Fair Pensions For All responds to Minister Duncan’s Fall Economic Update

LONDON: The Province of Ontario has become a have not province with over 600,000 people out of work. Over taxed and with government spending out of control the group Fair Pensions For All looked forward to Ontario’s Fall Economic Update. Here is what we found.

The Good

Minister Duncan started by promising that his strong action will make Ontario the best place in Canada to invest. Duncan referenced the deficit and pointed to its elimination as the single most important step in creating jobs. He promised no more funding for increased salaries in the Public Sector and hoped that collective bargaining could achieve these goals. While we agree that strong action is required and eliminating the deficit is necessary, we did not see any plan to do these things. Simple things like pay freezes will not slay the deficit, rather it’s just a deferral program that begs for an economic expansion that simply won’t come.

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The Bad

With the backdrop of the Drummond Report, you would have thought that our Finance Minister would have done something to curb spending. In fact the projections for government spending next year are higher than this year. The projected interest on our debt for next year will top the $10 Billion mark and has become the 3rd largest government expenditure behind only healthcare and education. With over $55 Billion of our money going into salaries and benefits each year it seems rather ridiculous that the Finance Minister refuses to either lay off some of the public sector workforce or rein in spending on their contracts. He continues to promise a $2 Billion savings from his pay freeze plan, but that is disingenuous. He is in fact promising not to spend $2 Billion more on contracts, not to spend billions less. Not spending more money is not the same as saving money.

The Ugly

With all of the talk of bringing down the deficit, our Finance Minister projects that our deficit will actually increase next year to $14.4 Billion. If, as the minister says, eliminating the deficit is the key to economic growth, why is he letting the deficit increase by over $1 Billion next year? In fact, the Province of Ontario’s deficit is scheduled to be higher that the Government of Canada’s deficit in 2013. With GDP growth projected at less than 2% next year, clearly the Finance Minister has given us little to hope for. As a pensions advocacy group we expected to hear something about the massive unfunded liability in our Public Sector Pensions, but alas, not a word. In the final analysis it is pretty clear that Minster Duncan’s economic update was incredibly weak. It was long on election style platitudes and short on sound fiscal policy. We are in a financial mess and Ontario needs strong leadership now more than ever. Mr. Duncan continues to kick the can down the road and in doing so, he is not only letting us down, but also our children and grandchildren.