Doug Ford of the Ontario PCs is NOT a smart economic manager –He says he would end the Ontario/Quebec/California polluter-pays cap and trade program and anything else related to 65,000 modern high tech jobs in the $8 billion clean tech industry (3,000+ companies) in Ontario. One quarter of the province’s clean tech jobs are held by Ontarians aged 30 or younger. Jobs in the sector grow at about 7% per year compared with widespread job decline in oil and gas all over the world.

Cap and trade is based on the principal that the polluter pays for the cleanup. This allows the economy to move gradually into clean energy, without placing the burden on taxpayers who contribute less than these big industries to the climate change problem. It creates a progressive, modern economy and healthy planet where our children don’t get sick just from breathing the air and drinking the water.

The 65,000 people in Ontario who work in clean energy jobs, compares to about 1500 who work in oil & gas. Clean tech adds to our job skills, expertise and builds our worldwide brand in a new industry that is projected to double in size in the next decade or two. You think the rust belt in the US has problems, if we opt out of the fastest growing industries just so that the Tories Trump-voter-like core can feel better about its inability to change with the times, we are supporting horrible economic managers; not smart ones.

When Al Gore was in Toronto recently he said that when he travels and make speeches around the world, he points to Ontario as a place that has got the modern economy figured out and is doing it right.