Monte tilts at windmills, takes on sex ed

Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership hopeful Monte McNaughton blew into the Alternative Energy Capital of North America Tuesday, promising to close our area wind farms.

The Lambton-Kent-Middlesex MPP hosted a meet-and-greet last night for party faithful at the Sault's Quality Inn.

And he wasn't backing down an inch from his hard-line stance against wind energy.

"Ontario's wind turbine experiment is going to cost $60 billion over the next 20 years," McNaughton told SooToday.

"It's energy that we don't need in the province. It's driving jobs out of Ontario. I would enact specific legislation ending the program, including decommissioning wind turbines across the province."

And how does he figure that will be received here in Algoma, home to the 126-turbine Prince Wind Farm and the 36-turbine Bow Lake project?

"Well, look," McNaughton responds. "The problem is it's killing jobs in Ontario. We have the most expensive energy in all of North America. We need to get out of it as quickly as possible."

"We would be the fifth jurisdiction in the world to end it. I think that's the responsible direction if we ever want to return economic prosperity to the province, we've got to deal with this."

McNaughton says he's seeking the Ontario PC leadership because he wants to create a responsible, strong Conservative alternative, not just a pale blue imitation of a middle-of-the-road Liberal party.

He has the backing of former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who considers McNaughton "the true conservative in the race,"

And he says he's the only Ontario politician speaking out on an issue that's being increasingly debated within some Algoma faith groups: sex education.

"Back in 2010 when Kathleen Wynne was minister of education, she brought forward a very controversial sex ed curriculum that Dalton McGuinty had to pull the plug on three days later, because there was such backlash from parents."

"We found out in November, 2014 that there's going to be a new sex ed curriculum when our kids go to school in 2015."

McNaughton is demanding that Premier Wynne make that curriculum public.

"I want to know what she intends to teach our kids. I want to know why she's not letting parents have any input into this curriculum."

"I come to this issue as a father of a young daughter, as well as with a belief that parents should be first educators on serious issues like sex education. The government should respect parents, but clearly in this case, the Kathleen Wynne Liberals are not respecting parents.

McNaughton hails from the tiny Southwestern Ontario hamlet of Newbury, home to 447 souls who shop at his hardware/ home centre and at other local businesses controlled by the McNaughton family.

He has connections to Northern Ontario through his wife Kate Bartz.

"My wife is from Sudbury and my mother-in-law (Nancy Bartz, née Reinhart) is from Blind River. We spend a lot of time up in this area. It feels like home," McNaughton tells SooToday,

Ontario's Progressive Conservatives will pick a new leader on May 9.

Also seeking the party leadership are:

• Patrick Brown (MP, Barrie)
• Christine Elliott (MPP, Whitby-Oshawa)
• Vic Fedeli (MPP, Nipissing)
• Lisa MacLeod (MPP, Nepean-Carleton.)

(PHOTO: Left to right, Amy Robert, Lorne Carter, Monte McNaughton and Josh Pringle chinwag provincial politics at a McNaughton-hosted meet-and-greet at the Quality Inn on Bay Street, Sault Ste. Marie. David Helwig/SooToday)