Mr. Speaker, northern Ontarians are tired of being treated like second-class citizens. We are tired of the ongoing attack on public transit in the north. We have seen the loss of air services, like Bearskin Airlines, and the privatization of road maintenance. Then the Liberals killed our train. When the provincial Liberals killed the train, they did it on the Thanksgiving weekend in 2012, stranding all the students who wanted to come home. The Liberal minister sneeringly told northern families that if they wanted their kids home, they should buy cars. That is not good enough.
Now they are going after the bus service. It is really unacceptable that someone who is going to Toronto for cancer treatment would have to stand outside at midnight, in -45°C weather, waiting for that bus to come down from Matheson, Kirkland Lake, and Englehart.
The Liberal and Conservative plan for northern Ontario has been the death-by-a-thousand-cuts policy. Public transit is a right. Northerners know that only New Democrats, provincial and federal, will stand up and defend them and fight for the north.