The Progressive Conservatives are launching a jobs tour to sell their message that Ontario can be a manufacturing powerhouse again.

But critics say the Tory road map leads to the union busting and lower wages often identified with the U.S. right-to-work states.

Tory MPP Monte McNaughton said Friday his party’s “Made in Ontario” tour is necessary because the minority Liberal government has given up on manufacturing.

“There are nearly one million men and women out of work in Ontario today who can’t afford to wait another day for someone to take action,” McNaughton told a Queen’s Park news conference.

“There are three things that are holding Ontario back: sky-high energy prices, growing debt and deficits, and outdated labour laws,” he said.

McNaughton said Ontario has a lot to learn from right-to-work states where he says new manufacturing jobs are being created, not lost.

“When it comes to manufacturing . . . we just have to look south of the border to jurisdictions that are creating jobs,” he said, adding that right-to-work states Michigan and Indiana have created tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs in four years while Ontario lost 300,000 in 10 years.

“We are talking about creating, under (party leader) Tim Hudak and the PCs, 300,000 new advanced manufacturing jobs . . . good paying manufacturing jobs” such as developing video games.

Labour Minister Yasir Naqvi said the Tory job tour “promoting their race-to-the-bottom approach only means one thing for Ontario — lower wages for every worker in this province.”

“These policies have been tried before and have failed miserably. North Carolina has lost a third of their manufacturing jobs and Michigan’s unemployment rate has increased since right-to-work-for-less policies were put in place (last year),” he told the Star.

As part of its proposed labour law changes, the Tories are calling for an end to the Rand Formula that requires unionized employees to pay dues whether they join or not so that there are no so-called free riders.

Opposition critics and union leaders alike agree that getting rid of that formula will weaken unions.

“We’ve got to create the conditions for job creators to invest in Ontario,” said McNaughton, adding that “giving workers a choice creates winning conditions.”

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MPP Catherine Fife (Kitchener—Waterloo), the NDP’s economic development critic, says the Tories’ right-to-work style paper “is essentially a right to work for less pay, fewer benefits and less safe (working) conditions.”

The Lambton—Kent—Middlesex MPP said the province, for example, needs to restore the secret ballot voting system among construction unions and replace the current certification system that allows a handful of workers on a job site to join a union without input from all their fellow workers.