Paul Wells is talking about when he says that if PM Harper is not careful the fiscal imbalance will take care of itself.
Wait a minute. Wasn't the province of Ontario drowning in a sea of red ink just two years ago, according to Premier Dalton McGuinty?Didn't he and then finance minister Greg Sorbara tell us back then that the previous Conservative government left taxpayers facing a deficit of at least $5.6 billion after eight years of spendthrift rule?
And yet, miraculously, the Liberals today seem to be swimming in money. Our money.
A government source told the Star last week the Liberals will be hard-pressed to show they're running a deficit in their March 23 budget, which is why they're ready to announce such megaprojects as a $1.5-billion expansion of the Spadina subway line.
Meanwhile, the Liberals boasted last week about their $6-billion investment (over five years) in post-secondary education -- in the middle of a teachers' strike at the province's community colleges and at the same time as they announced tuition hikes for college and university students this fall.
Over at City Hall, Toronto politicians were happily suggesting a last-minute bailout by the province will hold this year's property tax hike to 3% -- as if that's something to crow about.Still, it suggests the province is flush with cash.
Is there no independent body that can audit the books? When Enron cooks the books the are (rightly) borught down. When governments do it they can win re-election.
Comments (2)
I don’t know Ontario’s budget very well, but I do know New Brunswick’s. Because of the downloading during the 1990’s onto provinces, they too had to cut back on funding for social programs.
The only reason why a province like NB is not in deficit this year is because they literally cut everything from hospital beds to provincial testing.
The fiscal imbalance still exists because there are these massive surplus’s in the federal government, when the provinces are cutting and scraping by to not run into deficit. Sure some provinces like NB have managed to come out of deficit in the last two years, but only because they cut absolutely everything under the sun.
If we are going to address the fiscal imbalance between the amount of taxes that go to ottawa, and the amount that go to the provinces, we need to look at how BOTH these entities share responsibility for social programs. Its not as simple as who has money and who doesn’t.
Posted by Riley Hennessey | March 12, 2006 3:44 PM
Posted on March 12, 2006 15:44
Oops, the “provincial testing” I was referring to is actually the standardised testing system that the entire province used to run to measure education in high schools. I should mention that teachers were cut, department heads slashes, and generally the entire budget for education was chopped under both Liberal and conservative governments of NB in the 1990’s and early 2000’s.
Posted by Riley Hennessey | March 12, 2006 3:48 PM
Posted on March 12, 2006 15:48