Ted Chudleigh Blog

This summer has come and past. The McGuinty Liberal government has put in a quick seven years managing the affairs of Ontario.

Who would believe that Ontario could have sunk so far, so fast, in those seven years. From the economic engine of Confederation in 2003, to now accepting equalization payment from the other provinces. From four consecutive balanced budgets and a bare bones $2.1 billion shortfall halfway through a fiscal year due to the costs of fighting SARS, to a nearly $20 billion annual deficit. From tax levels that left money in the pockets of families and working people, to numerous tax increases which are forcing those who work to fear their ability to meet their financial obligations.

The McGuinty Liberals have nearly doubled the amount of money they take from Ontarians each year, and after seven years they are closing in on doubling the amount of total debt that it took all other Ontario government’s 136 years to accumulate.

High deficit spending is a signpost to higher future taxes. Those higher taxes come from trying to recoup the borrowed money. However, high taxes keep business investment out, as businesses don’t want to be saddled paying for the government’s mistakes.

Seven years has gone so fast.

Slick McGuinty realized that balanced government budgets and reasonable taxes were high on the public’s agenda in 2003 so he promised to hold the line. However, there has never been a Liberal who could balance a budget, say no to special interests or reduce taxes paid by everyday people. Remember David Peterson? McGuinty’s promises were never more than an electoral mirage – blown away by the first strong wind.

Now, seven years later, people are waking up to the nightmare. However they are only beginning to realize the daunting task we have ahead of us to restore Ontario to its 2003 glory. Throwing money around has raised expectations that money will always be thrown around. Those who have benefitted from the party are loathe to see it end and will fight for what they see as their entitlements.

In the end, high taxes, wild spending and liberal entitlements are unsustainable. Given the chance we will fix it. We did it after the Bob Rae NDP debacle of the early 1990s and we will do it again. We have a track record. The NDP has a track record. So do the McGuinty Liberals.

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Changing your mind isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It shows that you can be educated, that you are mature enough to accept the inevitable heat that comes with such a change. After all, in the end, what is more important than getting it right?

Then there is the flip flop.
Different than the considered change of mind or heart, the flip flop has its roots in a lack of basic knowledge, an ill-considered decision, and bad press. It is the place where decision-makers go just before they fade away.

In politics the flip-flop isn’t the last gasp, long bomb to the end zone. Rather, it’s a pass for a first down as time runs out: successful on paper by rather pointless in the larger game.

Governments that have lost their mojo engage in the flip flop. They make loose decisions based on the ideas of a small circle only to have everyone else, including their own supporters, point out their myopic mistakes.

The McGuinty Liberals have engaged in numerous flip flops in recent months. In fact nearly everything they do seems to have a whiff of failure, and is then followed by a futile frenzied flip flop.

The Ministry of Energy was going to supply side by side comparisons between local electrical suppliers and contract suppliers. Then they dropped the idea last spring. Flip! This week it’s back. Flop!

The McGuinty Liberals introduced a major eco-tax secretly with incomprehensible rules and applications. Then they put collection of that tax on hold. Flip! But they say it’s coming back. Flop!

The McGuinty Liberals introduced a solar energy program aimed primarily at rural residents. After several months they announced a drastic drop in the amount they would pay for solar generated power. Flip! People who had invested thousands and millions of dollars spoke up and the government relented, restoring the original contract prices. Flop!

The McGuinty Liberals announced a plan to drastically change the teaching of sex education to be more graphic and to teach it at a younger age. Flip! Parents objected and the government quickly backed off its ill-considered plan. Flop!

Examples of this type of leadership abound. It is evident that these changes of mind and heart do not come from sober consideration of the facts. These flip flops come from a fear of bad press, of rocking the boat and a recognition that their decisions are just plain wrong. The root is a lack of understanding of Ontarians. People want basic fair play. They want clarity on their electric bills. They want logic and results in waste reduction. They want the government to honour its contracts. They want their children protected from adult concerns. They want their government to be on their side, worried about them and their future and not worried about holding on to power at any cost.

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We have fools running the government. But you knew that already.

It appears the McGuinty Liberals have a mistaken impression of how incentives work.

So far the 90 day review of the eco-tax program, has hatched the idea of charging manufacturers lower eco-taxes on various products to encourage those same manufacturers to compete to produce less toxic products. This approach ignores the fact that many of the products being taxed have no business being taxed, that much of the packaging is already covered by existing blue box programs, and less toxic in many cases will simply mean less effective. What is worse, Miller fails to grasp that consumers will end up paying any additional fees charged to manufacturers. Consumers always pay in the end.

If you really want to make this program effective, and really pull toxic waste from going to landfill the only way to do it is by providing an incentive to consumers to drop their used materials off at a depot. Give them money. The government gets the money from a front end charge like a deposit on beer bottles, and returns the deposit when the empty or unusable product is brought back to the depot.

Municipal dumps could handle the task. Many landfills already have Household Hazardous Waste depots – there is just little incentive for everyday folks to use them.

Funding the program by chipping off a portion of those eco-taxes collected as product deposits and giving them to municipalities to operate the program would vastly improve diversion rates, make for cleaner, greener landfills, extend the life of existing landfills and provide a stream of recyclable materials for reuse.

People will do amazing things if they are provided a reasonable rationale and a bit of incentive. Part of that reasonable rationale would be to reduce the number of products covered in the plan. Municipalities might even provide a Red Box to store used batteries, old electronics and paint cans and whatever else is deemed toxic enough to be included in the program.

The government’s current plan is merely a tax grab. They want money from the manufacturers to give to Stewardship Ontario but there is no real commitment to removing toxic materials from the waste stream.

Of course this idea would require some streamlining. It is important to take enough time to get it right rather than simply charging ahead and leaving a wake of inexplicable charges, no rationale plan and no buy-in of the program by the public. Public input would be valuable and help the public believe in the program and take some ownership regarding its effectiveness.

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So now, the government is backing off the eco-tax. I’m guessing they’ll say no more about it until after the next election. If the Liberals win look for eco-taxes to come back and a carbon tax and who knows what else.

Apparently Canadian Tire determined they weren’t going to charge the eco-tax anymore because of all the product confusion, so the McGuinty Liberals cheerfully rescinded the tax so they could think it through this time. Well, with apologies to Ma Gump, ‘Tax policy is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’ll get.’

As for killing the tax, who knew it was this easy.

If we get enough people to complain the HST is too confusing, what with some items exempted and strange tax on tax situations which have cropped up, apparently the government will simply cave in.

Since when does Canadian Tire dictate government policy?

Oh, I agree that the eco-tax is a logistical nightmare with some items taxed by weight, some by size and some with different amounts of tax applicable at different rates to different parts of the same product. Yet the biggest problem is that the government states these taxes will help divert hazardous wastes from landfill but makes no mention of reimbursing people for their cash when the hazardous material is turned in. Last time I looked collecting a fee upfront in no way guarantees that people will recycle this material properly. Unless Stewardship Ontario is planning to hire a large numbers of garbage sorters their plan seems to have a giant hole in it.

And yet, even if the government has backed off, ostensibly until they can make this tax more logical and understandable, they still haven’t addressed the major issues.

Why are we paying ecotaxes on products that we already pay fees to help recycle? Why are we paying fees on items that we use and there is nothing left to recycle? Why are we expected to fill the coffers of Stewardship Ontario and what are they going to do with all this money? Who sits on this board and now apparently has the power to tax Ontarians?

Answers to those questions would be a great start. Instead we get a government more interested in soothing the ruffled public than in producing a program with a logical aim, a measured approach and an achievable result.

Again Ma Gump sums it up nicely – ‘Stupid is as stupid does.’

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We’ve reached the breaking point.

Government is the problem. Or more specifically, big government is a big problem.

The McGuinty Liberals have a spending problem. Sure revenues have fallen as the recession continues to bite hard on our economy, but it is spending which is out of control.

The government’s solution: increase taxes. This is a government that does not get high marks for policy development as they bounce from one created crisis to another, leaving a trail of nanny state legislation in their wake. Yet it appears they’ve spent their creative ability on how to take more and more of your money without you noticing the theft. They have increased user fees, hiked utilities, slapped on surtaxes, driven up consumption taxes and introduced hidden fees. All of a sudden people are seeing far less disposable income and they wonder where it’s all going.

Well, Dalton is at the other end of the siphon. While he can take your money he can’t bring himself to wean Ontarians off government handouts.

Well that inability and the recent triple whammy of HST, ecotax and higher hydro bills is where the good ship Ontario runs aground.

We can’t take it anymore. The hidden, unannounced little ecotax is the final straw. The party is over.

All that is left now is to clean up the mess. Problem is the McGuinty Liberals will continue to party on the broken down remains of Ontario’s economy while ignoring the mess for another year.

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So did you feel the earth move?

Well, some people felt the earthquake but I was referring to the more cataclysmic event, the imposition of the Harmonized Sales Tax.

I for one have felt it, and not in ways that I expected.

So far I’ve heard of HST being charged in some situations where it was not required but where the small business was using it as an opportunity to raise prices. Prepared foods under $4 should not be taxed, but a recent slice of pizza cost me 50 cents more after Canada Day than it did before. I was told of a haircutter who raised his prices due to the HST several weeks before the tax became official.

Regarding haircutters, another story was related to me where customers said they would simply get their hair cut less often because of the additional cost. So a haircutter will do much less business while having to absorb the additional cost of HST being applied to their utilities and general cost of doing business. That is not a recipe for success.

Of course Dalton McGuinty promised the HST would bring more employment. While I never believed that whopper, it appears the HST in some service industries might actually reduce jobs as it forces people out of business, like our haircutter whose business is being trimmed.

As for the HST being attached to gasoline, the cost of gas went up for the long Canada Day ‘weekend’  but will never come down, disguising the increase. What irks me the most about the HST as it applies to gasoline is that it comes on top of a 10 cent per litre federal excise tax and a 14.7 cent per litre provincial gas tax that is already applied to the product before you buy it. That means that you and I get to pay tax on tax. It would be far more reasonable to charge HST only on the cost of the product before taxes are applied to it.

Now, I wonder if the agreement that the McGuinty Liberals signed with the federal government making changes to HST very difficult to impose, would allow for that accounting change. Certainly saving 13 per cent tax on 24.7 cents of each litre of gas would represent a considerable saving to the average consumer – about three cents a litre in fact.

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Those who benefit from tax and spend Liberal-style government have been the most rabid in its defence. That isn’t really a big surprise. However, the methods they have adopted are definitely outside the accepted bounds of public debate in Ontario.

The last two Ontario elections have been marred by substantial advertising campaigns aimed at any Progressive Conservative suggestion to reduce the size of government.

As we run up to the 2011 election, and it is obvious that big government is unsustainable and must be scaled back, a number of public sector unions and construction trade unions are again gearing up an advertising campaign under the guise ‘Working Families’, a secretive group dedicated to siphoning more money from taxpayers and putting it in the pockets of already well paid people working in the broader public sector or benefiting from public infrastructure contracts.

While I would be the last person to demand any reduction in free speech, evidence suggests that Working Families are working quite closely with the Ontario Liberal Party. In fact many people believe that the Ontario Liberal Party is using Working Families as a way to circumvent existing election financing rules. They also see the Liberals as funnelling their more negative advertising through Working Families so the actual Liberal Party can appear to remain clean and above the dirty political fray.

For more information you can see www.workingfamilieswatch.ca

Certainly since Working Families entered the political arena the McGuinty Liberal government has passed union friendly legislation, provided teacher unions with very generous raises, spread millions in tax dollars in various grants to Working Families affiliates and stepped up construction spending in Ontario.

Working Families has spent more than $7 million on anti-conservative attack ads in the last two elections. As the biggest beneficiaries of a Liberal government they will spend more this time around.

The whole thing stinks.

Flouting campaign finance laws, providing a dirty tricks front for the Liberal Party and maintaining a grip on your wallet - it is time this group and their tactics were exposed.

Sure, we could fight fire with fire. But that isn’t right. It isn’t in the spirit of open public debate, nor is it something my colleagues and I could support in good conscience. So we will take the more difficult route, and do something by trying to shed light on this shameful chapter in Ontario’s electoral history while hoping that our fellow citizens pay attention.

I remember former British Prime Minister Edmund Burke’s observation that all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to stand by and do nothing.

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Green energy isn’t really about saving the environment. No, actually it’s energy that costs a lot of green.

Get ready for dramatically higher energy costs here in Ontario.

We built our province into an industrial powerhouse by providing inexpensive electricity. That was yesterday. Consumers were able to piggyback on inexpensive power. Today we are on the brink of huge increases in our bills.

The McGuinty Liberals are big on conservation. So far their conservation measures consist mostly of chasing industrial demand from the province and sponsoring energy retrofits. With demand now so low, they’ve had to raise rates to bring in enough money to operate the system. They also introduced a surcharge to your bill to pay for their retrofit program.

If those two price increases aren’t enough, they will shortly add HST to your electricity bill and begin to meter electricity by the time of day that it is used. The time of use metering is expected to raise rates by as much as 20 per cent alone, unless you start drying your wash at 2 a.m.

So your electricity bill is facing four different increases. But that’s not the whopper. The McGuinty Liberals have contracted with Samsung to build wind farms - $7 billion worth of wind farms.

Now, the wind doesn’t always blow, so there has to be back up generation capacity. That’s expensive. And without the industry around to pay for it, the cost will fall to individual consumers.

So as you see your electricity bill rise and rise – remember increasing costs are a Liberal trademark. Either they raise them to pay for their pet projects or they raise them through taxation to pay for their mistakes. It’s the Liberals’ solution to everything.

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You gotta hand it to Dalton. The nanny state Premier never does anything in small measures.

First, the Premier passes the Harmonized Sales Tax, a tax grab effectively adding 8 per cent PST to a whole raft of things including utility bills. Then old Dalton sneaks in a special charge on Hydro bills to cover the cost of conservation incentives – taking your money by force and then giving it back to you if you do things his way. Then Ontario Hydro announces it wants to slam customers with a 9.6 per cent hydro rate hike.

That’s a triple whammy coming to a hydro bill near you.

So do you like Liberal government so far?

Let’s review seven years under the Liberal yoke – lies; spending like, well, Liberals or its synonym ‘idiots’; higher and higher taxes; more rules and regulations, bans and incentives to be good, and reduced freedom of thought and action.

Is that working for you?

The best part is the Liberals have another 18 months or so to really stick it to you. Just so you’ll be sure how you feel about them and their administration.

And to think this all started with the Liberals demonizing the PCs for spending $2.1 billion to stop SARS in its tracks.

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Get used to it.

If you thought the Health Tax that McGuinty introduced shortly after his 2003 election was the only time he’d break faith with voters, think again.

We are poised to absorb the HST – a tax grab that will simply suck away discretionary dollars from everyone in Ontario. With fewer dollars to spend our economy will contract – yet again. It means fewer dollars for movies, restaurants, home renos and that huge part of the economy that underpins demand for all kinds of day to day products and services. Economic activity is a spiral, and it’s going in the wrong direction.

And now, in advance of a key Ontario budget, where Ontarians will find out how their government will handle the $25 billion tsunami of budget deficits, McGuinty has slipped in another tax. This time it’s a little clip-on to your hydro utility bill.

It’s supposed to pay for all the home energy audits and rebate programs the Liberals have created to promote conservation measures. Those programs have some value. However, like all Liberal ideas they have a significant cost and it is simply disingenuous to tack on those costs to utility bills. It’s a form of off-ledger accounting.

No matter how you cut it, this is a tax increase. In fact it is a very clear cut example of Liberal-think. They are directly taxing utility bills to pay for programs for utility users. It used to be that taxes were collected for those limited things of general public good. However the Liberals have created taxes from one select user group to benefit selected members of that user group. In truth, they’ve been doing this for years, expanding taxation into user fees and income redistribution programs. If that seems beyond the scope of taxation and government power – it’s because it is. The Liberals continue to grow the nanny state a little bigger.

And if you thought tax increases were complete – think again. We are going to see all manner of tax increases. They be disguised as mandatory user fees, they’ll be in your face scattered through out the current tax code. It amounts to the death of the middle class by a thousand tax increases.

Tax and spend Liberalism has morphed into socialism.

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