predictable ontario budget: formulated by the 1% for the 1%

Ontarians, already living so close to the bone, are being told we must sacrifice even more - because corporate tax hikes cannot even be discussed. Ask the 1% for a solution and you'll get a solution that satisfies the 1%.

Ten months ago, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty appointed former TD Bank Economist Don Drummond to head the Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services, to deal with a projected (and likely overestimated) debt of approximately $16 billion.

Ontario’s deficit was a result of the global economic crisis triggered by the gang of banking bandits to which Drummond belongs, but Dalton McGuinty asked the same gang to suggest remedies.

It is therefore not surprising that the Commission’s recommendations are heavily biased in favour of the 1%. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, the pain will be absorbed by the most vulnerable in society and ordinary working people, because McGuinty directed Drummond not to keep revenue generation off the table, including increasing taxes for profitable corporations or for the 1%.

Instead, Drummond proposes a host of new or increased user fees, including post-secondary tuition fees, which would hit low- and modest-income earners hardest.

Drummond admits his recipe for balanced budgets in 2017-2018 entails sharper and deeper cuts than those meted out by former Conservative Premier Mike Harris in the mid-1990s — and for a much longer period of time.

Drummond estimates that spending cuts will be the equivalent of a permanent 16.2 per cent cut for every man, woman and child in Ontario. And of course, not every Ontarian relies on such services to the same extent, guaranteeing that those at the bottom of the economic hierarchy will experience the sharpest cuts.

But Ontario is already at the bottom of the heap in terms of provincial per capita spending on social programs, a fact even Drummond is forced to acknowledge. Clearly public sector workers and social programs are not “out of control” as the rest of the report would have us all believe. It is McGuinty’s huge tax giveaways that are out of control — $4.5 billion annually when fully phased-in. Drummond’s report is really proposing a way to pay for those tax cuts. . . .

Cross-reference Impudent Strumpet: A major flaw in mandate of the Drummond report.