THUNDER BAY — Free medical school for doctors who agree to long-term contracts to practice in smaller northern towns is one of several platform details Ontario Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie laid out while in Thunder Bay.
Crombie was in the city Thursday evening to officially open the party’s local campaign office, and to help rally support behind the city’s two Liberal candidates: Brian Hamilton in Thunder Bay-Superior North and Stephen Margarit in Thunder Bay-Atikokan. She is the first major party leader to visit the city as part of the 2025 campaign.
During her speech to a crowd of just over 50 people, Crombie said her party would spend the equivalent of the $3 billion she said Progressive Conservative leader Doug Ford spent on $200 rebate cheques to Ontarians to attract 3,100 new doctors to the province. Speaking with reporters after her speech, Crombie said that her healthcare plan has a significant northern component.
“If they agree to practice in the north, they sign a multi-year agreement, we'll give them free medical school, medical training,” she said. “We're going to incentivize them, pay them, and that means pay them more to locate in the smaller towns in the northern communities.”
Crombie also pledged to double the size of residency programs and double the size of Practice Ready Ontario — a workplace assessment program that aims to streamline the process for qualified internationally-trained family doctors or general practitioners to work in Ontario.
“We're going to attract family docs who left the discipline because they've gone to other lucrative medical disciplines,” she said. “We're going to bring them back.”
Crombie’s speech also included promises to cut the provincial portion of income taxes on people making $75,000 or less, halve small business taxes, take the HST off home heating and hydro and roll out a plan to build more affordable housing.
That, she said, means taking the financial burden of funding affordable housing as well as supportive housing for people with addictions and mental health issues off municipalities.
“This is a provincial issue; it shouldn't be put on the municipal taxpayer, so we need funding behind it,” she said. “We need a strategy to build housing that's affordable, supportive housing with the wraparound services that are required, particularly if there are mental health and addiction issues.”
When speaking with media, Crombie didn’t specify the amount such a strategy would contribute, nor to what degree affordable housing would be uploaded to the province, but stated that her party will have a costed plan.
“All the mayors are left alone to deal with these problems, and that's not the solution,” she said. “This is of crisis proportions and we need a strong leader who will take this by the horns and deliver — deliver for communities like Thunder Bay where this is in epic proportions here.”
Crombie is scheduled to remain in Thunder Bay on Friday with an announced stop at Confederation College.