The Ontario Liberals have proven themselves neither managers of the Province’s economic engine nor of our public purse. Their big government ways have placed Ontarians and future taxpayers and businessmen in a difficult position.
The accumulated effect of the Liberal’s big government ways over the past eight years have cost us dearly. Already, their economic policies have seen the Province gone from “have” to “have-not” status. Liberals’ focus on nanny-state priorities have left Ontarians initiative to drift. The once humming economic engine of Canada has become a sputtering, choked-off remnant of itself.
Each second of Liberal economic management costs us $685. It’s criminal that the Liberals have amassed a provincial debt that now totals over $224 billion. This works out to over $18,000 per person. It is a fact that in their two terms in office, the Liberals have accumulated more debt than all previous governments combined!
How have the Liberals accumulated this debt in less than eight years? It is Dalton McGuinty’s systematic, underhanded approach to the management of public sector – an approach that can only be summed up in the phrase “labour peace at any cost.” Toronto Sun political reporter Christina Blizzard recently accounted for the Liberal’s record in a column entitled: Ontario has a debt crisis.
They’ve increased spending on government programs by more than 70% and doubled the province’s accumulated debt.
Public sector salaries are out of control. With those salaries comes the ticking time bomb of cushy, defined benefit pensions.
Despite a stern finger-wagging from Finance Minister Dwight Duncan and a pledge to freeze civil servant salaries in the 2010 budget, only a handful of government workers actually had their pay frozen. Ontario provincial police, got an 8.5% pay hike — a deal that has municipalities across the province up in arms, as they know it sets a precedent for their forces. The government negotiated a secret deal with OPSEU that gave them 1.75% in 2009, 2% in 2010, 2% this year — and 3% next year. The big teacher unions weren’t included in the pay hike. Their contracts, conveniently, aren’t up until next year. Same with the province’s doctors.
You only have to look at the annual so-called “Sunshine List,” of people making more than $100,000 on the public dime to see how salaries have soared. When the Liberals took office eight years ago, 20,249 people were on that list. The latest list of 2010 salaries show that number has more than tripled — with 71,478 people on the list.
Read Blizzard’s full column here: http://www.torontosun.com/2011/09/17/ontario-has-a-debt-crisis
Dalton McGuinty is steering a run-away-train wreck of his own making. Here is hoping that next week Ontarians chose to jump the track on this disastrous course.
