Quote:
Originally Posted by eternallyme
If it became a separate province, I foresee a massive resource boom since it would be free from the clutches of Toronto environmentalists.
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Do you not realize that we have environmentalists up here too? Bruce Hyer might have only joined the Greens after leaving the NDP, but he always was known to be an environmentalist. Most of the members of Thunder Bay's city council supports environmentalism, carbon pricing, the elimination of coal-generated power (though not the closure of our useless and expensive power plant), they support bike lanes in the city. They were each elected with an average of nearly 45% of the vote in their jurisdictions. One of them is actually a Green Party member. (Based on my best research, Thunder Bay's council is composed of 4 PCs, 4 Liberals, 3 NDP and 1 Green. The mayor claims to be a member of the PCs, but typically supports policies that are on the left wing party platforms.)
It wouldn't be as different up here as you'd think. We're probably be a lot like Quebec in terms of environmental policy: a bizarre amalgam of environmental protections and wanton resource extraction.
The agricultural areas of Northern Ontario, and some of Thunder Bay's exurban belt do vote Conservative, as do rural areas around Kenora and Dryden, but I don't think that they would ever actually result in the election of PC members there. Some parts of the region, at the provincial level, do follow the Prairies trend where the main options are NDP or PC, and the Liberals are a fringe.
As it is, the PCs have a very hard time just beating the Greens within Thunder Bay itself. If we were our own province and had smaller ridings (Manitoba sized, about 20,000 people each) I think the Greens would often come out ahead of the PCs in Thunder Bay itself, possibly even be elected depending on how one drew the riding in central Port Arthur (which has a strong support for Green politics).
We can't forget that in Northern Ontario, the NDP's support base is largely unionized factory workers, who at this point have been laid off and are aging. Since Kathleen Wynne was re-elected, I've noticed more and more people openly supporting the Liberals and Greens.