Our plan to ensure no community gets left behind
Northern Ontarians face unique challenges—ones that require definitive action from the government to ensure no community is left behind. New Democrats are ready to use our power in Parliament to fight for the needs of Northerners. Here’s our multi-pronged plan.
1) A family doctor for everyone
2) Closing the health care gap for Indigenous people
3) Responding to Trump’s tariffs
4) Ensuring families don’t bear the cost of tariffs
5) Putting reconciliation into action
6) Investing in infrastructure
7) Ring of Fire
8) Housing for Northerners
9) More accessible services for Northerners
A family doctor for everyone
The NDP will work to bring health care closer to home for Northerners. We understand that addressing health care requires a whole team approach. We will push for more family doctors and nurses in every community, to close the funding and infrastructure gaps for health care services in small rural northern communities, and ensure that Canada’s first independent medical university, NOSM, has the funding it needs.
We will implement a Health Care Workforce Strategy to strengthen our health care system against Americanization. As a first step, we’re going to make sure that every Canadian has access to a family doctor by 2030.
The NDP will push to:
• Train and equip more doctors from northern and rural communities to serve in their hometowns, including delivering fair wages for doctors committed to these communities
• Invest in regional medical schools based in underserved urban, rural and remote communities, like NOSM University
• Work with provincial and territorial governments to provide housing and facilities for family doctors and primary care teams to keep health care providers in the North
• Create residences for qualified, internationally trained doctors already living in Canada to get thousands more licensed family doctors
• Implement a pan-Canadian licensure to help medical professionals practice where they are needed across the country
• Work with provinces and doctors to reduce burdensome administrative paperwork that takes time away from patients
Closing the health care gap for Indigenous people
For decades, the Mushkegowuk Cree of James Bay have fought to end substandard health care. In June 2024, following unrelenting pressure from the community and New Democrats in Parliament, the Liberal government announced $1.2 billion towards the redevelopment of the Weeneebayko General Hospital facility. This facility will serve 12,000 people in the Weeneebayko region, providing quality health care services closer to home for First Nations in Northern Ontario.
New Democrats are ready to keep fighting to close the health care gap in Indigenous communities. Indigenous people have an equal right to the highest standard of physical and mental health, with a right to access traditional medicines. New investments in health care infrastructure, medical supplies and diagnostic equipment will help meet people’s needs in their communities.
The NDP will work in partnership with communities to push for:
• Improved access to mental health and addiction treatments to address the high rates of suicide and addiction in northern towns
• Investments in Indigenous healing centres and traditional healers
• An action-plan to prevent suicide
• Indigenous-led, culturally appropriate home care and long-term care is available for Elders, in their home communities and languages.
Responding to Trump’s tariffs
New Democrats will push for investment in Northern Steelworkers with our Build Canadian, Buy Canadian plan – a national public infrastructure and procurement strategy to:
• Use 100% Canadian steel and wood products in all federally funded projects
• Ban US companies from federal procurement contracts as long as they are targeting Canadian goods with tariffs
• Prioritize Canadian unionized firms in public project bidding
• Increase Canadian content requirements for all federally funded projects
• Support clean energy projects in the North
Apply our Build Canadian, Buy Canadian plan to regional transit projects and to boost investments in the Thunder Bay Alstom Plant.
We will also push for a massive building plan focused on shovel-ready infrastructure projects like roads, bridges, schools, transit and health facilities – using Canadian materials like steel and creating unionized jobs.
New Democrats will push to protect essential Canadian industries like public hydro, critical minerals and cultural sectors from being sold off or exploited by foreign interests.
And we will push for Indigenous leadership to be at the table in trade negotiations with Trump to ensure Indigenous Treaty rights are never sacrificed.
To better protect workers, such as forestry workers in communities like Timmins, Hearst, Kapuskasing, and Thunder Bay, New Democrats will push to meaningfully improve employment insurance (EI) by:
• Raising the Maximum Insurable Earnings and increasing the benefit rate above 55% to ensure workers can count on livable benefits that actually cover the bills
• Reducing the threshold for qualifying to a universal 360-hour standard and extending benefits to contractors and self-employed workers
• Eliminating the one-week waiting period for EI benefits and extending coverage duration to 50 weeks
Ensuring families don’t bear the cost of tariffs
To shield Canadians from the worst effects of Trump’s trade war, the NDP is committing to push for:
• Reforming Nutrition North so the subsidy goes directly to Northerners, not to corporate chains like the North West Company
• Capping grocery prices on essential items while cracking down on price gouging by corporate giants
• Using every dollar collected from retaliatory tariffs to directly support impacted workers in industries like steel, auto-manufacturing and aluminum
• Removing GST from essentials like home heating and from Canadian-made vehicles, saving families hundreds annually while boosting domestic industries
• Expanding the Northern Resident Deduction to include more remote regions
Putting reconciliation into action
New Democrats will continue to work with Indigenous peoples to fully implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, all 94 Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and all Calls for Justice from the final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
We’ll push to replace mere consultation with a standard of free, prior and informed consent, including for all decisions affecting constitutionally protected land rights, like energy project reviews. Opportunities and benefits of projects should go to the Indigenous communities that want them, not the CEOs and billionaires who force them through.
New Democrats recognize and respect treaties, and we support any Nations building or re-building their governance structures.
The NDP will push for an end to discrimination against Indigenous children, young people and families by fully implementing the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal orders regarding chronic underfunding of child welfare. This includes fixing the broken First Nations children’s program (Jordan’s Principle), which has a 140,000-case backlog, by investing in more staff and better case management, and working with other levels of government to ensure equitable access to health services and educational supports for all First Nations children.
All long-term boil water advisories on First Nations must end. The Liberals promised this would be done by 2021, but too many communities, like the Neskantaga First Nation, are still waiting. To do this, Canada needs to make new investments in clean water infrastructure and support Indigenous-led water management training programs. We will also support funding on-reserve emergency management and prevention, including firefighting.
We will push to enhance the capacity of the Canadian Rangers, ensuring Rangers are properly compensated and reimbursed in a timely manner for the use of their own equipment.
New Democrats believe in ensuring long term sustainable development of the incredible resources we have in our country. Northern communities like Timmins, Kirkland Lake, and Black River-Matheson, and Dryden are resource-dependent, and we have to do it right. First Nations communities must be consulted on economic development plans from the start.
Investing in infrastructure
Economic opportunities in indigenous communities could be expanded by providing dedicated regional economic support and by creating a Northern Infrastructure Fund.
New Democrats will work with towns and First Nations communities to close the rural and First Nations infrastructure gap. We will push for:
• Ensuring reserves have access to proper water and sewage systems for new homes
• Federal investments in highways to ensure that the Trans-Canada Highway is safe
• Twinning of key highways
• Investigating issues in trucker training and underqualified truck drivers by leveraging negotiations on interprovincial trade
• Working with the provincial governments to standardize the Mandatory Entry Level Training (MELT) trucker training standards so that truckers coast to coast to coast are held to the same high standard of safety
• Addressing climate change impacts on unreliable winter roads by investing in and improving winter roads and working with First Nations to build all-season roads to Northern communities that wish to be connected
Ring of Fire
Nothing will happen in the Ring of Fire without the input of the Matawa people and the Mushkegowuk people. First Nations must have free, prior and informed consent. New Democrats also support fully transparent, community-led Environmental Assessment processes.
Pierre Poilievre wants to bulldoze right through rights holders, only delaying development, rather than do what’s obligated to move the project forward. Over ten years ago, the Conservative government promised to build the Ring of Fire but failed. Northern Ontarians just can’t trust Conservatives to get this project done because they refuse to do it right. And despite being in power for the last ten years, the Liberals have failed to move the project forward.
The NDP will work with First Nations to sell our critical minerals to the world and ensure sustainability and Indigenous rights are at the heart of our strategy.
Housing for Northerners
The homelessness crisis in northern Ontario is a serious concern. In the past, communities such as Attawapiskat and Kashechewan have declared states of emergency because of their severe housing crisis. Youth and 2SLGBTQI+ Canadians are disproportionally impacted by homelessness and must be a part of the housing conversation in the North. Seniors, especially single seniors, who have lived in rural and remote northern communities all their life are being forced out of their communities because of a lack of suitable core housing and affordable rents.
We need to build more housing, faster. We need to bring provinces and cities to the table to do it. And we need to protect affordability while we get it done. We're fighting to deliver real solutions that keep Northerners in the communities they want to live in, because we’re fighting for people, not the wealthy who profit while you get priced out.
New Democrats will continue to push for:
• building millions of new homes, including non-market and affordable housing
• Introducing stronger rent protections to stop renovictions and price gouging
• Creating good jobs and faster construction with Canadian-made materials
More accessible services for Northerners
New Democrats will push to strengthen and expand services in French, ensuring that bilingual federal government, medical, and legal services are available. Northern Ontario is home to a large part of Canada’s Francophone population and the region should have high-quality service in both official languages. The NDP also supports the protection of French-language post-secondary education in the North, such as the Université de Hearst and Collège Boréal.
The NDP will strengthen access to education and childcare services to address critical issues such as staff shortages, school closures, and rising costs in Northern Ontario.
The NDP will push for Northerners to benefit from a postal banking service through Canada Post to ensure that everyone has access to financial services in their communities.