When Premier Dalton McGuinty came to power he promised he would improve our health care system and do it without raising our taxes. But local PC nomination candidate Paul Hong says he broke both promises.

“The people of Dufferin- Caledon work very hard for their money and they expect that their tax dollars will fund the basic health care services they need,” he said .

“You don’t deserve to be in government when you break promises, raise taxes on hard-working families and then force them to struggle to pay for important health care services you used to fund publicly.”

Mr. Hong said that during the last provincial election, Mr. McGuinty signed a very public pledge with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation where he promised to not to raise taxes.

He also pledged to improve public health care. But in his first budget, he raised taxes on working families and then he cut important health care services that Ontarians have come to count on.

“Specifically, his government cut health care funding for physiotherapy, chiropractic services and eye exams,” Mr. Hong said in a press release.

“When I pay my taxes I expect that my publicly funded health care system will pay for the eye exams I need,” said Rose D’Arpino, of Caledon. “I think it’s just plain wrong that the McGuinty government raised taxes and cut services for the people who need them.”

Groups like OPSEU’s Health Care Professional Division have argued that if the people of Ontario don’t have affordable and adequate access to services like physiotherapy they risk never fully or properly recovering from their ailments and/or risk re-injury. They also note that such cuts could result in greater cost to our economy.

Mr. Hong cited the recent Ontario Auditor General’s Report as showing the McGuinty government is falling down on health care. “For example, the Ontario government is 14 years behind in its efforts to replace the old red and white health care cards with the newer green cards with photos and other enhanced security features. In fact, there are 300,000 more cards in circulation than there are people in the province.

“It also turns out that patients and staff at Ontario’s hospitals may be exposed to dangerous levels of radiation as a result of a

lack of guidelines for the use of CT Scans. One CT scan can be the equivalent of 500 chest x-rays.

“In addition, the Auditor General used terms like ‘misleading’ and ‘should be taken with a grain of salt’ when referencing the McGuinty government’s claims that it is reducing wait times for health care services.

“In fact, the Advertising Standards Canada (ASC), an independent body that oversees advertising in Canada, ruled on two separate complaints about the advertisements run by the McGuinty government. The ASC stated that the advertisements “made inaccurate claims” and omitted relevant information.”

The candidate said that rather than spending $2 million dollars “on misleading advertisements, the government should have spent it on actual health services. Premier McGuinty should apologize to the taxpayers of Ontario.”

A Caledon resident for 22 years, Mr. Hong is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario’s Richard Ivey School of Business and Osgoode Hall Law School, who is working at an international law firm in Toronto. He is also a Maritime Surface Officer in the Canadian Forces Naval Reserve (currently on leave from the military for the duration of the campaign). The Dufferin- Caledon PC Association is selecting its candidate at a nomination meeting on January 13.