Lots of doom and gloom in the media these days about Ontario’s future and rightly so.
Under Dalton McGuinty’s watch we have become a have-not province with a crippling debt that has caused Moody’s to warn of a credit downgrade if action is not taken to balance the books.
But is that even possible now? Dalton McGuinty doesn’t seem to have the political will to deGreece the public sector entitlements that have a choke-hold around private sector growth.
Due to pressure from unions and the NDP it’s doubtful that this minority Liberal Government will go ahead with plans to lower corporate taxes - which along with high energy costs will only end up chasing more companies out of Ontario. And Dalton McGuinty wouldn’t need much coaxing to give into his friends in the unions.
Of course if Moody’s does downgrade Ontario’s credit, that will only make things worse because the cost of servicing the debt will increase.
For now Dalton McGuinty is talking a good game but there is no real action. He is appealing to the public sector to voluntarily give up some ground, but as John Ivison points out that is unlikely to happen:
The Premier talked of the respect that has been built up with the government’s “public sector partners.” The Liberals have accommodated the unions by granting generous pay increases that outpaced inflation, for example the 10.6%, four-year deal high school teachers struck in 2005. In return, the labour movement funded the multi-million-dollar election smear campaigns against the Tories under the Working Families banner. But that cozy relationship should last about five minutes after Sid Ryan and his pals at the Ontario Federation of Labour read the Drummond report.
Of course, in some ways, it doesn’t matter what the Ontario Liberals decide to do, since they have boxed themselves into a corner when it comes to negotiations with Big Labour.
[Do you ever wonder if Dalton is sorry he won that last election?]
At this point I’m not sure that even a change in Government could stop this downward death-spiral unless an extreme austerity program were implemented including a mandatory public sector wage freeze and extreme cuts to programs and services.
And who’s going to vote for that?
The problem is that in the good times politicians were only to happy to dish out the goodies. But nothing is free. We are seeing the Federal Government now having to address this problem as we contemplate changes to OAS. Nobody wants their entitlements taken away.
But this is where we need to grow up and look at the bigger picture. I’ve had to wrestle with that one myself over the past few weeks.
Pay now or pay later. Look at Greece and you will see our future if we don’t act now.
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Update
Full-day kindergarten on chopping block: Drummond report exclusive – Blizzard:
We’ve been living a champagne lifestyle when we should have been buying lager.
Now there’s a money-quote if I ever heard one.
* * * *
Saturday Update – (Lots of great related links)
Alberta’s first NDP budget – National Post (H/T Wilson):
Not only will recent years’ cuts in education spending be restored — and then some — to fulfill a promise Ms. Redford made in order to convince unionized teachers to take up Tory memberships in great numbers so they could vote for her leadership, the provincial daycare budget will be greatly expanded and some welfare payments will jump by a full third every month, at a combined cost to the provincial treasury of nearly half-a-billion dollars per year.
Gee that sounds familiar…
Rebuilding a strong, confident Ontario – Tim Hudak (Sun)
And Sandy asks the tough questions here – Hudak & PCs need to specify HOW they would rebuild Ontario.
BTW you can follow the PC General Meeting in Niagara Falls this weekend via Twitter at Hashtag #pcagm12 and the website.
Radwanski: Figuring out how to march to Drummond’s beat the hard part for McGuinty (Globe). Comments are worth checking out too.
Whatever Dolty does he won’t take any blame, let the finger pointing begin, excuse, excuses.
Even if we had an opposition to boot him out his mess would have to be dealt with and we are the bank, the money will come from us for the custodial work.
We need Hudak to come out swinging against the freaking wind turbines for starters.
I work for the Onatio Public Service. I’ve tried telling my “brothers and sisters” in OPSEU that expecting ANYTHING in regards to gains in bargaining when our contract is up December 2012 would be sheer lunacy, considering that unions everywhere, even in the private sector, are making concessions just so that the workers that they represent can still keep their jobs. I told them that since McGuinty asked our union to voluntarily opt out of the contract pay raises for the last two years that it is inconceivable to expect any gains, and if we try to demand that in our current economic crisis, the public will crucify us, and rightfully so. But no, they don’t care; as long as they are happy in their little bubble, they don’t really care what happens outside of it, and apparently I’m one of the blacksheep for even talking about this, but there are many more of us that are sane than you realize.
The government has already tried everything to make sure layoffs don’t have to happen, staff attrition being one of them (that is where an employee retires and they don’t replace them). They have also tried voluntary exit options for early retirements. Another thing they have done is to resolve, finally, the situation with all the people on sick leave, those that have been injured and can’t return to their former jobs (freeing up more spaces for attrition), and those with employment accomodations. However, it obviously hasn’t been enough, there have already been layoffs within the OPS, with another round is coming. Our Ministry hasn’t been hit yet, but an audit is being done in all the Ministries to see where corners can be cut. We know it is coming, it is only a matter of time. Everyone is holding their breaths right now, wondering when their Ministry is going to be next. So if our union is expecting gains in the face of that? ****ing idiocy.
So McGuinty is keeping this on the down-low; it is all about timing. He is sitting on a knife’s edge with a minority government – pi** off the unions, and he pays at the ballot box; pi** of the public by letting the public sector unions run rough-shod, and he can expect the same. So he is laying out in the weeds, looking to see which way the winds are blowing before he decides what he is going to do. It is all about self-preservation for the OLPC, he doesn’t give a damn one way or the other.
“It is all about self-preservation for the OLPC, he doesn’t give a damn one way or the other.”
Right you are Michael. You’re not the only public servant who thinks this way either. There is a culture of fear built in to the job which puts a gag on common sense people like yourself.
and apparently I’m one of the blacksheep for even talking about this, but there are many more of us that are sane than you realize.
Thanks for allowing us a little window into your world, Michael.
It’s good to remind us not to paint all union members with the same brush as the leaders.
Go West.
Good info Michael Harkov, thanks.
I guess our Federal”Budgetary Officer”, Kevie Page doesn’t believe in gloom and doom, he doesn’t believe changes to OAS are necessary. Most do, I agree with John Robson , he thinks he must be using pixie dust or something.
More jobs in Ontario are servicing the Oil/gas industry in Alberta, than there are jobs in Ontario’s auto industry (thanks to a huge Canadian taxpayer bailout there still is an auto industry).
Put an end to the green stupidity in Ontario,
exploit the vast resources Ontario has that McGuinty ‘protected’ with his ‘parks parks everything is a park’ program.
Then Ontarians can double or triple the jobs servicing oil/gas/mining and the province can earn royalties….. it’s huge money, and foolishly wrapped up in a green recyle bag.
Ending green stupidity does not mean you destroy the environment.
Native groups in Ontario’s north are begging for resources to be opened up, so as they can work and earn benefits.
Green stupidity.
Imo, any province (Quebec and Ontario) who are sitting on a wealth of resources but refuse to exploit them,
should NOT be entitled to equalization.
wilson – rural and small town Ontario did there bit to show Dalton and the Liberals the door based on their green energy plan. None of that matters to us though unless Hudak takes his gloves off and moves on that issue as well as a few others.
Re: full-day K was doomed from the start. It was an unaffordable and unsustainable plan. We said so many times over at Sandy’s and School For Thought. It was a program that was pitting municipal daycare workers against ECEs and education workers. For small communities it has been a joke.
Hudak played this one too safely during the election campaign, being meek in his stance rather than pointing out what so many of us already knew, INCLUDING McGuinty who admitted when he announced the full-day K that they didn’t have the money for it then…but went ahead and let the teacher unions have their way and unionize the ECEs.
Maybe mcGuinty having to clean up his own mess, and be the ‘bad guy’, turns out to be a good thing.
”…an extreme austerity program were implemented including a mandatory public sector wage freeze and extreme cuts to programs and services.
And who’s going to vote for that?…”
Albertans did. That is how Ralph Kline turned our province around.
There was a time when oil was -$10-30 pb. And that being our main industry … it was bad.
We all bit the bullet.
For the sake of the future, Albertans dug deep and pulled together to dig ourselves out of the deficit problems and lack of direction the PCs had taken the province. Unfortunately, the people of Ontario do not seem to have that type of grit and determination. Shame really, they were once great. Cheers.
Yes Fern, we did dig deep. And we will be doing it again if Alison Wonderland gets back in. Yesterdays budget is atrocious.
It seems that Kelly McParland agrees with you Anise.
Do you know what bugs me. Its this ‘Albertans have told us they want’ crap. She says it all the time when she rolls out another clinker.
We Ontarians could certainly take a few lessons from Alberta. I have never felt more ashamed nor worried about this province than lately.
McGuinty has no shame that’s for sure,we have reason to be ashamed of him and his mess, it’s full throttle on wind and solar/green energy which will sink us further.
The good news is he has said will not raise taxes, yeah, right, we heard that one before and we know what happened. Hang onto your firstborn, your hats and anything else you can grab, he’s already legislated us to a near paralytic state, the sky’s the limit.
Well we are right back in a bad scene here too.
These lefties just seep in thru the cracks in the good times, and then before yah know it…
Alberta is 2 years away from being Ontario West.
I think McParland called us Ontario West re: Alison in Wonderland’s budget.
There are many lessons to be learned from this whole Ontario debacle.
On the political side, I would encourage all Ontario junkies to pay close attention to how the Flanagan-crafted Wildrose campaign plays out in Alberta. And how the very good, conservative communicator, Danielle Smith executes Flanagan’s game plan.
This is going to be a great learning experience. Flanagan is, IMHO, easily the best analyst of the federal political game. How he adapts his theories to the very different, and very challenging provincial scene is going to be the stuff of future campaigning textbooks.
There’s always a silver lining. In this case, Hudak’s recent loss, will help Flanagan and Smith more effectively counter the slippery, sleazy, incompetent, intelligence-insulting incumbents we have here.
The Ottawa Citizen headline for today reads: McGuinty vows not to raise taxes to kill deficit.
That can be taken as an absolute given that tax increases are on the way. Indeed even as he makes the statement minimum prices for beer and liquor are set to increase on Mar 1. These are disguised tax hikes, as the tax on alcohol is applied as a percentage.
This does not rule out further increases in the next budget to the actual tax. So best stock up in the following 2 weeks.
Notably absent in his speech yesterday was any mention of concessions on his green energy initiatives. With most of rural Ont up in arms over wind turbines, it is full speed ahead with industrial wind development.
Where ARE the headlines announcing that McGuinty has achieved a new low for this province…even lower than Bob Rae did?
Seems to me that the PCs and their media friendlies are missing a HUGE opportunity to kill two birds with one stone (pen). Hit Dalton where it hurts and at the same time remind Canada what Rae has in store for the country if he should EVER be the leader of the LPOC.
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p.s. – it was written somewhere today that Don Drummond’s report has over 300 recommendations for where the government can find savings.
That’s almost as many promises McGuinty’s broken since coming to office isn’t it?
O/T – The only thing worse than Roger Smith on CTV is Roger Smith via Skype on CTV.
Blah!
Joanne , I watch the OMNI NEWS channel 11 edmonton, where I get up to date news news both local and fed. I saw the story on Vic Toews on security ; the other side of the story not seen on regular station.
I went into the OMNI ONTARIO, saw Rob Ford in his office assembly I guess, then I saw Dalton giving a speech on jobs and growth.
You have to see it for yourself maybe, you might see what the big shot cbc wouldn’t show.
Just take a look.
http://ontario.omninews.ca/index.php?language=1
Ooops, click on South Asians News to hear the english version the hostess is a white girl with very short boy like cut.
they got rid of michael harris . its a start
Getting rid of Harris was a surprise but a good one.
He billed himself as the unofficial opposition, he certainly was opposed to PM Harper. He never forgave him for siding with our traditional allies on Iraq in the beginning, when he was in opposition.
Wildrose presented an alternative budget today,
”..a modest $16-million budget surplus in 2012-2013 instead of the $3.1-billion cash deficit the PC government posted yesterday
[reported $886 million deficit plus $2.2 billion capital deficit – Page 8, Fiscal Plan]. ”
-An across-the-board public sector wage freeze
- $114 million for 1,425 more teachers
- $80 million for 1,000 more health workers, technicians and support staff
- $50 million for 1,000 more seniors care support workers
- $53 million for 300 more police officers, including 5 dedicated checkstop teams
http://www.wildrose.ca/feature/news-release-wildrose-presents-2012-balanced-budget-alternative/
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NP Editorial Board:
Alberta’s first NDP budget
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/02/10/national-post-editorial-board-albertas-first-ndp-budget/
Good interview with PMSH and cbc’s Susan Lunn on The House this a.m. At least she lets him talk,and unlike Solomon doesn’t interrupt and argue.
Interesting observation from this am,watching the wrap of PM’s trip to China..on cbc they play vid.of PM,and Laureen playing with baby panda…ctv only showed still shots.CTV afraid to show a soft,and gentle side of PM?? Idiots!
Sorry I missed that interview on The House. Good for Lunn. We should give her positive feedback.
Aha! Found a link to the intervew on NNW!
Jo,the audio link to interview is up at Natnewswatch
Yeah thanks Sammy! We both saw it at the same time. Listening now.
Re all day kindegarten. If this does get chopped iot has nothing to do with fiscal savings. McGuinty introduced this to buy teacher union votes plain and simple, as a glut of teachers seeking employment was ramping up. But a funny thing happened. Those critical of the plan cited the fact all day kindegarten would be too hard on the kids. McGuinty ignored that and plowed ahead anyways, with votes and Working Families attack ads dancing in his head.
Now go ask any teacher who is involved in the all-day classes. They say it was a mistake. They tell you everythings great until lunch, at which point the kids start getting tired and cranky. No time in the afternoon is spent teaching, but rather struggling to limit the amount of hissy fits from children who were used as pawns by McGuinty.
It would be great to hear from more teachers on this issue if they’re not afraid to do so.
you’re right Paul.
Joanne and others here, go to Barian Lillely’s videos and listen to them. One of them in particularly with Breitbart who gave an insight to the media and what changed him from the liberalism impsed on him to conversatism.
Also listen to England’s own politician Daniel Hannan on Stephen Harper and the OAS.
http://blogs.canoe.ca/lilleyspad/
Ann Coulter description of canada under a conservative government to the democrats is also something to listen to. Of course there are other videos to your liking
Something must be done about this. Did you know there are people out there that think disabled persons on AISH do not use deoderant, brush their teeth or shampoo their hair. I did not know this. lol
From a comment in the Lethbridge Herald re increase to AISH
I wonder if Premier Redford has ever had to budget out the cost of looking remotely presentable and professional for a front-line job, not to mention the cost of gas, insurance and parking for those fortunate enough to be able to own a vehicle. Personally even my shampoo, toothpaste, antiperspirant and second-hand clothing from Value Village cost far more than that $100 that AISH recipients aren’t required to spend every month.
Why don’t AISH people have to spend that money. Who buys those items for them. I hate to tell this lady she is out to lunch, as those items are bought. And if you buy them for a person it is not considered to be helping to support them. The tax dept thinks only clothing and food go to support said person.
And these disabled who do not have a vehicle must use the handibus, if they are w/chair bound, and it is not free, nor should it be. Just got the breakdown of what it cost for my g/son to use it last year. 777.50 was the total. Then we have the cost of a van, insurance etc that the family uses to transport him to Calgary or other places he needs to go. But those costs are also not considered support, nor is the tenant insurance for his room and belongings. And aids to daily living insist that he insures his w/chair. I do feel really bad for those that do not have family to assist in these extra costs. I just hope landlords do not decide to take most of the increase they will be getting.
And agencies that run group homes to charge clients a fee, in our case 200./mo, that is deposited in trust in his name. This covers items needed for his care, like personal products mentioned above, handibus, movies, etc. Nothing is free, and we get an accounting of all expenses.
End of rant.
Should be do charge, not to charge.
I hear you Mary T. We have the same issues here in Ontario. The disability allowance only covers rent and food. Our son called this morning. His boot heel exploded. So, we asked him to duct tape it together until Monday and my husband will take him out for breakfast and then go buy him new winter boots.
A couple of months ago he broke a front tooth. The ODSP would not pay to get it fixed because it would have required a surgeon. So, they pulled it — just to the left of the two front teeth.
So, we arranged for a partial. He doesn’t use it to eat but he does wear it the rest of the time. A good looking guy supposed to walk around with a gaping hole in his month for the rest of his life.
But, like you, we don’t expect the gov’t to pay for everything. It would be nice, however, if people had at least some awareness — as with that Lethbridge Herald commenter.
O/T but this may well be the best speech I’ve ever heard. (Daniel Hannan at CPAC)
Yes Joanne, we head Daniel H. crediting the canadian PM for his tackling the OAS now rather than later. It amazes me how foreign politicians and leaders for that matter credit our PMSH yet he can’t get that same credit here.
Have you also heard the interview between Lilley and Breitbart who talks about the liberalism in schools radios etc and how he got caught in their propaganda….. the same problem we face here.
Our MP is having a town hall meeting in our town next week to discuss the budget. You can be sure I will be bringing up the disability tax credit and how the unused portion needed by the person can be transferred to another family member. But, when trying this last year we were told that if you are not supplying housing, food and clothing you are not supporting said person. Guess we will have to start having g/sons brother paying the 700.00 month rent/food/utilities and the 200.00 agency fee. Then the g/son will have money for other items needed to survive. Then the brother will get a non refundable credit for about 5000.00. and increase his refund by about 600.00.
Considering g/son has not walked for 7 years, he really doesn’t need a lot of new shoes or boots other than style or something.
O/T,but just heard Whitney Houston dead at 48.Tragic,tragic story.What a voice,what a waste.
Editorial in Toronto Sun today: “We’re picking up McGuinty’s tab”. It goes on to say “We used to have Premier Dad, now we have Premier Don”.
Does that mean Dalty will lean back, smile and take orders from Don meaning we have an appointed caretaker to do the dirty work?
Wow. Painful column, but a must-read. Link here.
Yikes!
And Christina Blizzard seems rather cranky this morning.
I agree we need to get behind Hudak but not to kick him.
With the backing of his party it would be nice if he could now come out against forging ahead with green energy, promise to stop the wind catchers/bird killers/visual pollution/unknown consequences. There’s so much to go after but he needs to concentrate on one big item at a time.
He could come out swinging, calling for action against the Green madness March 17 when McGuinty is sure to think he’s a Leprechaun and push the blarney.
Liz J – Hudak needs to give his support base a reason to “get behind him” by getting specific on what he’d do if he were in government, and he has to make it clear how those who elected a PC candidate last election can tell if we’re getting any traction given that McGuinty will still ignore rural/small town issues.
You’re right that he needs to come out stronger on the whole green energy issue, but in my community that’s only one of MANY issues of concern. It’s a major one but there are so many others.
Until PC supporters see what they’re getting for their loyalty via their votes, it’s a wait and see scenario for me. I can easily get behind Hudak but I want a clear reason why.
I’m hoping Richard Ciano wins the party presidency today, because I’m tired of losing elections.
That Dalton is a sneaky SOB, he is trying to push the blame onto someone else’s shoulders so he can complain that he was just following orders and look what happened. A dirty trick the liberals play regularly, I hope Don wakes up because Dalton is far awake already planning his next ” it is not my fault” tactics.
count on it Jen.