A. DEMOCRATIC REFORM and INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS
The Reform Party of Ontario supports measures to make your vote count and your voice heard.
1. We support direct democracy measures including the use of referenda and citizens initiatives.
2. We support the ability of voters in a riding to recall their elected representatives.
3. We support the Province holding elections to fill the Ontario seats in the Federal Senate. We would expect a Prime Minister to appoint these elected representatives until changes can be made to form an elected and effective Senate.
4. We oppose the proposed Mixed Member Proportional Representation electoral concept that is being put to the voters in the referendum. Costs will balloon and democracy will not be served By adding 30% more seats to the Legislature, seats which are no longer accountable to voters in a specific riding. There are other ways in which voters voices can be heard.
5. The Reform Party would champion a constitutional amendment to the Canadian Constitution to allow for Canadians to have the right to own private property. And in the absence of success at the Federal level, we would propose an investigation ino the establishment of a Constitution for the Province which incorporated property rights.
6. The Reform Party would support the implementation of measures to allow for consideration of the reversal of the forced amalgamation of local municipalities.

B. FREEDOM FROM GOVERNMENT
The Reform Party of Ontario stands for Freedom from overbearing and arrogant government, for Lower Taxes and Smaller Government. As part of this process, the Reform Party supports governmental accountability through each level of government meeting its own jurisdictional responsibilities without overlap.

C. HEALTH FREEDOM
The Reform Party of Ontario stands for the right of individuals to pursue the form of health care that they believe would be most conducive for the repair and rejuvenation of their own health. We support access to all heath care professionals in Ontario, including naturopathic medicine, chiropractors,dentists, and optometrists. We support the unfettered access to natural herbs, supplements, and vitamins.
We advocate the provision of Health Freedom Vouchers that would assist citizens in the purchase of services from alternative and mainstream health care providers not currently covered by Ontario health insurance payments.

D. JUSTICE
The Reform Party of Ontario supports improvements to the court system to allow for timely trials, and sentencing reform to be geared to serving full sentences.
We believe in local policing controlled by the municipalities, and support the formation of local police forces in all jurisdictions of the province with the OPP becoming an exclusively provincial force.

E. ENERGY & THE ENVIRONMENT
We support a more balanced mix of electrical generation assets to ensure a more secure, reliable supply of electricity, plus a conservation programme to reduce demand for electricity. We support the development of additional ethanol capacity so that 85% ethanol (produced from locally grown grains) are available across Ontario within five years. Furthermore, we support the expansion of wind, solar, and small-scale hydro projects in rural Ontario, as well as a move to decentralize the power grid in the province as more localized generation capacity comes on line.
We support the nutrient management legislation and would move to prevent the use of sludge as a farming crop input. We support the localized treatment of municipal waste as well as an expansion of our recycling programmes to include grey waste, computers and electronics.

F. AGRICULTURE & RURAL REVITALIZATION
We support agricultural diversification across the province to assist making family farms more stable economic operations. We support working with the federal Trade Minister to resolve trade-related subsidy irritants facing farmers today. We support measures to revitalize rural communities, economies, and schools by allowing the settlement of new residents, immigrants, and retiring farmers into rural areas. Such support would extend to allowing farmers special permission to sever farm land to create retirement homes as well as to create 1-acre residential lots fronting on hard-surfaced roads where services such as natural gas and waterlines, waste and recycling collection, exist. These measures are aimed at keeping farms in the family and boosting rural populations to allow schools and businesses to prosper.

G. TRANSPORTATION
We support a long-term shift of trucks off our superhighways onto parallel rail lines (thus reducing pollution, reducing the need for future highway expansions to accommodate ever-growing truck traffic, and to increase driver safety). To initiate this shift, we support the provision of highway truck tolls on all provincial highways to balance the competitive position of rail and road.

H. EDUCATION
We support letting the voters in Ontario decide whether they wish to retain the present Public/Catholic school system structure, or a revised system based on language, or purely a single publicly-funded school system.
We do not support the current move to close rural schools. We advocate each school living within an assigned budget, whereby school staffing and operations are adjusted to allow all schools to remain open (except in extaordinary circumstances).
We support the mandatory meshing of public and religious school board busing as a means to put tax dollars to their best use.
We advocate the streamlining of post-secondary education so that overlaps in programmes do not occur between community colleges and universities. This move will add more value to the degrees and diplomas each grant to their paying students.

I. LANGUAGE & CULTURE
We support all provinces controlling the cultural affairs of their own jurisdictions. To that end, we advocate similar measures seen in other provinces to operate in one primary language, and to provide government services geographically in minority languages (Chinese, Portguese, Italian, French) only where numbers warrant.

Furthermore, we will increase Ontario's control over immigration so that it reflects the linguistic makeup of the province.

We will ensure all provincial signage is in English except in areas where the majority of residents speak another language.

We will ensure second-language instruction begins in grade one in all publicly-funded schools. Second-language instruction offered will where possible include French, Spanish, and Chinese.

We will restore funding to art and music instruction in the public school system.

~OFFICIAL POLICY DOCUMENT 2007B~Dated 13 December 2007 copyright Reform Party of Ontario
www.NewCanada.ca

519-245-2041

415 Scott St E, Strathroy, Ontario N7G 3Y8

********************POLICY DEVELOPMENT**********************

Every member of the party is welcome to participate in our policy development process. Simply contact anyone on the home page or email head office indicating that you wish to participate in this exciting opportunity.

Our New Ontario Policy Workshop took place in London on 21 June 2008. We explored ideas for Tax Reform, Social Reform, Democratic & Electoral Reform, and Environmental, Energy, & Transportation Reform ideas.

****************************************************************

Starting in Decemeber 2007, the party launched it's first policy working group on Agricultural policy. Chaired by William Cook, a farmer near Owen Sound, this working group is actively discussing all aspects of agriculture and the business and lifestyle of farming in Ontario. This group's 'Interim Report on Agriculture in a New Ontario' was released in August 2008.

Reform Party of Ontario - Draft Agriculture/Rural affairs platform - August 2008

THE FUTURE OF AGRICULTURE & RURAL REVITALIZATION
IN ONTARIO

Agriculture is one of the ministries we hope to achieve sole custody over after the Who Does What Commission has completed its work. The Agriculture Ministry will develop and implement new models of farming, production and marketing, and encourage greater competition in the marketplace at all levels within the Agri-Business world. It will stress niche, mixed(general), and family farming to provide long-term stability to rural Ontario and its farm families, so they have less need to work off the farm to make ends meet and less need to rely on income support programmes.

A) TAKING CHARGE OF OUR OWN FARMING FUTURE - The Reform Party supports making Ontario’s agricultural industry more efficient by clarifying funding responsibilities, jurisdictions and overlaps between the federal and provincial governments. This would be achieved by making provinces the sole level of government responsible for agricultural policy in Canada, with the federal government solely responsible for trade issues of the agri-business. The Reform Party supports eliminating costly inter-provincial trade barriers, too.

B) ENSURING THE COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF FARMING LEGISLATION - The Reform Party supports a cost analysis of the Nutrient Management Act, Clean Water Act, and the Greenbelt Act. As well the Reform party supports a cost analysis of any future Carbon cap-and-trade/credit programme. The party would ensure all such legislation is affordable for the average farming operation in terms of costs and red-tape.

C) FARM REGISTRATION - The Reform Party supports a review/overhaul of the Farmer Registration programme to include everything from scrapping the programme to the creation of “One Farm Voice”. Any changes will be put to all registered farmers in a binding, province-wide referendum.

D) PROPERTY RIGHTS - The Reform Party supports the creation of an Ontario Constitution, which will include recognition of landowners’ rights/responsibilities in Ontario as well as clearly defined responsibilities for municipalities.

E) PROPERTY TAX - The Reform Party supports Real Property Tax Reform where producers are not penalized for adding Value to their Farm products(MPAC).

F) FOOD SAFETY & INSPECTIONS - The Reform Party supports using scientific information and consumer choice to determine Food Safety issues, and not political interference. Exported farm produce must of necessity be inspected by federal inspectors, whereas farm produce for purely domestic production should fall under provincial inspectors. Produce that is intended for both domestic and foreign markets would be inspected by both levels of government.

G) RURAL REPRESENTATION - The Reform Party supports the election of Senators from Ontario to Canada’s Upper House. This should include a better balance in representation between Rural and Urban interests in Canada’s Senate.

H) RURAL REVITALIZATION - The Reform Party supports the adoption of a Rural Revitalization Programme to reinvigorate and guarantee the future of Ontario’s rural communities. We support measures to revitalize rural communities, economies, and schools by allowing the settlement of new residents, immigrants, and retiring farmers into rural areas. Rural Revitalization measures would extend to allowing farmers special permission to sever farm land to create retirement homes as well as to create 1-acre residential lots fronting on hard-surfaced roads where services such as natural gas and waterlines, waste and recycling collection, exist. These measures are aimed at keeping farms in the family and boosting rural populations to allow schools and businesses to prosper.

I) We support both large and small farms, and encourage agricultural diversification across the province and within each farming operation to assist making family farms more stable economic operations.

J) MARKETING - The Reform Party supports a more broad-based view of Ontario agriculture which allows producers to take advantage of marketing opportunities whether they be local, national, or export-driven. We believe marketing structures need to be overhauled in Ontario to allow this to happen.

K) SUPPLY MANAGEMENT & THE QUOTA SYSTEM - The Reform Party supports an adjustment over time on Marketing Board quotas. Certain Provinces have an unfair amount of dairy quotas relative to their share of the Canadian population, others in chickens, eggs, butter, and cheese production. As populations change between provinces new quotas allocations should expand to areas where the populations are expanding to keep agricultural production as close to our population centres as possible. New quotas should also not be transferable and in the granted in the name of resident citizens only, not corporations. Old quotas should be grandfathered and tradeable only for a period of 20 years or less.

L) We support working with the federal Trade Minister to resolve trade-related subsidy irritants facing farmers today. In trade matters, Ontario should lobby Ottawa to advocate a countervailing duty on subsidized US products produced with subsidized Corps of Engineer water and public range lands.

M) The Reform Party supports a ban on the production or sale of cloned livestock. This would create a unique product for export to the US and other countries.

M) We support a tobacco industry shutdown programme will be an early initiative of this ministry.

Reform Party of Ontario - Draft Agriculture/Rural affairs platform - August 2008

****************************************************************

In January 2008, our second policy working group on Post-Secondary Education was launched by party leader Brad Harness. This group's membership is open to all interested members. It is exploring how to improve our post-secondary educational system in Ontario. So far, proposals include more summer job placements for post-secondary students, increased merit-based scholarships, working with municipalities and colleges and universities to accommodate more student housing, options for student book costs, discussing the merit of entrance exams in exchange for low or even no-cost tuition. We are also interested in student concerns over housing, transit, and health care, as well as secondary education as a preparation for university and college. This group's 'Interim Report on Post-Secondary Education in a New Ontario' is expected to be published on this site in April 2009.

****************************************************************

The RPO's policies pertaining to municipalities is currently under study. This report will be published on this website in May 2009.

****************************************************************

Reform Ontario's "Purple Book" of policies will be published in October 2009. It is presently under development. It will be published on this website and will be an organic document, to be distilled into our election platform for the October 2011 general election.

Home • Policy • Purple Book • Ontario Public Sector Salaries • The New Ontario Vision