10 Facts to Contemplate regarding Ontario’s Election

The day after the night before – and I am both irritated at how the election played out with the public sector unions ruling the day; and I am troubled about what the next 4 years will bring with a Liberal majority government. We all work hard; pay our fair share of taxes; and should expect that the tax money is not being misspent, wasted or unaccounted for. Here are ten facts that were exposed during the election that should give pause to any taxpaying Ontarian.

1. With its unbridled public sector spending and growth, the Liberal government doubled the Province’s debt in just 10 years. It has grown to a total of $291.9 billion; the debt increases by $400 a second, $25,000 every minute and $1.5 million every hour. This is a fiscally undisciplined, tax-and-spend government.
2. Ontario is now in a worse fiscal situation than the State of California (that is on the brink of bankruptcy and has had municipalities declare bankruptcy). The Ontario government spent 9.2% of its revenues paying off interest on debt in 2011/2012, more than three times higher than California’s 2.8%. On a per person basis, every Ontarian owes $20,166 compared to $4,282 for every California resident.
3. It is going to cost Ontario $ 1,000,000,000 ($1 billion) every month to service its debt. That is money going to pay financial institutions and not going to government programs and services like bettering our health care and education.
4. The Liberals grew the public sector by 17.6 per cent; 300,000 new government sector positions added in the last 10 years. More alarmingly, Ontario teachers, police, firefighters all enjoy pay and pensions that make them the highest paid public sector earners in the world for the jobs they are doing. And today, approximately 40% of our population in Ontario is public sector. One word: unsustainable.
5. Our healthcare mess is not going to be addressed. There is the never-ending multi-year E-HEALTH development project; the ORNGE air ambulance fiasco; and the establishment of new inefficient LHIN bureaucracies that have cost us billions. This is money that should have gone directly into delivering front line health care. The diagnosis for our Province’s healthcare is anything but hopeful.
6. The Liberal energy programs and policies will cost us dearly. We already know that our hydro rates will rise 42% in the next few years – and natural gas prices will rise this year by 40%. This is while the Liberals offer subsidized hydro to New York & Michigan. The total cost of Ontario’s subsidies for wind and solar power is $46 billion – which we will continue to pay for the next decade. In the years ahead, our energy costs are going to zap us.
7. The Liberal’s “election budget” which they will now pass, is digger us further into a hole from which our generation of taxpayers will likely not to climb out of. There’s $29 billion for transit and roads; $11 billion for hospitals; $11 billion for schools, $2.5 billion for corporations; a new pension plan to save us from ourselves, and on, and on, These are 10-year commitments, and with the new debt level and increased monthly debt-financing load, it all adds up to “no chance” of the government hitting its promised, balanced-budget target by 2017-18.
8. For a government that spends like this one does, it should not be surprising to know Premier Wynne will impose new taxes. We can expect in the years to come the taxes she has already hinted about (prior to the election): raising HST to 14 cents, adding new gas taxes at the pump; and introducing new taxes on employers and employees to pay for a pension plan scheme. All these tax hikes will shakedown more money from our pockets.
9. And there is no tax relief. When the Liberals brought in the Harmonized Sales Tax in 2010, they extended the reach of the province’s 8% sales tax to a wide range of goods and services to which it did not previously apply. Among those items were the cost of electricity, home heating fuels and gasoline. As the cost of those services rises, all household owners and consumers will be hit over and over again by that 8% provincial sales tax.
10. Literally billions of dollars have been lost and wasted. The mismanagement and scandals of the last ten years will never be explained. There will be no atonement for E-Health, ORNGE, Green Energy, power plant cancellations, etc. Is it also any wonder when a scandal-plagued government is returned with a majority mandate that people become disengaged with politics and disrespectful of politicians? Is it any wonder, we have become increasingly agitated to pay our taxes?