BARRIE, Ont. - The Ontario government is stubbornly refusing to address the tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs that continue to disappear, and is acting as if the problem doesn't exist, the opposition said Friday.

While the economy created almost 35,000 new jobs in June nationwide, the manufacturing sector lost 31,000 jobs -- with about 19,000 in Ontario. About 50,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in Ontario this year.

"I think it alarms people across Ontario that the McGuinty government has no plan (to deal with the increasing job losses),'' New Democrat Leader Howard Hampton said from Dryden, Ont., where he attended a public forum to talk about job cuts in the forestry sector.

"To those of us that have been asking for a plan or a strategy for over two years now, we've come to recognize the McGuinty government doesn't have (one). They'll conduct a few photo ops but they don't have a plan.''

The New Democrats have called for the creation of a jobs commissioner, an independent officer who would be proactive in bringing forward ideas to protect jobs before they are lost.

"You don't wait until the `closed' sign goes up,'' Hampton said. "You need to start working with industry, working with labour, to identify some of the challenges up front and start responding to those challenges.

"(The government) is not doing anything proactive.''

Conservative Leader John Tory agreed there's much more the government could be doing to protect jobs, and he endorsed the NDP's pitch for a jobs commissioner.

Tory said the premier could also reach out to industry by reducing taxes, making electricity more reliable and affordable, and changing regulations to make business more viable.

"Those are things Mr. McGuinty could personally, as the head of the Ontario government, act on if he chose to do so,'' Tory said.

McGuinty acknowledged the manufacturing sector continues to shed jobs, but he said the same problems are playing out across North America.

He also admitted his $650-million fund to help companies be more innovative may not be enough to offset a rising dollar and interest rates, and called for help from the Bank of Canada.

"We also have made it clear to the Bank of Canada: don't adopt economic policy that takes only an overheating Alberta economy into account, take a look at what's happening in Ontario as well,'' he said.

"We're growing. The economy continues to grow at a steady pace but we continue to experience some real challenges in the forestry sector and manufacturing, for example.''

McGuinty also said that while job losses in manufacturing have been significant, employment is up overall.

"The good news is every day we gain more jobs than we lose jobs in Ontario, so we're up to ... 340,000 net new jobs,'' he said.

But it's that kind of rationale that irks the people who have lost their jobs, Tory said.

"If he continues to essentially deny the existence of a problem here, he's going to have a lot of trouble doing that,'' Tory said.

"There are things that could be done.''