Ted Chudleigh Blog

Well, the little rodent popped his head out of his hiding place and said the future doesn’t look too bright.

Wiarton Willie saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks of winter. Who did you think I was referring to? Well, the Premier has made much the same prediction, in that deep program cuts, Dalton Days and well essentially everything else is on the table as we approach budget time in Ontario. The future doesn’t look too bright here in Ontario.

We have nearly two more years of the McGuinty regime miring us deeper into recession, have-not status among provinces, public debt, job losses and economic mismanagement.

Now it bears reminding that this is a government that promised balanced budgets but has managed only one in six tries. And the one they did have was presented as a small deficit budget, but tax collection exceeded predictions and the year ended with a small, unexpected surplus.

The government expects this current year’s deficit to be nearly $25 billion. I expect it will be significantly higher. And then there is the 2010-11 budget expected sometime in March. Already Premier McGuinty has mused about what it might contain. Restraint is not a word that comes easily to Liberals – but it has passed the lips of our erstwhile Premier.

Still, where is this restraint? The Premier promised all day kindergarten programs will start in September. A plan expected to cost more than $1 billion annually.

Today there is word that the union representing Ontario college instructors has called a strike for February 11 if their contract is not settled. The strike vote was only 57 per cent in favour of a strike and a significant number of members didn’t even vote. It’s obvious that union leaders cannot help but see that strong arm tactics have served public school teachers well with this government for whom labour peace is more important than public affordability.

Now apparently Wiarton Willie’s predictions haven’t been too accurate in recent years. In that, Willie and our Premier are much alike. And it goes deeper. Willie’s predictive powers are based on folklore. The McGuinty Liberal budgets are based on nanny state myths that ignore fundamental human and fiscal truth.

The March budget will likely be another exercise in dream weaving. Willie’s predictions are what they are – but the Liberals’ actions and forecasts have real consequences for which Ontarians will pay the price.

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The province is broke. But Dalton McGuinty wants to keep spending, so he’s coming after you and your money.
Health Tax, HST, allowances for municipalities to tax, higher fees for services - The Dalton Gang will get your money one way or another.
The latest is a huge increase in electricity costs to subsidize energy jobs coming on the heels of a previous large increase in electricity
costs courtesy of smart meters. There are very few opportunities for time-shifting electrical use. That means that most people will not see
the advantage of lower rates for off peak use and will have to pay more for electricity than they do currently.
This latest rate hike is tied to subsidies for the Samsung deal for Green Energy. In essence Ontarians will pay $437 million in subsidies to bring jobs to Ontario. However, the deal is hollow in that there are no job guarantees, just a lot of hope that Ontario can become a Green Energy leader by being the place where a lot of Green Energy equipment is manufactured. Ontarians will be paying for these jobs on their Hydro bills for years.
Given that Green Energy has never provided more than a token amount to Ontario’s electricity load, or the energy loads of any developed jurisdiction, this deal is banking on a lot of ‘ifs’ and ‘maybes’ for its success.
Dalton’s job promises are about as solid as his fiscal ones. Last year he promised one million new jobs. What we got was 140,000 fewer jobs. He promised balanced budgets. Ontario has had one balanced budget in six years of Liberal rule. He promised no tax increases. Go back to the top of this post . . .
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What a raucous session.

Government spending scandals, the HST tax grab, expulsions from the floor of the Legislature and enough political theatre for a dozen sessions – the fall session had it all.

What has become painfully obvious is that the Liberal vision of Ontario doesn’t work and that most Ontarians now see that reality.

Dalton isn’t a boy scout anymore. The Teflon has worn off as it’s now apparent he is more interested in dishing out plumb jobs to his political friends than in keeping his word to voters or doing the hard work of governing.

In the run up to the worst economic conditions in at least a generation Dalton aggressively avoided being prepared – letting Ontario slip into have-not province status as manufacturing jobs abandoned their heartland. And now instead of trimming costs to keep spending down, Dalton has hired a slew of new bureaucrats and simply reached in your pocket to steal more of your money to pay for it.

It is clear now – that there are two competing visions for Ontario. A province that sets the rules to encourage self-sufficiency and reward hard work; or a province where the nanny state tells you what’s good and what’s frightening, where endless taxes are required to pay for endless programs of diminishing utility and where people are forced to concede their basic responsibilities and hand those responsibilities to the state.

History shows us that nanny states always implode. The entitlement culture they spawn is unsustainable. Witness Dalton’s $25 billion deficit this year.

It is apparent now that sanity will return to provincial administration round about the next chance people in this province have to effect that change.

As I have said as this process unfolded -  the damage done affects real people, it can destroy families, as opportunities are lost, hope is shattered and dreams deferred or discarded in the face of simply surviving.

The bad news is Ontarians have to survive this culture for almost two more years. The good news is once they survive it, restoring that hope and reviving those dreams will occur.

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We’re in deep.

We promised to do everything we could to stop the McGuinty Liberals’ HST from becoming law.

And we are.

The last few days in the Legislature have been historic.

Grey – Bruce – Owen Sound MPP Bill Murdoch and Lanark – Frontenac – Lennox and Addington MPP Randy Hillier defied an order from the Speaker of the House to leave the chamber for using unparliamentary language in the HST debate and were subsequently banned from the Legislature for the rest of the session.

Other MPPs have been kicked out for the day, me included, in protest over the heavy handed tactics of the McGuinty Liberals who refuse to give the public more than a token opportunity to comment on the HST legislation. Because they refused to leave the Legislative Chamber when they broke parliamentary language rules, both Murdoch and Hillier have been banned by the Speaker for the rest of the session, even though that could last until the October 2011 election.

That ruling seems a little rash. I am hopeful that some way out of this impasse can be found. Certainly Mr. Hillier and Mr. Murdoch will do what they can to disrupt daily sittings as they remain in the Legislature night and day, until some accommodation can be found, or, I suspect, until the government completes their process of grinding this legislation through the Legislature.

And grind they will. If early indications hold, they are no longer satisfied simply ramming it through by paying a minimum of lip service to existing rules, but they want to grind anyone who gets in their way – Messrs. Hillier and Murdoch especially.

This is not over yet.

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Dalton wants more of your money.

He refuses to stop spending it the way to which he has become accustomed.

A 60 per cent increase in tax revenue is not enough, apparently. Retail sales tax is not enough. So now he wants you to pay tax on everything.

The worst part is, you don’t get to pick and chose the services you want, you’re in for everything. Taxes which used to be reserved to finance public projects in which everybody benefited, are now used to fund hundreds and thousands of projects where only some people benefit – the idea being that collectively, we all benefit in proportion.

That’s the theory, but we’re living the practice. The government has owned up to  overspending this year by about $25 billion. Do you see the benefits of that overspending?

I sure don’t.

It’s time to rein in our Liberal deficits, annual only since the Liberals took over the government. It’s time to rein in our huge tax increases and spending without tangible results.

If we don’t we might have more than a tax revolt on our hands.

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Try this on for size.

When we left office, the SARS outbreak had put Ontario into a $2 billion shortfall half way through the 2003-04 budget. That was the cost of the emergency – masks and hand washing fluid for all hospitals and doctors offices, overtime for medical staff, testing and all the associated costs to the government of the respiratory outbreak that killed 44 people.

Recently it has become public that the Liberal eHealth team spent $1 billion for a software program which they still don’t have. That was the cost of fancy restaurants, ludicrous personal expenses, bloated fees on hundreds of consulting contracts to fill the pockets of Liberal insiders, and of course the real work which produced nothing.

So the PCs dipped into borrowed money to stave off a virtual pandemic, which was so bad that the World Health Organization issued a travel advisory. Yet we were pilloried for causing the eventual deficit, brought in at $5.6 billion at the end of that year, six months after the Liberals came to power.

A few years later, the Liberals throw a $1 billion party with taxpayer’s money while denying drug treatments to cancer patients. And they throw their party as people are losing jobs, economic despair is finding its voice and the province is headed for a deficit this year of at least $15 billion and likely as much as $29 billion.

And those deficits come on the heels of five other Liberal deficits since 2003.

The audacity of the Liberal Party on this is matched only by the lack of outrage among voters and the stunning apathy of the public.

Outrage in politics is old hat. However these developments prove that being outraged at every point of disagreement, every policy change and every indiscretion leaves no place to go when real outrage is required. And that probably explains some of the public apathy. Given an election right now I am sure the public would make its voice heard. Given two years, will the public sense of hurt and betrayal remain as high?

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The Ontario Liberals have let it leak that we are facing a much more serious deficit than even their dire $18.5 billion estimate last spring.In other circumstances it might even be possible to commiserate with the Premier on the poor turn of events, however, having seen it coming, having warned the Premier to take corrective action and having been ignored, and laughed at for our prudence, there will be no commiseration. Only a fool didn’t see our economic troubles as they bubbled – manufacturing jobs and people were leaving the province before last year’s stock market plunge. Before the credit panic, once mighty Ontario bellied up to the bar of Confederation looking for equalization payments.

Remember we in the PC Party have experience cleaning up deficits. We turned around Bob Rae and ‘Pink’ Floyd Laughren’s five years of going comfortably numb on the economy and digging an ever deeper deficit hole. We put together four straight balanced budgets before the emergency of SARS spending on health care put the whammy on us.

So when called upon, we can do it again.

The McGuinty Liberals partied while times were good, never had a plan for the future and ignored the warning signs that the party was over. The eHealth mess shows that many of them continued the wild spending frenzy even after the economy turned, more concerned about themselves than the people they were supposed to serve.

While the Liberals employed their friends on make work projects, drank champagne and ate at nice restaurants, cancer victims were scrounging for a few dollars to extend drug treatments.

Of course, having no plan for the economy the Liberals just did what they do best, stuck their heads in the sand and figured if they couldn’t see it, it wasn’t happening.

And now we pay.

The Premier says despite the growing deficit he will maintain core services and hold the line on taxes. What does he think the HST is? It’s a tax increase. A $2.5 billion tax increase. The boy scout facade has dropped and once again, the Premier is flashing the real Dalton for all to see.

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He obviously believes he’s untouchable.
Two years before the next provincial election Premier McGuinty has appointed Harinder Takhar, the only Minister ever found in breach of the Members Integrity Act, as his new Integrity Czar. For real.
In 2005 Minister Takhar was censured for failing to maintain an arm’s length relationship with his personal business interests while sitting in cabinet.
Did the Premier forget the taint surrounding Minister Takhar, or is he purposely rubbing the faces of Ontarians in the scandals of his
government? Perhaps Premier McGuinty felt that the best person to take on setting the rules of Members Integrity is the guy who knows best how to break them. Who else has the appropriate experience and expertise to take on the role?
Appointing Minister Takhar as the Integrity Czar is the same as allowing the fox to run the henhouse. Is the Premier serious?
It’s apparent that the Premier’s promises of improved accountability in government have the same value as all his other promises.
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The McGuinty Liberals have created a culture of entitlement in the Ontario government.

First it was taxpayer’s money being parceled out to various cultural groups with significant Liberal Party ties. Then it was inflated pay and expense claims at eHealth Ontario. And now it is more of the same at the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission.

Hard of the heels of a prize fixing scandal at OLG we have executives living the high life at taxpayer expense, right in the middle of the toughest economic conditions in a generation.

You know there’s more. You know similar practices must have occurred in other agencies, boards and commissions.

Too often the electorate shrugs their collective shoulders. However, if we allow this corruption to continue essentially unpunished we will invite more. The message has to be sent that this will not be tolerated by the taxpaying public.

Premier McGuinty set the tone when he lied about raising taxes and running deficits, when he paid $6 million to consultants who recommended removing the ‘C’ from the OLG logo. People refused to punish him then, and this is what they got.

It is the honesty and trust in public officials that keep our society working well. Without them our country would be a much less desirable place to live and work.

Voters can’t allow this to continue. The answer is not more study or more consultants, or even reimbursement of the excess payments. It is swift punishment, and where appropriate criminal charges and convictions.

Failure to do so will foster a culture of corruption at every level, from routine attempts to bribe public officials, to the expectation that payoffs and favours can smooth the bureaucratic minefield.

Ultimately, people have to hold the government responsible for not protecting taxpayer’s money.

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Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak has been hard at it these last few weeks putting together his team. He now has a group of dedicated, experienced people to help him with the business of holding the McGuinty Liberal’s to account in the Legislature.

He has also begun the lengthy process of preparing for the next provincial election slated for October 2011, in barely two years time.

In addition, Tim laid out his shadow cabinet, putting PC members into roles to closely watch the operations of each government Ministry and to comment on their actions when appropriate.

I’m to be critic to the Ministry of the Attorney General, that is the Ministry of laws and courts but not police, which falls under the Ministry of the Solicitor General.

Already in this new role I’ve been chided and lauded for not having a legal background. I see the advantage of being able to comment on the workings of the Ministry without my thinking being clouded by how policy would affect the legal profession. The Ministry exists for the benefit of the people of Ontario and their considerations must be first and foremost. That being said, the legal profession’s views play a significant role and cannot be discounted.

One of the areas under the watch of the Attorney General is the Ontario Human Rights Commission and Tribunal. Recently some of the rulings of the Tribunal appear at odds with those of other government agencies, not only making the Province appear foolish, but lessening the respect for law in the province.

In Burlington, a sports bar owner, defending the desires of his customers, was ordered by the Tribunal to allow a patron to smoke medical marijuana at the front door of his business. This ruling came despite the fact that serving liquor to someone using a banned substance violates Ontario’s liquor license laws and could possibly cost him is liquor license. The contradictory rules and subsequent legal battles cost the bar owner a substantial sum.

Members of the Ontario PC Party, including Mr. Hudak, have been calling for reform of the Tribunal. I certainly welcome any input into the future direction of the Human Rights Tribunal. I only ask that input be directed at issues surrounding the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal rather than the Canadian Human Rights Commission which is administered by the federal government.

Please drop me an email or letter. All input is welcome.

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