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You can read all the details at our website, www.paymoregetless.ca. But I’d like to share some of them with you today. As they did last year and the year before, the McGuinty Liberals have released a budget document full of big promises and even bigger spending. And, just as they did last year and the year before, we can expect that many of those promises will be broken, unfulfilled, or simply forgotten. This is a government that, from its earliest days, defined itself as a government that breaks its promises. Out of the more than 200 promises they ran on in the election two-and-a-half years ago, over 50 have been broken. The biggest of these, of course, was Dalton McGuinty’s solemn, signed and witnessed promise to not raise taxes on Ontario workers and families. In his first budget, Dalton McGuinty broke this promise with his huge, so-called health tax. It was the largest personal income tax increase in history, hitting people who earn as little as $20,000 a year. And there have been other devastating hits on the family budget on Dalton McGuinty’s watch
All told, the average Ontario family is paying over $2,000 more per year in additional taxes and costs, that they weren’t paying before Dalton McGuinty and his Liberal government came to Queen’s Park. Yet as if the broken promises so far weren’t enough, and the costs to Ontario families weren’t enough, in this budget the McGuinty government is making 43 more promises. With their record, why would they expect anyone to believe these new promises will be kept? If you look at the McGuinty government’s last two budgets, and compare them to this one, you will see many promises repeated, with little or no progress from year to year. In their first budget, they promised to reduce wait times for critical health care services, such as cataract surgery and hip and knee replacements. In last year’s budget they said their plan was working. Yet there have been huge wait times increases for some of these surgeries across the province. And not in remote northern or rural areas – in good-sized communities. Patients in Chatham are waiting 53% longer for hip replacements. Patients in North Bay are waiting 132% longer for knee replacements. Patients in Cambridge are waiting 205% longer for cataract surgeries. In Durham region – which, coincidentally, is getting none of the transit money announced in the budget – cancer surgery wait times are up 67%, CT scan wait times are up 31%, and angioplasty wait times are up an unbelievable 213%. Meanwhile, the government has spent $180 million on a new layer of health care bureaucracy – including $2 million in new office furniture. Spending additional billions on health care while wait times shoot up and emergency rooms remain in chaos just doesn’t cut it anymore. They have spent the dollars. But they haven’t delivered the goods. In last year’s budget they promised $4 billion dollars for elementary and secondary school renewal. But schools will be closing in Norfolk, Brantford, Haldimand, Brant County, Oxford County, Port Hope, Glencoe, Larder Lake, Bothwell, Thunder Bay, Niagara, Orillia, Stayner and Collingwood. In last year’s so-called education budget, they announced that $6.2 billion will be spent on colleges and universities over five years. But people at the colleges and universities tell us they have seen none of that money yet – one year into a supposed five-year plan. In both previous budgets, the government promised that the number of people entering apprenticeship programs would increase by 7,000 by the year 2007-08. But this promise has been quietly dropped from this year’s budget. For three budgets in a row the Liberals have been promising improvements to the Windsor border crossing. But ask anyone who has to do business across that border on a regular basis what it’s like. In last year’s budget they said they were working on ways to strengthen the forestry sector. But we all know what’s happened to the forestry industry in Northern Ontario over the last year: shutdowns, job losses, and devastation to entire communities. Their big announcement in this budget is funding for an extension of the Spadina subway in Toronto. But for three budgets in a row now, they have announced the creation of something called the Greater Toronto Transportation Authority. It was on page 119 of last year’s budget. It was on page 33 of the budget before that. The legislation to create this agency has never been introduced. They are proposing to funnel nearly a billion dollars to build a subway, through an agency that doesn’t even exist on paper yet. Just so everyone is clear: this government is borrowing money today for work that will not be taking place for a long time. You do not take out a mortgage today for a house you will buy three years from now. In business, you would be answering to the authorities, if you artificially depressed one year’s results to finance a future spending spree. They said they would be able to replace the one-quarter of our electricity supply that they are shutting down by 2007, but projects are not coming on line fast enough, and they have already extended that timeline to 2009. They claim they will be able to hold spending growth to 3% a year, but they haven’t been able to meet that target in any year to date. And for two years in a row now, they’ve had a last-minute spending spree – when they could have significantly reduced the deficit and saved interest costs. They’ve had three budgets and every one has had a different priority. The first budget was about health. Despite the largest personal tax increase in Ontario history, they have failed to keep their promise to reduce wait times. Their second budget was about education, and they have massively increased funding to school boards and teacher contracts. But school boards are still facing deficits and some are even being audited. This budget is supposedly about infrastructure. But the big infrastructure spending they’ve announced is coming out of last year’s money – a budget that was supposed to be about education. Are you confused? So are they. And while they are rushing through a last-minute spending spree, important sectors –such as our farmers –have been cut:
But what is most disturbing of all, is the effect that the McGuinty government’s three budgets are having on Ontario’s economy. We may be in a position to get rid of this government in 18 months’ time, but we are going to have to live with the damage they have done to our economic fundamentals for much longer. The budget plays down the fact that many of Ontario’s key economic indicators are going in the wrong direction:
The stories behind these worrying trends and statistics are the stories of the very entrepreneurs and investors that we need to create jobs and opportunities in this province. We need to encourage investment and new growth – there is no other way to fund the health care, education and social programs that Ontario families expect and deserve. The fair taxation of income and profits is the only place this money will come from, now or in the future. Yet this is a truth that Liberals seem to forget every time they get in power in Ontario. The last Liberal government raised taxes, launched dozens of new programs, hired thousands of new civil servants and added thousands of people to the welfare rolls. Times were good, and the Liberals thought they would never end. And, by the way, they promised to build five subways – but never got a shovel in the ground for even one of them. This Liberal government has not learned from their predecessors’ mistakes, and are making the same ones. Despite all the spending that has delivered little or no results, despite the very worrying economic signs, this government insists that they have been good managers. Well, let’s see what the budget has to say to support that. In the last year, the McGuinty government has not eliminated one new cent of waste or identified one new dollar in efficiencies. Not one. Last year they claimed to have found $407 million in savings since they were elected. This year that number is the same, as if frozen in time: $407 million. How can a government call itself a good manager when over the course of three years it has found a grand total of one half of one per cent in savings? How can a government call itself a good manager when it can’t balance the budget with over $17 billion in new revenue? This is the amount of money that has flowed into Ontario’s coffers since 2003. Yet instead of balancing the books as they could have this year, the McGuinty government gerrymandered them to make a big splash next year. Liberal sources have admitted that this was a purely political move. As they told the Toronto Star: “We’re having a hard time showing a deficit this year.” Unfortunately, the Liberals’ multi-billion-dollar jump-start for their election campaign is costing the rest of us. By the end of their mandate, annual debt interest charges will have risen to $11 billion – nearly equal to the budget of the Ministry of Education. The Liberals are attempting to cover up their record of broken promises with announcements of shiny new subways and buses. But the truth is that under Dalton McGuinty, Ontario is falling behind, and his reckless spending and poor management is hastening that slide. Weakening economic fundamentals show that – on the McGuinty Liberals’
watch – Ontario has become a less attractive place for businesses
to locate and invest, and a less secure place for families to plan their
futures.
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