Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown addresses the media during a stop in Sudbury, Ont. on Thursday June 16, 2016. John Lappa/Sudbury Star/Postmedia Network

Progressive Conservatives are poised for a breakthrough in Northern Ontario, PC leader Patrick Brown believes.

Both Sudbury and Nickel Belt have voted Liberal or NDP in every provincial election since the 1950s, but in a tele-press conference on Tuesday, Brown said high energy prices, high spending, low efficiency and low regard for Northern issues at Queen's Park have voters looking for change in 2018.

"There is no safe Liberal seat," Brown said. "Scarborough-Rouge River was viewed as one of the safest Liberal seats in the City of Toronto, it had only been an NDP-Liberal fight, and in the fall, we had a byelection in which Raymond Cho, the PC candidate who only three years ago had finished third, won it convincingly."

Brown made the comments before embarking on a tour of eight Northern Ontario communities, but not Sudbury, which he visited last summer.

He heard then from Northerners upset with high hydro bills, and expects to hear more of the same this week.

"People are fed up with this government and frankly, one of the biggest issues people are frustrated about in this province is hydro, and the Liberals and NDP have been complicit on it," Brown said. "A lot of voters, a lot of families, have been saying we need a different approach."

Brown pointed to the Green Energy Act, which has resulted in wind turbines across the province. Ontario has been generating surplus hydro, Brown said, and "giving away" that electricity to New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio by selling it at a loss.

"Since 2009, we have given away $6 billion in surplus electricity," Brown said.

Ontario energy minister Glenn Thibeault, the MPP for Sudbury, has countered Brown's claim by pointing out that Ontario had made $250 million by 2015 by selling excess power to neighbouring jurisdictions, adding that the province once had to spend up to $500 million per year to buy electricity from its neighbours to avoid power shortages.

But Brown accused the Liberals of awarding Green Energy contracts to reward companies for donating $1.3 million to their party, rather than to serve the energy needs of Ontarians.

"One of the reasons a lot of people are disappointed with the Liberal government is they don't like that type of behaviour, nor should they," Brown said. "But why would the NDP prop it up? That's one of the reasons we have seen the NDP continuing to lose support, because the NDP can't continue to prop up the Liberals' Green Energy Act. It has been viewed left, right and centre as an unmitigated disaster. It's the best economic development program that the northern United States have ever seen. and frankly, it's not Ontario's business to be giving free electricity to our competitors."

Brown said efforts by the Kathleen Wynne government to reduce hydro bills, whether through an HST rebate announced last year or the elimination of the global adjustment reportedly being considered currently, amount to "shell games," which won't result in real savings for ratepayers.

"They are very clever," he said. "Don't underestimate the Liberals on their ability to be sneaky when it comes to hydro."

Brown was also critical of the Liberals for allowing Local Health Integration Networks to become "bloated" and called on Wynne to stop the hiring of 84 new vice-presidents at LHINS and instead direct funding to front-line care.

"They use these LHINs as a political buffer of accountability, so they don't have to own the cuts that are happening around the province," Brown said. "The sad part is the LHINs are an extraordinary cost to avoid political accountability. If you look at these new VPs, these 84 vice-presidents, you have to put a value on what it means for a Northern community – one of these VPs is the same cost as 5,000 homecare visits."

Move on Ring of Fire

Asked about his vision for development in the Northern Ontario Ring of Fire, a massive deposit of chromite and other minerals in the James Bay Lowlands, Brown said the province must do its part to speed up the process.

Noront Resources and KWG Resources, two major players in the Ring, recently laid out their plans for development there. Noront hopes to start small with a road while mining nickel, copper and a small amount of chromite to sell in the northeastern United States, while KWG prefers a railroad to move large quantities of chromite.

Chromite is a key component in the manufacture of stainless steel.

"This needs to be done, obviously, in co-ordination with indigenous communities and local municipalities, but we have been waiting five years," Brown said. "What I'm saying is this can't be delayed further and what we would want is to expedite that investment. Everyone's got to be at the table for that, but we can't be sitting and waiting another five years. We have had three announcements that shovels were about to go in the ground, three re-announcements in five years, and there are no shovels in the ground.

"As far as rail to road, those are options we would welcome looking at with all the stakeholders involved."