(Queen’s Park) - Randy Hillier, PC Party Critic for Northern Development, Mines and Forestry today called for a postponement in the bankruptcy proceedings of Grant Forest Products, formerly a major player in the Ontario forestry sector.
“Throughout his time as Premier, Dalton McGuinty has taken apart Ontario’s northern industries. Piece by piece, one by one, he has reduced this province’s forestry sector to a shell of what it once was,” said Hillier. “Grant Forest Products is just the latest domino to fall.”
Specifically, Mr. Hillier wants the government to examine the company’s Crown forest tenure, so that Ontario assets such as sawmills are not cut out of the equation.
“We used to have a strong Canadian company which used our natural resources sustainably and created jobs for the people of Ontario,” stated Hillier. “Now that company, those jobs, may be gone. What is this government’s plan? Where do those workers go? Instead of answers, we just get his plan to send taxpayer dollars to Korea.”
“The McGuinty government is asleep at the wheel and has an impaired view of the North,” he concluded.
Randy Hillier, MPP Lanark Frontenac Lennox, is a co-founder of the Lanark Landowners Association, which was brought to life to address government imposition on the rights of private property owners, and to address the regressive regulatory impositions that government was bringing down upon farmers and business owners in rural Ontario.
In 2006, Randy resigned as President of the OLA in order to run as a candidate for the Progressive Conservatives. Randy was elected in the 2007 provincial election.
Randy a long-time resident of Lanark County, an electrician by trade and member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), continues to co-publish and edit rural Ontario’s successful magazine “The Landowner.”
