Will Bouma was re-elected as Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) for Brantford-Brant after Election Night on Thursday, February 27, 2025.
After receiving the news of his victory, Bouma took the opportunity to speak to a number constituents, friends, family and supporters at the Royal Canadian Legion, Branch #605 in St. George.
Addressing Premier Doug Ford’s decision to call a snap election, Bouma said that he and the Progressive Conservatives will uphold their commitment to protecting the economy from President Donald Trump’s threats.
“The reason that the Premier asked us to go to the polls was because of the threat of tariffs from President Trump. Our local economy here in Brantford and Brant has grown rapidly in recent years, precisely because we are well positioned to serve American markets. Now, whether it’s our steel industry, our automotive industry, agriculture, or food processing, we’re very, very vulnerable to what those tariffs might do to us locally,” said Bouma. “Our government has said to the people of Ontario that we would ask permission before we would potentially spend billions of dollars helping the Ontario economy and our local economy survive, and we are ready to keep our commitment for the next four years until Donald Trump is the ex-president.”
He said that besides the threat of tariffs, there are other matters of interest to the people of Brantford-Brant that need to be addressed.
“A critical one is health care. Our government has invested more than $50 million in the last couple of years into the Brantford General Hospital. Right now, we’re redeveloping the emergency department to better serve patients at a critical time in their lives. We’re also spending money to upgrade broken infrastructure to keep the hospital functioning,” said Bouma. “Of course, these are short term fixes while we pursue the most important improvement of all, and that’s a brand new hospital to serve our fast growing community. Let me be crystal clear, we are getting a new hospital. The Premier made a promise to our community last fall, in September, and I look forward to making more announcements regarding this in the next couple of months.”
Bouma added that the next concern to address is education.
“It’s a top concern for everyone. If there’s one thing that I did hear at the doors, it was ‘when are we getting our new school in West Brant? When are we getting our new school in Paris?’ and wouldn’t you know it, we’ve made those announcements. We are getting the first new high school in Brantford in 30 years at Powerline Road; that high school will be teaching skilled trades so that we can train the people of the future, so that we can continue to build Ontario,” he said. “…We are getting another new grade school, and we announced another one for West Brant. We are also getting another two new grade schools in Paris. And at Wilfrid Laurier University, it’s been so wonderful to see the new Faculty of Education which started with 60 students per year, is now at 120 students per year.”
Noting that housing has become a large issue, Bouma said that his PC government will be taking big steps to address the housing shortage and high housing prices.
“One of the best things that the Ontario government can do is support the construction of new infrastructure. That’s something that we’ve heard again, and again, and again from our municipalities. Sewers and roads seem very, very simple, but those sewers and roads can lead to new housing construction so that my children and the young people here, our children and our grandchildren, can afford to live and work in the same community,” he said. “That’s why our government is investing $35 million into the sewage treatment plant here in St. George and that’s why we’re putting almost $10 million into Paris to rebuild Grand River Street North so that people can build in our community easier.”
Bouma later told reporters that he would also like to see work being done on finally getting a new courthouse, as well as improvements made in transportation and roads.
“Hopefully we can get the dust settled between the City and the County and get some real momentum going. We need to have connections between our communities; we need to have a road between the 403 and the 401 and if our municipalities get together, I have a commitment from the bureaucrats in the Ministry of Transportation that that will significantly accelerate the construction of such a thing,” he said. “But that takes our communities actually working together and I believe that includes Brantford, the County of Brant and Cambridge. We need to figure out where that needs to go, start having those conversations with the community and what that could look like, and I think if we did that groundwork, we could, we could significantly ease the burden on our communities as far as transportation goes.”
As far as a GO service to the community? Bouma said the CN line is just too busy.
“The serious problem that we have is that the CN Line is too busy and we can’t get more passenger rail on there than the VIA links that we have now. Now, I dream of Light Rail Transit on the old rail trails with bike trails still beside them, and those are conversations that I continue to have, with no success yet, but I think we have the existing corridors,” he said. “Especially because we’ve committed to protecting the Green Belt long-term, we need to work on the spokes between the communities that will travel through the Green Belt; we have the existing corridors, we just need to figure out how to use them properly so those are the things I dream about.
Overall, Bouma said he is committed to working on all of these issues, and looks forward to continuing to represent the region.
“You have my pledge that I will continue to push these issues, because we’re a long way from getting some of these things done, and our community continues to grow very, very quickly,” he said. “We have a long way to go, but I believe that this place is the best place to live, to work, to play, to start a business and to raise a family, and we will continue on those priorities.”
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
