McGuinty sounds warning shot over Hudak's green-jobs 'threat'

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Ontario Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty made a campaign stop on Friday at a solar panel manufacturer to deliver a dire message to its employees: their hopes and dreams are at risk.

"There is a real threat to this industry" a sombre sounding Mr. McGuinty said in a speech at the Flextronics plant in Newmarket, Ont. "The threat consists of the opposition. They don't support our plan. That puts your job at risk. I wish I had something else to tell you, but I don't."

Mr. McGuinty is trying to capitalize on the same sort of nervousness about the fragile economy that helped Prime Minister Stephen Harper win a majority government this past spring. The 150 employees gathered around him on the factory floor at Flextronics made a fitting backdrop for his key campaign message.

If the Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak wins the Oct. 6 election, Mr. McGuinty is warning that jobs in the province's fledgling green energy sector will be in jeopardy. If he wins a third term, the province will become a leader in North America's green energy industry.

Mr. McGuinty made no apologies for his highly partisan remarks. "My job is to give them the facts," he told reporters, "and the facts are there is only one party in this province, only one government in this country, in fact, which is fully committed to a clean energy future who has both the vision and a basic plan nailed down to the bedrock of our economic reality."

This was the second straight day that Mr. McGuinty spent his time on the campaign trail talking about the Liberals' green energy policies. On Thursday, he was in London, Ont., to announce 200 new jobs at a plant to be built in the city by South Korean industrial giant Samsung Group. He challenged Mr. Hudak to come to London, look employees in the eyes and tell them he plans to kill their jobs.

The governing Liberals signed the $7-billion deal with Samsung in January 2010 as part of its goal to create 50,000 new jobs by luring investors with the promise of generous long-term contracts that include a guaranteed revenue stream. The Samsung deal alone is supposed to produce 16,000 direct and indirect jobs.

But Mr. McGuinty has come under fire for luring the company to the province with incentive payments over and above the revenue his government pays green energy companies.

Mr. Hudak has complained that Samsung is getting a sweetheart deal because the company gets preferential access to the province's electricity transmission grid. He has vowed to rip it up if he becomes the next premier of Ontario.

Jobs in the green energy sector are at risk because of the Liberals' "unsustainable" incentive programs, said Frank Klees, who is seeking re-election as the Progressive Conservative candidate in the riding of Newmarket-Aurora.

"This is an artificially inflated industry that will blow up like a balloon if the subsidies are continued," he said.

For its part, Flextronics began making solar components earlier this year under contract to SunEdison, a Maryland-based company. The company has 250 employees and hopes to expand to 500 once it becomes fully operational.

"We're going to be here in the long term. That's our goal, so we'll work with whatever government's in power," said Greg Scallen, vice-president of SunEdison Canada.