(All Tool Manufacturing, a small ISO nuclear class manufacturing plant, Hamilton, ON)
This budget is clearly a disgrace and a disaster. The only ones happy with it are, of course, the teachers union because they’re going to get full-day kindergarten, AKA socialized babysitting. McGuinty’s own expert recommended letting Early Childhood Educators run much of this program, but the teachers union demanded they get the jobs instead, regardless of the much higher cost and of course McGuinty succumbed to their demands rather than stand up for the taxpayers.
Screwing the taxpayers is what he does best: He had years to amend the OPSEU collective agreement so that the tax-collectors don’t get a pay-out for switching jobs yet he let us down again. Now 1250 tax-collectors are going to get up to $45,000 each for absolutely nothing. Since the province no longer needs PST collectors, they’re going to work for the feds now, as GST collectors. They’re not going to miss a single day of work yet it’s going to cost the taxpayers $25 million in ‘severance’! Not to mention they’re also getting a 3.4% raise! Could you possibly insult and abuse the taxpayers more than that? That just gives them yet another reason to cheat the taxman at every turn. Not to mention, why the hell are the feds hiring 1250 GST collectors when they already have an army of them in place? Because they simply don’t have the guts to dismiss them for the redundant obsolete positions they are, as surely would have been done in the private sector.
And where in this budget are the austerity measures for the public sector? After all, they consume 80% of the budget. Wage freezes for NON-UNION civil servants only?? There should be wholesale layoffs & an across-the-board wage rollback. They’re overpaid to begin with, just look at the bloody sunshine list! 60,000+ Ontario civil servants making $100K+ per year yet only 3% of Canadian filers do. For crying out loud, what a debacle!
To quote Kelly McParland of the National Post today: “The public payroll would choke a cow. It's not hard to make $100,000 in Ontario now -- all you have to do is get a job with the government and maybe put in a bit of overtime.”
To put it in perspective, California, the largest economy in the US, with 37 million people, and with a GDP larger than all but 8 countries in the world, is currently coping with a $12 billion fiscal hole. Schwarzenegger's proposed budget calls for eliminating the state's $1-billion welfare program and for state employees' salaries to absorb a 5-per-cent reduction.
McGuinty by comparison, who has a far greater deficit problem, is actually going to increase program spending by 6.5% this year, to $116 billion! He’s going to boost nearly every government ministry and they’re spending half a billion dollars to bail out Nortel pensions while 70% of Canadians have no pensions at all! Total spending, including debt charges, will go up $8.2 billion to $126 billion. They’re going to run a deficit of more than $21 billion and they’re going to run deficits until at least 2018!
How much will the provincial debt be after 8 more years of red ink? And how much interest will we be paying at that time when rates are triple the historic lows they are currently, and Ontario's credit rating is further downgraded?
Will the public sector at that time consume more than our total revenues, as in Greece? Where will that leave our children, besides bankrupt, thanks to the McGuinty liberals? McGuinty is essentially forcing our children to pay for our inflated standard of living and what do you think the health care system is going to be like for them, when all their money will go to servicing debt interest?
I’ve been saying for years now that the McGuinty liberals are cursing this province because they can’t control their spending. Our provincial debt now stands at around a quarter-trillion, up 25% in the last two years. Now the Feds aren’t much better, but at least they paid down debt when times were good & reduced taxes. McGuinty by comparison increased taxes and debt, despite soaring record revenues, and spent beyond even HIS OWN massive budgets!
Jeffrey Simpson of the Globe & Mail published an article a few days ago that sums up the disastrous situation in Ontario most ominously:
“For Ontario, as part of a Canadian economy roughly one-10th the size of that of the U.S., a provincial deficit of $24.7-billion eclipses the $180-billion facing all 50 states combined…
Ontario, therefore, is kidding itself. It's in terrible financial shape, has no plan to restore its health, will take no remedial action... is in an immense fiscal hole with absolutely no idea how to climb out of it, and no constitutional requirement to do so"
Hey kiddies, want a glimpse of your future thanks to the McGuinty liberals? Just look at Greece!
Thanks,
Rob Viles
Controller, All Tool Manufacturing Inc.
