by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
January 25, 2005
Since the 2003 election campaign in Ontario, it has been obvious that now premier Dalton McGuinty has had difficulty telling the truth. During that campaign he made promises that he knew or should have known he couldn’t possibly have kept. Two of the most notable of these were his promises to stop development on the Oak Ridges Moraine and to roll back tolls on Highway 407. He knew that he couldn’t stop the development north of Toronto without facing large lawsuits. as far as Highway 407 is concerned, he didn’t bother to read the contract that the courts have found do not require the owners of the toll road to obtain the consent of the government when they set the tolls. It didn’t seem to bother McGuinty that some of his promises were simply out and out lies, many of which he could not blame on the previous Conservative government.
Dalton’s biggest lie came when he looked into the cameras and with a straight face told Ontarians that they would not pay one penny more in taxes under a McGuinty government than they were paying under the then current government. Then, in the 2004 budget he imposed a hefty and regressive health care tax. another McGuinty lie? Not so cried the premier; it wasn’t a tax, it was a premium. It would have been bad enough if the charade had ended right there but it didn’t. When McGuinty found out that some old collective agreements that the province had with its workers contained clauses that required the employer to pay for "health care premiums" undaunted Dalton said it wasn’t a premium, it was a tax. What is truly amazing is that McGuinty said all of this with a straight face. at least Bill Clinton smiled when he pondered what "is" is. The premier has no shame in his tax that is a premium except when it is a tax and not a premium.
It is way too early to claim that McGuinty now tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But he’s coming closer to a feeble attempt at honesty. after the health tax or premium or whatever it is, the premier said that all of the monies raised from the tax/premium/tax would go into health care. and so far that’s been the truth. Out of the estimated $2.4 billion that will go into provincial coffers, his Minister of Health, Furious George Smitherman, said that Ontario hospitals had to balance their budgets and the province would not be giving them any more money, Smitherman then gave the hospitals another $200 million (uh oh; another lie). and $91 million of that will go to severance pay in order to lay off nurses.
That one was our fault. When the government announced that the $2.4 billion windfall would be put into health care, most of us thought that it would go towards hiring the 8,000 new nurses that Dalton said he would hire. The fact that the money is being used to reduce the number of nurses in Ontario hospitals doesn’t alter the fact that that money was put into the health care system. The bad news is that those who end up in hospitals will suffer because there will be a greater shortage of nurses. But the good news is that Dalton didn’t lie about that one. Money that pays severance to get rid of nurses is money that goes into the health care system. He’s got us on a technicality. He may have pulled a fast one, but he didn’t out and out lie. His mother must be so proud.
Cigarette taxes went up this week by $1.25 a carton, the third such increase since McGuinty scammed his way into power. But taxes on smokes were always exempt from the McGuinty Doctrine of not paying one penny more in taxes. The reasons that the premier gave for the increases in tobacco taxes were to reduce smoking-related illnesses and disease which is a good thing, especially in light of the fact that by the end of his term there will hardly be any nurses left in the province’s hospitals. McGuinty was almost truthful about that but it wasn’t the whole truth. If McGuinty and his government were really concerned about helping people stop smoking they would put money into programs to help smokers quit. But that would cost money, not make it, and whatever else he is, Dalton McGuinty is a tax and spend Liberal.
McGuinty is a long way from becoming known as Honest Dalton. But he seems to be getting a little more truthful as time goes by. Hope springs eternal.