Ontario Liberals On The Verge of Forcing An Election

To make a minority government work, the party in power needs the support of enough members of parliament to pass confidence-vote legislation like the budget. This can be done on an issue by issue basis, or, by coming to an on-going agreement with one or more opposition parties to form a coalition government.

Currently, in Ontario, the Progressive Conservative party under Tim Hudak has been chomping at the bit for an election. They have been uncooperative for some time, looking to gain power for themselves instead of looking to get things done for the people of Ontario.

So, the governing minority Liberals, now under Kathleen Wynne, have been appearing to be willing to work with the NDP to pass legislation. With this in mind, Andrea Horwath's NDP have asked for some things to be added/changed in the upcoming Ontario Budget. 

Here is what the NDP demands include:

• Close corporate tax loopholes (while running a deficit, it makes no sense to allow so much potential income to escape)
• Reduce car insurance rates by 15 per cent (Ontario has the highest rates in Canada)
• Introduce new measures to help reduce youth unemployment
• Strengthen health care
• Improve Welfare rules
• Improve support for home care for seniors
• Generally make life more affordable for Ontarians

At first, it seemed, for a while, that the Liberals were going to meet the NDP demands and get a budget passed. However, Horwath has said that recent meetings over the budget have been "unproductive" and that the Liberals have not offered a clear agenda.

The most recent item proposed to meet the NDP demand was a relatively insignificant amount to improve support for home care for seniors. 

From the Toronto Star:

On Tuesday, Wynne, Finance Minister Charles Sousa and Health Minister Deb Matthews tried to meet a key NDP demand by announcing $260 million in additional funding for home-care services.

But Horwath remained unimpressed, which infuriated the premier.

“This is not a political game. This is not a ping-pong game about ‘you put out a policy and I’ll put out a policy, and we’ll see which one we can fight about and where we land,’ ” Wynne scolded her rival. “We will not be held hostage to a list, an arbitrary list.

“It’s not that it’s a Liberal budget, it’s not that it’s an NDP budget, or it’s a Conservative budget. It’s the right budget for the people of Ontario,” the premier said.

Horwath, who told reporters she was taken aback by Wynne’s “arrogance,” said it’s about delivering for Ontarians, not the NDP.

“People have told us that they’re looking for change — simple, affordable change — that makes their lives better,” Horwath said. “They’ve been promised it over and over again but constantly find that they’re being asked to pay more and expect less from their government.

“New Democrats have been clear since the throne speech. If we are going to support a budget, it has to create jobs, strengthen health care and make life more affordable for Ontarians,” she added.

It seems apparent that the Ontario Liberals are purposely dragging their feet when it comes to trying to make the government work for Ontarians. This would point to them actually wanting an election, but not wanting to be the ones to seem to bring about an election.

If there is an election in Ontario soon, people should realize it will be the fault of the parties unwilling to make the government work for Ontarians (The PCs for being totally unwilling to negotiate for things for Ontarians, and the Liberals, for being unwilling to work with the only opposition party remaining who IS willing to negotiate for the good of Ontarians).

ON Election Fact Check: NDP spending least, PC spending most

In this new article, Tim Hudak claims that the NDP is a "big spending" party. Let's look at the facts.

Both the PCs and Liberals have committed to spending almost $2 billion dollars on another wave of corporate tax cuts. But the PCs go further by committing to a total of $5.565 billion in tax cuts.

The total cost of the PC platform is $5.995 billion - this is mainly tax cuts to corporations and wealthy, and many service cuts (and they're not saying what they will cut).
Meanwhile, the total cost of the NDP platform is only $3.352 billion - no corporate tax cuts - mainly contingency funds, discounts, and boosts for services that most people could use, and tax cuts only for businesses that actually create jobs.
   See: Fiscal Cost of Ontario Platforms here.


So, Hudak is very misleading to say the least as his party is the biggest spender and remains faithful to the term Looters In Suits - taking our money and giving it all away to the rich.

See the full costing of the NDP platform here.

Ford Nation is now a little clam. And, Tim Hudak is as out of touch as ever

Toronto News: Hudak plunges into dangerous liaison with Rob Ford - thestar.com

According to the Toronto Star, Rob Ford's popularity has been steadily declining since the election in Oct. 2010.

Ford’s popularity is sinking, according to polling data, as his hunt for
“gravy” falters and his administration wobbles. Just as the provincial
campaign takes off, Ford is wading into budget deliberations seemingly
eager to inflict deep spending cuts despite a promise not to.
...
And Tim Hudak must have drank a lot of the Ford Nation kool-aid because he thinks that, under the Miller administration in Toronto, services went down and a deficit was run.

Hudak told reporters after the more than hour-long meeting in Ford’s
mother’s sprawling bungalow they talked about the mayor’s efforts to
clean up the financial “mess” left by his predecessor, David Miller.


“Taxes went up and services went down and they have a significant deficit,” Hudak said.
Actually Tim, services were maintained or went up, and they ran a surplus, not a deficit. And the fact that Hudak thinks there still was a "gravy train" when it has been proven that, without a doubt, there was no "gravy train" at City Hall, goes to show just how out of touch he is with reality and Toronto.

And Ford has been asking the provincial party leaders for money for his failed Sheppard subway extension. The subway extension that was supposed to cost the taxpayers nothing since he would be able to get private business to pay for it all. But, no offers are forthcoming.

And then we have a quote from John Capobianco, a PC party activist and Rob Ford adviser claiming about Rob Ford:
“He was elected with a sweeping mandate for change at City Hall and he
has done a phenomenal job of cutting spending and keeping taxes down.”
Actually, John, Rob Ford has increased spending, and reduced income, and will have to put a huge tax hike in place to balance things out sooner than later.

Here is the most heartening part of the article:
But the Star has learned of polling data showing Ford’s
popularity steadily sinking from an almost 70 per cent approval rating
after the Oct. 25 election to only 45 per cent in early August.


Nelson Wiseman, a veteran political  scientist at the University of Toronto, also believes the Fords’  rock-star appeal has dimmed, scoffing at the mayor’s past threat to
unleash his “Ford Nation” supporters to topple McGuinty.


“Ford Nation is now a little clam,”  Wiseman said. “Sometimes it seems to be two people — Rob and his brother who, since the election, have come across like Abbott and Costello.

Apocalyptic crisis budgeting

Apocalyptic crisis budgeting - thestar.com
This is a good article by Edmund Pries in the Star regarding the recent budgeting of conservative governments.

Here it is below. I've highlighted a few parts:
The headlines have been apocalyptic and relentless. Unless the U.S. cuts trillions in social spending, it will go bankrupt. Unless Canada cuts billions in federal spending, our economy will go bust. Unless Toronto cuts more than $700 million in program spending, the city will
collapse. We live in an age of apocalyptic crisis budgeting. Unless the most drastic social spending cuts are implemented, the world as we know it will sink into the quicksand of debt, never to reappear again. How could this happen?

During the Reagan era, a friend and former colleague, a professor of American history, was invited to the deliberations of a Washington think-tank that provided policy direction for the Republican Party. As they discussed growing the debt and increasing the deficit, he was
flabbergasted: “Are you not the party of balanced budgets and debt elimination?” The reply was unequivocal, “Our goal is to grow the deficit as much as possible in order to create political space to eliminate government-funded programming. Until then, we want high deficits while lobbying for a balanced budget — and promoting social program cuts as the only solution.”

To create this useful deficit, tax cuts to wealthy individuals and corporate sectors would be dramatically increased, especially to the banking, energy and military segments. In short, one would implement a transfer of the state’s revenue supply obligations from the wealthiest to the poor and middle classes in order to permit an even greater transfer of wealth from the middle classes to the rich thereafter.


The only trick was to convince the poor and middle classes to “buy in” via a mixture of patriotism and structural necessity so that they would vote in favour of cutting the very programs that benefited them.

Canadians have had front row seats to observe this structural engineering over the past two decades. After years of sky-high deficits, Bill Clinton’s Democrats balanced the budget and produced a surplus. Then George W. Bush granted tax relief for the wealthiest and went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq to create the largest deficit in American history. As Bush exited from office and Obama entered, trillions of dollars were transferred by the government (funded mostly by middle-class Americans) to the banks. As a thank you, the banks foreclosed on the homes of more people than at any other time in history. The recent debt ceiling settlement follows the pattern as additional social spending cuts are implemented without cancelling Bush’s tax cuts to the very rich.

Like Clinton in the U.S., the federal Liberals left office with a budgetary surplus. The Conservatives created the largest deficit in Canadian history and, unbelievably, ran an election campaign on financial management savvy! Of course, they created the deficit in part by implementing tax cuts and engaging in discretionary spending designed to produce the deficit which, we are told, now needs to be eliminated by cutting programs.

The same approach has now come to Toronto and is being mimicked by Rob Ford. He, too, was left a surplus by his predecessor. Nevertheless, the agenda marches on. First, create the crisis by reducing the revenue base through tax cuts and then take the budget knife to Toronto’s city-wide programs. Instead of articulating a vision for building a great city, it is simply a slash and burn approach to a manufactured crisis.

Some have pretended that the budgetary crisis is real and not manufactured. Let us be clear: our relative wealth is greater than atany time in our history. Our collective ability to build a strong,caring and inclusive society in which everyone can participate has never
been greater. This also holds true for the community of nations: wehave the capacity to build a just global society.

Our preparedness to do so, however, seems utterly lacking, for an extreme individualism has taken over the mindset of many. We believe, falsely, that we are best served by hoarding as many resources as possible and letting others fend for themselves. The opposite is true. We are best served when we build a society together where all, including
each reader of this article, can benefit through the building of community-wide programs.

In many 16th century European cities, each citizen was required to swear an annual citizenship oath to the city (or community) in which they resided. In it citizens affirmed, among other things, their commitment to “support the well-being of their neighbour” and “promote the common good.” Toronto’s early history as a community, like Canada’s as a country, speaks of similar goals and aspirations.

Have we really lost our sense of the common good? Or is each person now on his or her own? There is no apocalyptic budgetary crisis other than of our own making. The crisis is in our orientation. 


Edmund Pries teaches in the department of global studies at Wilfrid Laurier University