"If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It"

After his party tasted by-election defeat in both the Vaughan and Kitchener-Waterloo ridings last week, Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak has gone on the record in regard to the Ontario horse-racing industry and what his party is planning on doing, generally, moving forward.

"What do I do from here? Well, I'm putting my foot on the gas. I'm putting out bold, optimistic, Conservative vision of what Ontario can be," Hudak told Tim McConnell on Niagara's NewsTalk 610 CKTB

"I want to see Ontario as the best place to create jobs; to start a small business and see it grow; and to make sure our core services like health care and classroom education are there for the next generation. I worry that if we don't act today and get things under control, that we are going to be the Greece of Canada."

Later in the interview, McConnell asked Hudak point blank what the PCs would do with the future of horse racing and slots in Ontario in terms of how they are tied together.

"Yeah, I mean, they've (the Ontario Liberal Government has) made a mess out of this," Hudak said. "I'm of the view that if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? We (the Ontario PC Party) had brought in that slots-at-racetracks program. I fought for it as an MPP for the Fort Erie area, (I'm a) lifelong resident. The benefit was that as the government got the lion's share of the revenue --- 75 per cent for things like health and education --- then 25 per cent stayed in the local community: to the municipality, to the horse-racing industry, to the tracks themselves. It helped create jobs. I'm really worried that by ripping that out, we're going to displace tens of thousands of workers. The government's job today in our economy, particularly in Niagara, should be in creating jobs, not mowing them down."