Premier Kathleen Wynne spoke to a packed house in Mitchell last night at an event hosted by the local Rotary Club.
Rotarians and local politicians filled the Mitchell Community Centre, to listen to the premier's thoughts on the rural-urban divide that exists in Ontario.
She started off by stating, "We need to, I think, challenge that illusion of the rural urban gap because what that does is it divides us it masks the common ground and all the ways that we rely on each other and I think that's the most important thing."
In light of her upcoming trip to the United Nations conference on climate change, Wynne addressed concerns about the financial implications of reducing carbon emissions.
"The cost of doing nothing is going to be far more expensive than taking action. So if we, particularly in the agricultural community, if we think about the cost of drought, and of flooding, and climate change, the impacts on the agricultural communities, the impacts on our ability to produce, those will be devastating if we don't get greenhouse gas emissions under control."
And for the agricultural community, the premier explained, "Our Moving Ontario Forward plan invests over $31-billion over the next ten years and about half of that total funding, that's just transportation infrastructure funding, half of that total funding is going to communities outside the greater Toronto and Hamilton area."
Following her speech the premier was presented with gifts to commemorate the evening, including a personalized Mitchell Hawks jersey.