(Toronto) - Within minutes of becoming the 25th Premier of the Province of Ontario and with over a week before she’ll take her seat in the House as Premier, Kathleen Wynne has already blown $200,000 of taxpayer money appointing five additional cabinet ministers: each garners a $40,000 a year raise.
Her additional appointments now bring Ontario’s cabinet to 27. The Liberals will have more people sitting in cabinet than on their backbenches. Over one quarter of all Members of the House will now be Ministers. By comparison, the United Kingdom, a country with five times the population and five times number of elected Members, only has 32 Ministers for their much larger government.
“Premier Wynne said she wanted to ‘build on the legacy of Dalton’,” said Randy Hillier, MPP for Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington, “and that seems to be what she’s doing very effectively. Before even sitting in the House she has expanded the size and cost of government.”
“Dalton McGuinty doubled Ontario’s debt in his nine years as Premier from $139 billion to $278 billion. Ms Wynne seems on track to do the same.” Hillier observed that "[t]he only commitment that the McGuinty-Wynne Liberals are sure to honour is increased spending, more debt and lowering Ontario's standard of living."
Randy Hillier, MPP Lanark Frontenac Lennox, is a co-founder of the Lanark Landowners Association, which was brought to life to address government imposition on the rights of private property owners, and to address the regressive regulatory impositions that government was bringing down upon farmers and business owners in rural Ontario.
In 2006, Randy resigned as President of the OLA in order to run as a candidate for the Progressive Conservatives. Randy was elected in the 2007 provincial election.
Randy a long-time resident of Lanark County, an electrician by trade and member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), continues to co-publish and edit rural Ontario’s successful magazine “The Landowner.”
