Would Doug Ford actually move jobs out of Toronto? – by Steve Paikin (TV Ontario – April 28, 2022)

https://www.tvo.org/

The 2022 budget promises to move provincial agencies to smaller cities. But I’ve seen this movie before

When Labour Minister Monte McNaughton went to London earlier this week, he came bearing not much hard information but word of hundreds, if not thousands, of potential jobs.

The minister announced that the province would try to sell the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board’s downtown Toronto headquarters and then re-establish the agency at a new location in the Forest City. If all goes well, the Toronto headquarters could fetch as much as $600 million for the province’s coffers.

London’s unemployment rate is about the same as the provincewide average — about 5.3 per cent according to the latest Statistics Canada figures. But McNaughton was high on the idea because, obviously, the cost of doing business in the province’s capital city is much higher than in London.

Naturally, I would never be so crass as to suggest the announcement had anything to do with the pending election or the fact that three of the four London-area seats are held by New Democrats and the Progressive Conservatives may hope they can turn some of those seats blue. Perish the thought.

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