promises

Thursday May 31, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 31, 2018

All three parties spending like drunks

During the last televised leaders’ debate, 19-year-old Martin Badger, a first-time voter from Burlington, posed an audience question to the three party leaders that’s probably troubling other Ontario voters.

May 16, 2018

How do you plan to pay for the additional services that you’re promising? Badger asked.

Unless you’re dipped, dyed and butt-branded in party colours, the answers weren’t exactly comforting. The reality is they’re all spending like old-time drunken sailors, tossing free programs and tax cuts around as if the election is an extended shore leave binge.

NDP leader Andrea Horwath kicked off by acknowledging that people across the province, including herself, are concerned about the accumulated debt, now pegged at about $325 billion and rising.

May 15, 2018

To help pay for her promises, which include drug coverage for everyone, lower electricity rates, hiring 4,500 new nurses and getting rid of “hallway medicine,” Horwath said she’s “going to ask” the richest people and corporations to pay a “little more” in taxes.

What Horwath didn’t specifically mention is she also plans to borrow $25 billion to pay for these and other elections promises. Oh, yes, and then she’ll balance the books and stop deficit spending. Once that’s done, Horwath previously told The Spectator, the New Democrats “will take any surpluses … and apply them to the debt.”

For his part, Progressive Conservative leader Doug Ford basically repeated what he’s been saying before the campaign began. He intends to pay for his promises by finding four cents of savings on every dollar spent by the province and by bringing in outside auditors to find more “efficiencies.”

That’s a tall order, particularly since the platform-free Ford is promising to cut hydro rates, lower gas prices and taxes, create 15,000 new long-term care beds and invest almost $2 billion in various health and housing services, which, of course, means less revenue and more expenses. He also intends to run a deficit for at least the first year.

Liberal promises include more money for hospitals, more free tuition for post-secondary students, free preschool child care, and free prescription drugs for children, young adults and seniors. In total, it amounts to more than $20 billion of new deficit spending. Still, in a woebegone gesture to fiscal responsibility, Wynne also promises to introduce legislation directing budget surpluses be used to pay down the $325 billion debt. (Continued: Andrew Dreschel, Hamilton Spectator) 

 

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Wednesday May 16, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday May 16, 2018

Ontario election: NDP overtakes Liberals as the ‘Anti-Ford’ party, according to Ipsos poll

NDP’s Andrea Horwath is jumping ahead of Kathleen Wynne and the Liberals one week into the 2018 Ontario Election.

According to an Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News, the NDP is gaining ground with 35 per cent of respondents saying they would vote for Horwath’s party – that’s up six points from last week’s polling. The Liberals would only garner 22 per cent, down four per cent from last week.

But Doug Ford and the Progressive Conservatives are still ahead, with 40 per cent of respondents saying they would vote PC if an election were held tomorrow. That number is unchanged from last week.

Only three per cent say they would vote for other parties (including the Green Party).

“Normally you would expect the NDP not to be a factor in that the fight would be between the Liberals and the Conservatives,” pollster Darrel Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, explained. (Source: Global News) 

 

Thursday May 10, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 10, 2018

Killing Discovery Math

The Ontario Progressive Conservative party’s plan to scrap the province’s mathematics curriculum isn’t the answer to declining test scores among elementary school-aged children, a Toronto educator says.

September 3, 2013

“This is a very nuanced conversation and I think it gets really heated,” said Vanessa Vakharia, founder and CEO of The Math Guru, a math and science tutoring service based uptown, on Wednesday morning.

“I think it’s really easy to want to point to one thing and to place blame,” she continued, referencing PC Leader Doug Ford’s opposition to what is often called “discovery math.”

The concept, which places an emphasis on experimentation and problem solving rather than rote learning, is at the core of Ontario’s curriculum. It has come under increasing scrutiny as standardized test scores in math have steadily declined in Ontario in the last decade.

In a campaign speech on Tuesday, Ford said a PC government would develop a curriculum focused on “getting back to basics” in the areas of reading, writing and math.

“Kids used to learn math by doing things like memorizing a multiplication table, and it worked. Kathleen Wynne scrapped that. Instead, our kids are left with experimental discovery math,” he said. (Source: CBC) 

 

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Friday April 6, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday April 6, 2018

Federal infrastructure plan behind schedule: PBO

The Parliamentary Budget Officer says federal infrastructure spending created up to 11,000 new jobs over the past year and added 0.1 per cent to Canada’s GDP, falling short of Liberal government projections as the program falls behind schedule.

Parliamentary Budget Officer Jean-Denis Fréchette also cautions that rising interest rates are starting to offset the positive economic effects of infrastructure spending.

The PBO released a report Thursday that examines the impact of what the Liberal government calls its first phase of infrastructure spending. The plan was announced in the 2016 budget and initially promised about $12-billion over five years for projects that are primarily focused on repairs of existing assets. The PBO report looks at how spending from that budget – and top-ups announced in the 2016 fall update – will be spread over nine years, bringing the total to $14.4-billion.

In an interview, Mr. Fréchette said the amount of economic stimulus and employment created from the first phase of spending is relatively modest when compared with the promises made by the Liberals.

Thursday’s PBO report said phase 1 infrastructure spending added 0.1 per cent to Canada’s GDP in the 2016-17 fiscal year and 0.1 per cent in the fiscal year that ends March 31.

The 2016 budget included estimates from the Department of Finance that the announced infrastructure spending would boost Canada’s GDP by 0.2 per cent in the first year and 0.4 per cent in the second year.

That hasn’t happened, Mr. Fréchette notes. (Source: Globe & Mail) 

 

Tuesday March 20, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday March 20, 2018

Ontario Liberals use throne speech to make big spending promises for health care, child care

Ontario’s Liberal government teased what voters should expect in its upcoming pre-election budget in a speech from the throne on Monday, promising significant new spending on a wide range of programs and issues.

The address comes as the province prepares for a June 7 election.

The speech comes a week before the government is set to table its 2018 budget, which is expected to include a deficit of about $8 billion the Liberals say is necessary to beef up spending on health care, child care and support for students.

“After delivering a balanced budget this year, your government has made a deliberate choice to make more investments in the care and the services that the people of this province rely on,” Dowdeswell said.

“As a result, the 2018 budget will show a modest deficit next year of less than one per cent of our GDP, and outline a path back to a balanced budget.”

Health care is clearly emerging as a central theme in the run-up to the official start of campaign season.

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath was at Queen’s Park on Monday morning to provide more details on her party’s $1.2-billion proposal to provide dental care coverage for everyone in the province.

Speaking to reporters, Horwath said that an NDP government would “absolutely” run a deficit, but she said it was necessary because of Liberal fiscal mismanagement. (Source: CBC News)