrastructure for seniors in Ontario? Will you establish a cabinet committee on aging and provide financial incentives so that service hubs for seniors can be developed where required?
Ontario’s seniors have worked hard their entire lives and should be able to get around their communities safely and quickly.
More than $35 billion for new infrastructure
We will invest more than $35 billion to pay for new infrastructure – much of it in transit and transportation – over our first three years in office, and use innovative technologies to help reduce congestion.
We will give all Ontario communities a share of the gas tax for the transportation projects. Under Dalton McGuinty, only one in five municipalities gets a share of the gas tax, even though families in every community pay the same gas tax. I will ensure all of Ontario’s 444 municipalities get their fair share, and are given the ability to choose which transportation priority they want to spend it on, whether it’s a road, bridge, or public transit.
In addition to helping seniors get to their appointments easier and faster, we’re also going to reduce the hassle of government transactions, making them easier and faster.
We will give seniors more ways to get routine government transactions done. Municipal offices, private businesses, and the internet will be engaged to make transactions simpler, more efficient, and more readily available. For those transactions that must be completed in person – like driver’s licence and health card renewals – we will extend the hours of government offices so seniors have a more convenient way to deal with government.
