Budget

Saturday March 31, 2012

Saturday March 31, 2012Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday March 31, 2012

A tale of two budgets

Toward the end of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s budget presentation Thursday, a co-worker stopped at one of the newsroom TVs showing the speech. “So, how bad is it?”

That’s what every government budget boils down to for most of us, doesn’t it? How much is it going to cost me, how much is it going to hurt.

Neither of the two budgets that came down on Ontario this week caused the general public any immediate cost or monetary pain. Beyond that, Jim Flahertythey were as different as night and day.

The Ontario budget of Finance Minister Dwight Duncan went short term, abandoning good sense for mere political survival.

It looked out only a year or two to the day when the Liberals believe their minority government will probably fall and they face another election.

The federal budget of Jim Flaherty took the long, long view, looking generations down the road to our grandchildren. Flaherty talked, and acted, as though he had made decisions regarding fiscal stability which would last a lifetime much longer than his own.

Duncan postponed Ontario’s difficult decisions, and put off the day the province will confront its gigantic structural deficit, which will continue at $15 billion per year until it takes major steps to rein in public spending.

Duncan claimed his deficit will be gone by 2018, after tough government spending decisions are made that he hasn’t tackled yet, and if this economy recovers. Neither outcome is likely given the track record of his government. (Source: Windsor Star)

Thursday March 29, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Thursday March 29, 2012

NDP’s Andrea Horwath left as king maker

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has played his hand, tabling a budget he says will steer the province out of deficit. Tim Hudak, the Leader of the Opposition Conservatives, has played his hand, too, insisting his party will vote against it.

That leaves New Democratic Party Leader Andrea Horwath, whose party finished third in the last election, to determine whether the province has another one.

Ms. Horwath was careful not to signal her intentions on Tuesday, saying she was keeping her options open and would seek public input before deciding on how to respond to the budget. But it is with her that Mr. McGuinty’s budget will live or die, and with her that the decision on whether to head back to the polls rests.

The next few days will see a flurry of behind-the-scenes talks between the Liberals and New Democrats as Ms. Horwath attempts to wring concessions that will play to her supporters.

The New Democrats got their way on corporate taxes, with the government agreeing to freeze them until the deficit is eliminated. But they are not at all happy that Mr. McGuinty is taking aim at one of their key constituencies –organized labour – by threatening to impose wage freezes on doctors, teachers and other public-sector workers.

The wage front is where the New Democrats will likely attempt to wrest compromises from the Liberals. Ms. Horwath has pushed for hard caps on compensation for public-sector executives – it was one of her recommendations in her pre-budget letter. (Source: Globe & Mail) 

 

Wednesday March 28, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Wednesday March 28, 2012

Ontario’s rough road

The budget introduced by Finance Minister Dwight Duncan on Tuesday is entirely absent new goodies of the sort that Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals spent their first eight years in office distributing; the most that can be said is that it preserves a few old favourites, such as full-day kindergarten and smaller class sizes. And it takes aim at much of what Mr. McGuinty has always held sacred, including the labour peace that has been pivotal to his political success.

Save for cancelling corporate tax cuts, it could mostly pass for a Progressive Conservative budget – which makes Tim Hudak’s flat rejection of it more than a little peculiar. Conversely, it may be too much for the provincial New Democrats to swallow, which means that the Liberals have placed their minority government in some jeopardy just months into its existence.

But if the budget passes, which remains the likeliest outcome, there’s a big caveat before declaring the province well on its way out of its deficit.

While there is no shortage of immediate cutbacks and revenue increases in Mr. Duncan’s plan – abandonments of planned infrastructure projects, cancellation of corporate tax cuts, freezes of base funding for hospitals – many of the big-ticket items will require sustained effort and focus, rather than just strokes of the pen.

Wage restraint, one of the budget’s centrepieces, fits that bill. The Liberals seem prepared to take a hard line in their current negotiations with the Ontario Medical Association. But their resolve, which includes a purported willingness to legislate salary freezes and other measures if they can’t be achieved through collective bargaining, will be tested by this year’s encounter with their erstwhile allies in the teachers’ unions – and again and again as contracts expire over the next couple of years. (Source: Globe & Mail)

 

Wednesday November 9, 2011

Wednesday November 9, 2011Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday November 9, 2011

Flaherty is bearer of bad news

Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty came to one of the country’s economic bright spots to deliver some gloomy news about the Canadian economy Tuesday.

Announcing the government’s economic update in a speech at the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, he said that in light of global economic turmoil, GDP growth projections for Canada had been revised downward.

Jim FlahertyAnd the Conservative campaign promise to eliminate Canada’s deficit by the 2014-2015 budget was now described by Flaherty as simply an “aim,” with the government update projecting a return to balanced budgets only in 2015-2016 at the earliest.

But Flaherty used his speech to stress Canada’s relative strength in the world economy and noted Alberta’s relatively strong position within the country.

“The employment situation is certainly much stronger in the West than it is in the East,” he said. Nevertheless, Flaherty said he expects continued modest economic growth without the country slipping into recession.

The stay-the-course update contained only a handful of tweaks to the Conservatives’ fiscal plan, including some relief on employment insurance premiums, extension of a federal work-sharing program and stretching out the timeline for eliminating a $31-billion deficit. (Source: Calgary Herald)

Wednesday March 23, 2011

Wednesday March 23, 2011Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday March 23, 2011

No indication gov’t met his budget demands: Layton

NDP Leader Jack Layton says he has received “no indication” from the federal government that any of his suggestions have been included in the upcoming budget, ideas that were a condition of his party’s support.

Layton said Sunday he hasn’t heard from Prime Minister Stephen Harper since the two sat down several weeks ago to discuss the NDP’s key demands for the budget.

Layton told CTV’s Question Period that Harper has not said whether any of his ideas have made it into the budget’s final draft, which could kill his party’s support for the budget and kick-start an election campaign.

“I don’t want to support this particular government. I do want to get things done,” Layton said.

Jim Flaherty“However, the fact that we’ve really had no indication from the government that they’re doing anything significant, you’ve got to assume that that budget document’s probably been sent off to some printer somewhere already being printed. So, the prime minister has either made his decisions, or he’s about to make them, and he essentially has the choice to make here about whether we end up in an election or whether we have parties working together to get results.”

Layton has been calling for budget provisions that would boost CPP and GIS payments for seniors, increase funding to get more doctors and nurses into family medicine and end federal taxes on home heating fuel.

“We’ve called for these steps…they are reasonable, they are practical, and we want the government to follow through on it,” Layton said Sunday. “But we’re not hearing much of a sign that they will.” (Source: CTV News)