Wynne: Tories won’t repeat Federal win

[attach]4811[/attach]Liberal Kathleen Wynne is confident she will return to Queen’s Park as the MPP for Don Valley West even though the Liberals lost the riding on the federal level this past May.

“We’re not going to let that happen provincially,” Wynne said. “We’re going to return a Liberal in Don Valley West.”

As minister of transportation, one of the projects she said she would like to see completed is the Eglinton LRT, which will cut right through the heart of her riding.

“It’s important to the entire city but it’s very important to my constituents and I want to be part of working with them as we build that important link,” she said.

According to Wynne, Torontonians could be riding a cross-town line today if it were not for the actions of Mike Harris and his PC government, who filled in a partially built tunnel beneath Eglinton Avenue.

“Where we’re building an Eglinton cross-town line, the previous government … they filled in the hole in 1995-96,” she said. “So we would have had an Eglinton subway by now.”

Wynne also mentioned that the Ontario Liberals are focused on infrastructure upkeep; news that may come as a relief to residents who commute across the area’s several large bridges spanning the Don Valley.

“We’ve pretty much doubled the infrastructure investments over the last government,” she said.

Wynne has also served as the minister of education and was proud to note that a new school will be built in Thorncliffe Park to accommodate all-day kindergarten students.

The kindergarten school would operate in conjunction with Thorncliffe Park Public School, which is the largest elementary school in North America in terms of number of students, but would be fully detached.

In addition to areas like Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park, Don Valley West also includes the neighbourhoods of Leaside and the Bridle Path.

Wynne, instead of seeing this as a challenge, said she views her riding’s diversity as an advantage.

“The unique aspect, the really interesting aspect of Don Valley West, is that it’s got every layer of society,” she said.

“There are people who live in apartment buildings and there are people who live in mansions. So it’s really a microcosm of our Canadian society.”