The Ontario Progressive Conservative leader says tackling the province's debt and deficit needs to include an across-the-board wage freeze for all government employees.

Noting this will save $3 billion annually, Tim Hudak told local media: “I think it's actually fair considering what people who are not on the government payroll, the kind of sacrifices they've made in the last number of years.”

Hudak shared his vision for getting the province back on track Saturday as a keynote speaker at the Ontario Chamber of Commerce convention, hosted by the Chatham-Kent Chamber of Commerce.

He believes it is also necessary to go make changes to the benefits and pensions for government employees, by having new employees receive lower-cost pensions more in line with what's provided in the private sector.

Hudak also wants to see the labour arbitration process changed so pay hikes granted to government employees working in richer cities are not imposed on employees working in other municipalities that can't afford to pay the same wages.

The Chatham Daily News asked Hudak what kind of battle he expects to face considering the reaction of teachers' unions to a wage freeze and cuts to benefit recently imposed by the Liberal government.

“I think we would have actually avoided that if we had followed the PC plan, which is an across-the-board wage freeze for everybody,” he said, adding this would have included teachers, firefighters and MPPs.

Hudak believes the Liberals made a mistake by just going after one group at a time.

He also wants to lower taxes, telling chamber delegates the PCs have three ideas to do this, but can only afford to do one. They include lowering business tax to encourage and attract investment, lowering income tax or reducing the HST by two-points.

An upcoming confidence vote on the recently tabled Ontario budget by the ruling minority Liberals leaves the potential for an election to be called if it doesn't pass. However, the Tory leader wouldn't give a direct response about whether or not he wants to see an election called.

“We've got to get Ontario back on track,” Hudak said. “We've got to get change in our province.

“The problem with the budget is it's a Liberal-NDP coalition that's going to dig the hole deeper and it's going to cause more job losses in our province,” he added.

Hudak said if the 600,000 Ontarians who are out of work want hope restored, there needs to be a change in government.

The Tory leader said his party would also scrap the Feed-in Tarriff program that has enabled thousands of wind turbines and solar panels to be erected across the province.

Citing the program is resulting in soaring energy costs, Hudak said, “the first rule when you're in a hole and you want out is you put down the shovel.”

He said the impact of these renewable energy projects is causing the cost of power to soar, which is not making Ontario attractive for bringing back manufacturing jobs.

Hudak believes the province needs to get back to relying on lower-cost sources of power including nuclear, hydroelectric and natural gas, which have been the “work horses” of providing lower-cost energy.

Ellwood.shreve@sunmedia.ca