Four candidates on the Mushkegowuk-James Bay ballot

The Mushkegowuk-James Bay riding is in the most northern part of northeastern Ontario spans 245,000 square kilometres.

The Mushkegowuk-James Bay riding is in the most northern part of northeastern Ontario. Its southern tip touches Nickel Belt and its northern boundary ends at Hudson Bay.

Whoever is elected in this 254,000-square-kilometre riding will represent a population of around 25,000.

Four names are on the ballot, including NDP incumbent Guy Bourgouin.

Bourgouin said an NDP government would connect every Ontarian to a family doctor or a nurse practitioner by recruiting more health-care professionals and clear surgery waitlists.

“This government is so hellbent on pushing the private sector that we’re investing a lot in it but we won’t invest in our public health care,” he said.

“Our public hospitals are underfunded, yet the hospital says if it can be properly funded, we can do it all in our public system … We have the capacity to do it, yet we fund close to 200 per cent of the private sector and we underfund our public system to create this crisis.”

Dave Plourde, who is running for the Conservative Party, was elected mayor of Kapuskasing in 2018.

Plourde said affordable housing in the north is possible if industry and government work together.

“We need industry to come to the table and not just forestry, but mining and we need the municipal governments to come to the table and provincial and federal,” he said.

“Try and develop a plan that would get housing costs from $420 per foot in northern Ontario, somewhere down to $200 and to try to attract developers to our area, make it attractive for them to come and build homes, in our area.”

CTV News also tried to contact the candidates with the Green and Liberal parties. We were told Catherine Jones was unavailable for comment, while the Liberal Party failed to respond about its candidate, Kyle Allen.

Election day is Feb. 27.