Some of the hottest topics during the 2018 Ontario election campaign have barely blipped on the radar in this race — and hydro rates are at the top of the list.
The rising cost of electricity dominated the waning days of the provincial Liberal government and the last provincial campaign, which saw the soon-to-be-victorious Progressive Conservatives promise to drop the rates by 12 per cent.
But in the four years since, hydro rates have actually gone up by about four per cent.
"It's high! I live in an 1,100-square-foot house. There's only two of us and it's $280 a month," said Valerie Kennedy, a 61-year-old retiree who lives in Englehart.
"Yeah, you have to think about doing your laundry in the evening, when you'd like to be having a glass of wine."
The PCs now say the 12 per cent referred to how much the cost of power would have gone up if the Liberals had stayed in office for another four years.
The three main parties are not making specific promises about hydro rates in this election and instead are pledging to lower electricity bills by helping people retrofit their homes.
Warren Mabee, director of the Queen's Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy in Kingston, Ont., says voters are too busy shelling out more for gasoline to worry about their hydro costs.
"Almost a doubling of gas prices that we've seen in some areas has a much bigger impact on a household budget over the course of a month than the rate changes we've seen on the electricity front," he said.
Much of the outrage over hydro rates four years ago landed on the desk of Glenn Thibeault, at the time the Sudbury MPP and Liberal energy minister, who says he isn't surprised that it's faded as an issue in this election.
"Back then, the opposition did a very good job of painting the energy issue into a corner where we were always explaining and defending," he said.
"The old saying in politics is when you're explaining, you're losing. And to help people understand the electricity system, you have to explain it. Well, the five minutes it would take me to explain it, people would still be frustrated."
Thibeault said he is pleased to see that the PC government has kept the hydro subsidy program he helped bring in, although it no longer goes by the Liberal name "the Fair Hydro Plan."
School closures
School closures in rural areas across Ontario was also a hot topic toward the end of the 15-year term of the Liberal government, which brought in a moratorium that the Ford government has kept in place.
In this election, the parties have been more focused on how much they're spending to maintain and renovate school buildings.
But some northern Ontario towns are waiting and worrying to see when their school could next be on the chopping block — especially with four school boards competing for a dwindling number of students.
Levack and Larchwood elementary schools in the Onaping area of Greater Sudbury have come up for accommodation review several times, most recently seeing Grade 7 and 8 move to Chelmsford.
"Being from a small town, we're always fighting for our services, for our education, for our recreational facilities. It's all we know, unfortunately," said Chantelle Gorham, a Levack mother with two children in school.
"It's something we're always on guard for, and to be honest, it's draining to always have to fight for these services."
'Hallway health care'
Overcrowding in hospitals became one of the favourite talking points of opposition parties in the 2018 election campaign, branding it as "hallway health care" or "hallway medicine."
Both the Tories and the NDP vowed to put an end to it, and the New Democrats are still promising that in the 2022 campaign.
In Sudbury, Health Sciences North still has dozens of patients being cared for in "non-conventional" spaces, including hallways, offices and a downtown Sudbury hotel.
CEO Dominic Giroux said Sudbury is in a somewhat "unique" situation, because the hospital was built with 31 per cent fewer beds than what the city had before, unlike the "right-sized" hospitals built in North Bay and Thunder Bay.
"Pretty much everything we've asked for in the last four years in terms of short-term capacity solutions have been approved," he said.
The $36 million received for 198 temporary beds makes him "optimistic" that the province will pay for further expansion of Health Sciences North — especially considering the population over 70 is expected to go up by 35 per cent in the next eight years.
"We will need more space," Giroux said.
Resource revenue sharing
Northern Ontario mining towns have long complained that they don't get enough property tax from their primary industries to properly repair roads and other infrastructure.
In the 2018 election, the Progressive Conservatives promised to share some of the millions the province collects from mining and forestry with northern cities and towns.
In the fall of 2021, it announced a $15-million fund that sees every municipality in the region get a cheque every year.
"I must admit I was pleasantly surprised, because it kept being put off," said Rick Owen, a town councillor in Kirkland Lake, which received $220,000 this year.
"Nowhere near what the original promise was. It does help, but we have to push harder to get that amount increased."
In this election, the Liberals are promising to give five per cent of the total mining tax revenue to northern communities, while New Democrats say they would give everything the province collects from mines and forests to First Nations.
Broadband internet
The would-be premiers in the 2018 election talked about expanding high-speed internet across Ontario, with the Conservatives pledging $315 million and the NDP looking to spend $1 billion.
But after two years of a pandemic where people worked and went to school from home, the major parties are being much more specific in this campaign.
The PCs, NDP and Liberals all say they will bring broadband internet to every home and business in the province by 2025.
"Not going to happen by 2025. There's no way," said Geoff Hatton, president of Sudbury-based NetSpectrum.
"You'd have to be building those projects now."
But Hatton said in the two years since COVID-19 hit, there has been an influx of federal and provincial funding that has helped his company improve internet service in Wahnapitae First Nation, East Ferris, Redbridge, St. Charles and other small northern communities.
"We can certainly make an improvement, and I think it's been going that way," he said, noting that some of the provincial contracts are geared only to the big three telecom companies, not local providers like NetSpectrum.
"I don't see this is as being a temporary action item for any government."
Hydro, hallway health care and other hot topics of the last election: Where are they now? - CBC.ca
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