The interim leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and the official opposition in Ottawa is concerned about the loss of jobs in Ontario's manufacturing sector.
Rona Ambrose was keynote speaker at a luncheon Wednesday jointly hosted by the chamber of commerce and rotary club at Sarnia Golf and Curling Club.
Ambrose told reporters, after her address, that Sarnia is a huge job creator.
"We all thought that with the drop in oil prices and we thought with the drop in the dollar that we would see a bump in manufacturing jobs and we haven't seen that," she says. "It's a real big concern. I'm here to meet with people like the chambers of commerce, I've met with many business people and families in the last couple of days to talk about what we need to do to hold this government to account to get the economy back on track."
Ambrose says attracting new business to this area, starts with the fundamentals.
"We need a lower tax regime," she says. "We're worried that the Trudeau Liberals have already started to raise taxes and we know that there's more taxes to come. We're worried about trade agreements. We need to see the Trudeau Liberals to aggressively support the EU Canada Trade Agreement and the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement. A lot of jobs in this region depend on free trade. So we're going to be pushing them on those fronts and of course we need to make sure pipelines are built safely, but that they are built."
Ambrose says the current environment in Ottawa is anti-development in the energy sector.
"This is a region that relies on oil and gas and we've seen these pipelines run through this region safely and carry a commodity safely and create thousands of jobs and so we need the government to move quickly on pipelines," says Ambrose.
She says the high cost of doing business in Ontario could hurt Sarnia-Lambton's chances of securing a new heavy oil upgrader and world-class Nova polyethylene facility.
Ambrose encourages the federal government to cancel plans for a carbon tax.
She says it doesn't matter how good of an idea someone has to create a new business, they won't do it if it's too expensive and they can't make money.
