spending

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) 

 

SaveSave

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) 

 

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) 

 

Thursday March 29, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator (www.mackaycartoons.net) – Thursday March 29, 2018

Ontario Liberals bet big on seniors’ care, drug and dental coverage in 2018 pre-election budget

Ontario’s Liberals will plunge back into the red for at least the next six years to fund an array of big-ticket commitments outlined in the government’s pre-election budget on Wednesday.

August 17, 2016

The Liberals already unveiled a number of priority items in a series of commitments in the run-up to budget day, including major investments in health care, pharmacare and $2.2-billion over three years for free licensed daycare for preschool-aged children.

The primary themes of the 308-page budget were telegraphed in a Throne Speech last week that included the word “care,” or some variation of it, upward of 50 times.  It was clear that the budget would include substantial spending after Finance Minister Charles Sousa admitted the province would return to deficit to pay for it all, after running a $600 million surplus this year.

Despite Premier Kathleen Wynne’s recent flurry of announcements, there were a number of surprises revealed on Wednesday, many of them geared toward the elderly and affordability.

February 26, 2016

The budget includes billions in funding for seniors, including a $750 yearly benefit for those 75 and over who still live at home. The “Healthy Home Program” will cost $1 billion over three years. Another $650 million will go toward boosting the number of visits by caregivers to client’s homes.

For seniors in long-term care facilities, the Liberals plan to spend $300 million over three years to hire a registered nurse in every home in Ontario and provide an average of four hours of personal daily care for each resident by 2022.

The Liberals also plan to introduce a program to help cover costs of pharmaceutical drugs and dental care for Ontarians without workplace benefits, regardless of income or pre-existing OHIP+ coverage. (Source: CBC News) 

Letter to the Editor

Every Ontarian should be afraid

RE: March 29 editorial cartoon, Hamilton Spectator

I have just read a portion of the 2017 Ontario Auditor General’s Report. One excerpt from this document should scare every voter in this province.

In referring to the province’s accounting practices, she says, “As such, they obscure, or will obscure, the true state of the Province’s annual deficits and net debt reported on its consolidated financial statements at a time when Ontario already has the highest subsovereign debt in the world.”

Knowing this, the present government continues to buy our votes with our own tax dollars with no consideration as to how the next generation is going to pay this debt off. I applaud Mr. MacKay’s editorial cartoon. It really tells it like it is.

Ron French, Hamilton

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)