Budget

Saturday April 27, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday April 27, 2019

Ontario budget cuts could pull millions of dollars out of Hamilton public health, child care programs

Ontario budget cuts will end an addiction counselling program for Hamilton welfare recipients and likely yank millions of provincial dollars from local child care and public health services, city officials say.

April 6, 2019

The Progressive Conservative government is shifting more of shared costs for public health and child care budgets to municipal taxpayers — the kind of move local politicians have long condemned as “downloading.”

The changes will be retroactive to April — meaning city council will likely have to choose between cutting services or forcing local taxpayers to cover extra costs, said Paul Johnson, general manager of healthy and safe communities.

Johnson said Wednesday he does not yet have enough information to predict exact budget shortfalls this year or possible changes to critical services like subsidized child care, for example.

March 19, 2019

“I have a level of frustration because I am unable to tell our councillors, our community, our residents what the next steps are or how their services may be affected,” he said. “We have many questions and we are seeking answers.”

The city will now be on the hook for a portion of $10-million in child care program costs previously fully covered by the province. Hamilton will also pay 30 per cent, rather than 25 per cent of public health program costs.

This year, local taxpayers put up $12.4 million for public health. If that number rises, council could look at program cuts, put off planned hires or dip into reserves to temporarily cover extra costs.

December 18, 2018

But Johnson said it’s too soon to “do the math” on extra costs because the city is not even sure which services will remain in the public health budget — and it is always possible the province will provide transition funding. (Ontario is also working on a plan to review responsibilities and merge municipal boards of health.)

The city is also bracing for news on budgets for Ontario Works, land ambulance and long-term care.

The only specific program casualty of the provincial cuts so far is the Addiction Services Initiative, a long-running pilot program that gives addiction counselling to welfare recipients aiming to rejoin the workforce. The province has confirmed it will no longer fund the program as of July. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Saturday April 13, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday April 13, 2019

How Doug Ford’s budget has hurt Trudeau and helped Scheer

The sound coming out of Conservative backrooms on Parliament Hill in the hours following the presentation of this week’s Ontario budget was that of a collective sigh of relief.

April 12, 2019

From Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer’s perspective, his party dodged a pre-election bullet on Thursday.

By all indications, Premier Doug Ford’s fiscal plan will provide the Trudeau Liberals with less lethal ammunition to use against their Conservative rivals in the upcoming federal campaign than they had hoped for.

Yes, the fact that Ontario will remain in the red beyond Ford’s current term in office is liable to blunt Conservative Party of Canada attacks on the ruling Liberals for accumulating deficit upon deficit since they have taken power.

But it will also make it more difficult for Trudeau to turn the tables on Scheer and predict that the election of a Conservative government would result in a fiscal bloodbath.

November 20, 2018

And yes, the course charted in Thursday’s budget will — over time — impoverish Ontario’s social services. The plan to keep the growth in program spending below the rate of inflation for the next five years cannot but result in a thinner social safety net. The province’s most vulnerable constituencies stand to be the first and the hardest hit.

But the full impact on most Ontarians of the measures sketched out on Thursday will not have been felt by the time Scheer and his Conservatives go door-knocking next fall.

July 28, 2018

In the immediate, the first batch of post-budget media analysis has left federal Conservative strategists with an embarrassment of riches to counter the Liberals’ post-budget apocalyptic scenarios.

Take this summation by my columnist colleague Martin Regg Cohn: “There are no savage cuts in the first Ford-Fedeli budget, which could easily have been delivered by former premier Dalton McGuinty back when he belatedly discovered austerity.”

Or this one from Globe and Mail columnist Tim Kiladze: “If anything, it looks more like something that would come from the Liberals he replaced — the ones he swore had been reckless with the province’s finances.”

Those comments were not written to complement the Ford Tories but to highlight the gap between their rhetoric and their actual budget. (Source: Chantal Hebert, Toronto Star) 

 

Friday April 12, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday April 12, 2019

Ontario tightens purse strings, PCs don’t plan to balance books until 2023-24

May 17, 2018

Ontario’s books won’t be balanced within the Progressive Conservatives’ mandate, but the government’s first budget serves up an era of gradual belt-tightening with a side of booze.

The Tories peg the current deficit at $11.7 billion, and they don’t expect to eliminate the red ink until 2023-24. Drastic and widespread cuts that many had feared did not materialize in this budget, but the path to balance shows that much of the heavy lifting comes at the halfway mark to the next election, and after it.

March 27, 2009

The budget constrains spending growth – and shows cuts in post-secondary and social services – but is still nearly $5 billion larger than the last budget from the previous Liberal government, who the Progressive Conservatives often slam for their spending habits.

“We have developed a reasonable path to balance,” Finance Minister Vic Fedeli said. “Our path to balance in five years is a thoughtful and a measured approach to take … Our entire premise is to protect what matters most.”

The budget contains no new taxes. In addition to tackling the deficit, the government is also taking aim at the net debt – currently pegged at $343 billion – through ensuring surpluses and unused reserve or contingency funds go to paying it down.

March 20, 2004

As well, planned legislation would require the government to develop a debt burden reduction strategy, and make the premier and finance minister pay 10 per cent of their salaries for each missed reporting deadline for documents such as the budget and quarterly economic accounts. (Source: Global News)  

 

Saturday April 6, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday April 6, 2019

Balancing Ontario’s budget about to get painful — literally

Some are suggesting the Ford government is playing a little bait and switch with recent announcements.

April 9, 2019

As in, look over here: we’re dumping the licence plate slogan Yours to Discover for something else — maybe even Open for Business. How outrageous is that? (Based on the social media reaction, the answer is: very.)

And, look, look, we’re scrapping the provincial Trillium logo because it looks like three men in a hot tub. Crazy eh?

These would be the bait parts, intended to obscure the much bigger and altogether not humorous changes, like controversial education reforms that will reduce teacher-student interaction and eventually eliminate about 3,500 teaching positions.

Or this one: the province is studying changes to OHIP that would, among other things, drastically reduce the amount of pain-control medication available to chronic pain sufferers. And funding to remove certain types of polyps found during colonoscopies may be eliminated. Diabetes management, echocardiograms and tonsillectomies are also being examined.

Animated!

And, get this, the government may defund the practice of allowing general anesthetic for people undergoing colonoscopy testing.

The potential OHIP changes, which were revealed in an exclusive story by CityNews Toronto, are part of an effort to cut $460 million from the OHIP budget. A group of doctors and government officials are examining best practices to see where medical tests are overused or unnecessary.

Having a hard look at OHIP services makes sense. Health care, overall, is the top budget item for the province ($60 billion last year), with education not far behind. It makes sense to audit what we’re doing and paying for. But going from there to legislating more uncomfortable colonoscopies is a big leap.

With the government’s first budget coming next week, we should prepare ourselves for more news like this. Even though Doug Ford denied that getting Ontario’s books in order would be a painful process, anyone with common sense knew that wasn’t realistic.

It’s all about money. Those education reforms, which the province says will make kids more resilient? How convenient that they also save a few hundred million. Same with reducing OHIP-funded services.

But keep an eye on those OHIP changes. They may also be Ford opening the door to more private health care. Want more anesthetic with that colonoscopy? We can do that for a small fee. Need more pain management drugs? Sign right here.

What about the hidden costs of cuts like these? How many Ontarians who should get colonoscopies won’t? How many pain medication patients will turn to opiates, legal or illegal? How many people with diabetes will get sicker sooner in the absence of ongoing diabetes management programs? If the government cuts psychotherapy funding to 24 hours a year — another proposal — what will happen to patients?

We know the answer. People will get sicker, faster and more seriously. They will require more expensive, intensive intervention from the health and/or social services system. Sadly, the government is probably not studying that aspect of its budget plan. (Source: Hamilton Spectator Editorial)  

 

Thursday March 21, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator Ð Thursday March 21, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday March 21, 2019

Morneau’s budget speech drowned out by shouts of ‘let her speak’

After a delay in the House of Commons, federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau was finally able deliver his budget speech this evening — even though nobody could hear it at first.

Morneau tabled his government’s 2019 budget just before 4 p.m., getting around a threat by the Opposition Conservatives to stir up a disruption because Liberal MPs on the justice committee had shut down an investigation into the SNC-Lavalin affair.

But his budget speech was delayed by procedural votes. When he did stand to speak, he was drowned out by Opposition MPs banging on their desks and chanting “let her speak” — a reference to Jody Wilson-Raybould, whose resignation from cabinet last month over the SNC-Lavalin controversy has left the government on the defensive for weeks.

Per tradition, Morneau was set to deliver his budget speech just after the markets closed, but it was delayed by a vote on a motion to allow MPs studying fisheries to travel.

The Conservatives had threatened all day to disrupt the vote in hopes of delaying Morneau’s speech to make a point about the justice committee.

However, Morneau shocked many observers when he rose in the House and tabled the budget document anyway. That meant the lockups — where reporters and stakeholders were anxiously waiting for clearance to file their work — were released on time and the contents of the budget were made public.

The Tories went ahead with their delaying tactics, which included having a number of Tory MPs voting both for and against the motion. MPs also rose on points of privilege and points of order, further delaying Morneau’s speech.

When the finance minister began speaking around 5 p.m. ET, he was drowned out by thunderous noise.

Speaker Geoff Regan tried to intervene multiple times with calls for order, but those requests were disobeyed.

Conservative MPs eventually walked out of the Commons, with Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer calling the justice committee’s decision “an assault on democracy.”

The justice committee was looking into allegations the Prime Minister’s Office and other officials inappropriately pressured Jody Wilson-Raybould, justice minister and attorney general at the time, to allow Quebec engineering firm SNC-Lavalin to avoid criminal prosecution on bribery charges providing it met certain conditions in a remediation agreement.

After about two hours, members of the Conservative Party and the NDP emerged and said the Liberals — who hold the majority on the committee — voted in favour of a motion to “consider the meetings on this topic to be concluded.” (Source: CBC)