[OnTheIce]

I also forgot to add to the list, the most recent spending scandal at Ornge, the Air Ambulance operator for Ontario.

[Lemmy]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

I'm curious as to how they fucked up Ontario, in your opinion.

By creating utter chaos in virtually every aspect of provincial governance, especially healthcare and education, which are the two things that provincial governments are mandated, by the Constitution, to protect. He closed 28 hospitals, fired 6,200 nurses and eliminated 10,000 hospital beds.

He cut $400M per year in post-secondary education funding. He rewrote the Education Act, removing teachers' right to collectively bargain and created the Ontario College of Teachers, which continues to be a black-hole of bureaucratic waste. He created EQAO, which essentially changes the focus of public education away from learning and towards standardized testing. This Texas-style education model has been criticized by virtually every education expert on the planet.

He wasted, on average, $44M per year on partisan advertisements aimed at selling his bill of goods to the feeble minded. Here's one that came out the same time as hospitals were closing and nurses were being fired.

Harris abolished many aspects of workplace safety regulations, including making employers responsible for reporting workplace accidents. Talk about giving the fox the keys to the henhouse.

Then there's the millions pissed away on consultants and untendered government contracts. Tom Long, one of Harris' buddies, collected more than $3M personally.

Andersen Consulting's Business Transformation Project was set up to combat welfare fraud. It cost $500M with no results. Then Accenture was hired to fix design problems, which cost another $10M (the day I learned that was the day I bought Accenture stock). Andersen later went down in flames on the Enron fraud.

He downloaded most Provincial services on the municipalities and created the MPAC as a henchman to pry those tax dollars from people through artificially inflated housing assessments. This created massive increases in housing prices and municipal taxes.

What else?

Privatizing Ontario Hydro (you think McGuinty's fucked up hydro in Ontario? The Samsung kerfuffle is child's play compared to the mess the Conservatives made of the hydro business in Ontario. Highway 407, need I say more? The Ipperwash-Kettle Point native stand-off. Widesread deregulation, like the creation of the TSSA...remember that Sunrise Propane explosion in Toronto a few years ago? How about the USE Hickson Products fire? Walkerton water crisis? The Amalgamated GTA. How's that working out for you Torontonians? Ministry of Transportation cuts...led Mayor Mel to have to call in the friggin' army to clear the snow from Toronto's streets. Special interest groups, lobbyists and conflicts of interest: too many to name in one post. A 30% cut in income tax...sounds good until you do the math and learn that 60% of that was enjoyed by the richest 10% of Ontarians (amounting to roughly $6B in lost revenue). "Reforms" to the Landlord and Tenant Act gave the landlords virtually free reign, upheld by the Ontario Rental Housing Tribunal (another government henchman).

I need to stop before I have an aneurysm.

[eureka]

More tax than what? More tax than the reduced taxes of Harris and those were mostly corporate giveaways. Any increase just partly replaces lost revenues under Harris.

More debt than what? Not more than in the Harris years except for the necessary stimulus.

Delisting certain health services would not have happened had Harris not placed the finances of the province in such a precarious position.

I won't take all your points since you take them ideologically. For instance, who says the HST is a bad thing?

[Lemmy]

If you're asking me, I think the HST is a good thing. I think it should be applied at a lower rate, but it's a tax with broad incidence and is good for small business...and it's not McGuinty's doing so much as Harpers', so give the credit (good or bad) where it's due.

[martin14]

eureka eureka:

You should love people like me, because I write

the stinkiest pile of shit anyone has written for quiet some time

Wow, just wow.


Happily, the only one who truly believes that mound is you.

[martin14]

Lemmy Lemmy:

Walkerton water crisis?

Sorry, that's a stretch.


The workers had been there for 30 years.

[Lemmy]

martin14 martin14:

Lemmy Lemmy:

Walkerton water crisis?

Sorry, that's a stretch. The workers had been there for 30 years.

Yeah, but those morons were kept in check by the regulatory agency for those 30 years. Things went to shit when the watchers stopped watching.

[saturn_656]

eureka eureka:

saturn_656 saturn_656:

$1:

This province has still not recovered from himl in spite of careful stewardship by McGuinty.

Are you serious? Do you even live in Ontario?

Of course I am serious. If you dispute that, say why.

See OTI's post on page 2. Most of Premier Dad's screw ups are listed there.

Careful stewardship.

[Lemmy]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

Just a little McGuinty History:

You make some good points, and again, I'm no fan of McGuinty, but:

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

1. The McGuinty Ontario Health Premium - The highest tax increase in Ontario's history

Nope. Not even close to the total size of the increase in tax created by Harris' MPAC. NOT EVEN CLOSE. But what's the alternative? Cut healthcare or make people pay more? The thing that caused the Health premium is rising healthcare costs. New technologies are expensive. The population is aging. Those are out of the hands of the premier, regardless who he is or what party he leads. And they're going to continue to rise. You can vote in Hudak or Genghis Khan, the Health Premium is here to stay and it's going nowhere but up as inflation and aging demographics continue.

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

2. Delisting of OHIP Covered Necessary Health Services (Optometry (Eye), Chiropractic and Physiotherapy Services for Ontarians.)

Also hard choice made necessary by rising costs that are out of the control of government absent tax increases. You can purchase those services if you choose. I thought you conservatives liked privatized choice in healthcare.

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

3. The eHealth Scandal - That cost Ontario a Billion in wasted tax dollars.

That was a colossal clusterfuck, on par with the SkyDome and the Federal Gun Registy in terms of white elephant size. But was it the Liberal government's fault? To some extent, for sure, but E-health was an independent government agency, not a branch of the legislature. It was the deputy minister's fault, a government employee, not an MPP. Blaming McGuinty for this is like blaming Steven Harper for things that go on at the CBC.

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

4. The Caledonia Scandal.

Wouldn't have happened if Harris hadn't dinked the pooch at Ipperwash. If he'd supported law enforcement and shown these Native hoodlums who the fuck's in charge, McGuinty a) likely never would have had to deal with Caledonia in the first place and; b) if he did, he'd have had a police force that the Natives would have been a lot more respectful and fearful of.

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

5. The McGuinty Government has made Ontario Tuition Fees the highest in Canada

That's a half-truth because Ontarians also have access to the most scholarships and bursaries. But like healthcare, post-secondary education is becoming increasingly technology-driven. The costs of lab facilities and computers and research technologies are rising. Everywhere. Not just Ontario. You can't blame McGuinty for the rising costs of running a university.

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

6. Harmonized Sales Tax (HST)

As I already said, the HST has a broader incidence of taxation and is, therefore, preferred to the GST. It's also as much Harper's tax as McGuinty's (well, more actually) and is supported by economists and small-business groups alike.

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

7. Smart Meters-The Smart Meters have cost Ontarians $1 Billion to implement, and have failed to provide the cost savings.

I'm not even on smart-meter billing yet. They've installed the meter but we're not on the time-of-use billing yet. It'll pay for itself. Investments don't pay off in the first year, especially when a lot of the province hasn't had the meters turned on yet.

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

8.Sunshine List's Skyrocketing - Where under Dalton McGuinty, the number of Ontario Public Sector workers making $100,000 or more has skyrocketed from just over 12,000 members in 2003, to a whopping 63,371 in 2009, or in total, an over 500% increase while Dalton McGuinty has been Premier.

Sorry, but you TOTALLY fail on this one. Who are these people who've joined the sunshine list over the 10 years McGuinty's been in power? They're public employees who were earning $90K in the Harris years and whose salaries have crept over the 6-digit line because of inflation. Those new "sunshiners" aren't making any more in real dollars than they were under Harris. Total red herring.

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

9. Slush Fund Scandal - Where Dalton McGuinty's Government gave $32 Million to Liberal friendly groups

You think McGuinty's handed more dough to "liberal friendly groups" than Harris gave to both "conservative friendly groups" and just plain-old Harris friends? I'll take that wager in any amount you'd like pony up.

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

10. The G20 Scandal.

Harper's fault much more than McGuinty's. What would a Conservative provincial government have done differently? And who's bum-chum made out like the biggest bandit on the G20? Harris' weasel Tony Clement.

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

11. Hydro Rates- 46% increase in hydro rates in the next 5 years.

Electricity rates are going up everywhere. Maybe we could keep prices in line easier if Harris hadn't privatized Ontario Hydro, but I doubt it.

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

12. The Eco-Tax. The tax he thought he could sneak in without people noticing. We did and they pulled back.

Isn't that a good thing? The government tried something that the public didn't like, so the government scrapped it. That's the way it's supposed to be, isn't it?

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

That's Dalton's legacy. More tax. More debt. Less Health Care. More for education.

More for education is a good thing.

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

But we have full-day babysitting....er, kindergarten.

I'm not a fan of full-day kindergarten. There are lots of places we can save education dollars without repeating Harris' mistakes.

[OnTheIce]

Lemmy Lemmy:

Nope. Not even close to the total size of the increase in tax created by Harris' MPAC. NOT EVEN CLOSE. But what's the alternative? Cut healthcare or make people pay more? The thing that caused the Health premium is rising healthcare costs. New technologies are expensive. The population is aging. Those are out of the hands of the premier, regardless who he is or what party he leads. And they're going to continue to rise. You can vote in Hudak or Genghis Khan, the Health Premium is here to stay and it's going nowhere but up as inflation and aging demographics continue.

Either way, it was a massive increase on the people of Ontario right after the words of no tax increases came out of his mouth during the campaign.

Lemmy Lemmy:

Also hard choice made necessary by rising costs that are out of the control of government absent tax increases. You can purchase those services if you choose. I thought you conservatives liked privatized choice in healthcare.

So hard choices when a Liberal government makes those choices, but when the Feds cut your transfer payments and Harris has to make necessary cuts, it's "chaos".

Why is it that when we talk about the cuts Harris made, we fail to mention the austerity measures by Chretien that affected all Provinces?

Lemmy Lemmy:

That was a colossal clusterfuck, on par with the SkyDome and the Federal Gun Registy in terms of white elephant size. But was it the Liberal government's fault? To some extent, for sure, but E-health was an independent government agency, not a branch of the legislature. It was the deputy minister's fault, a government employee, not an MPP. Blaming McGuinty for this is like blaming Steven Harper for things that go on at the CBC.

When your government is pumping a billion into a project, you have an obligation to keep track of that money. I don't care where or who the money is going to. Accountability.

Lemmy Lemmy:

Wouldn't have happened if Harris hadn't dinked the pooch at Ipperwash. If he'd supported law enforcement and shown these Native hoodlums who the fuck's in charge, McGuinty a) likely never would have had to deal with Caledonia in the first place and; b) if he did, he'd have had a police force that the Natives would have been a lot more respectful and fearful of.

McGuinty had years to grow a set of balls. You can't lay this down on Harris a decade after he left office. He's the Leader of this Province.

Lemmy Lemmy:

I'm not even on smart-meter billing yet. They've installed the meter but we're not on the time-of-use billing yet. It'll pay for itself. Investments don't pay off in the first year, especially when a lot of the province hasn't had the meters turned on yet.

The program has been active for 5 years. They started installing Smart Meters back in 2007.

Lemmy Lemmy:

You think McGuinty's handed more dough to "liberal friendly groups" than Harris gave to both "conservative friendly groups" and just plain-old Harris friends? I'll take that wager in any amount you'd like pony up.

Just because one guy did it before, doesn't make it anymore right this time around.

Lemmy Lemmy:

Harper's fault much more than McGuinty's. What would a Conservative provincial government have done differently? And who's bum-chum made out like the biggest bandit on the G20? Harris' weasel Tony Clement.

McGuinty was the guy who, behind the scenes, made changes to the law to give the police additional powers. Not Harper.

Lemmy Lemmy:

Isn't that a good thing? The government tried something that the public didn't like, so the government scrapped it. That's the way it's supposed to be, isn't it?

Typically, you don't bring forth a tax on millions of items in secret without telling the public.

Lemmy Lemmy:

More for education is a good thing.

Paying more for an education is what I meant.

[Lemmy]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

Either way, it was a massive increase on the people of Ontario right after the words of no tax increases came out of his mouth during the campaign.

What alternative did he have? I'm sure he didn't want to raise taxes. He underestimated. And he knew it'd make him look like an ass but again, what choice did he have? The reality was what it was and that reality was independent of anything McGuinty may have said on the campaign trail.

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

So hard choices when a Liberal government makes those choices, but when the Feds cut your transfer payments and Harris has to make necessary cuts, it's "chaos". Why is it that when we talk about the cuts Harris made, we fail to mention the austerity measures by Chretien that affected all Provinces?

The results are what they are. I'm not saying Mike Harris' job was easy. It's no easier being McGuinty. It's a hard job to do.

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

When your government is pumping a billion into a project, you have an obligation to keep track of that money. I don't care where or who the money is going to. Accountability.

No question. What did McGuinty do wrong though? They discovered the problem and heads rolled. Same with Ornge. It just happened to be the Liberals in power when the story broke. It would have been exactly the same if the Conservatives were in power and I would expect that the Conservatives would have done exactly what the Liberals did in response to e-Health and what the Liberals are currently doing with Ornge.

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

McGuinty had years to grow a set of balls. You can't lay this down on Harris a decade after he left office. He's the Leader of this Province.

I agree with you. But you want to hang McGuinty on his handling of native problems when Harris handled them at least as badly.

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

The program has been active for 5 years. They started installing Smart Meters back in 2007.

Give it time. A billion dollar investment in anything takes time to break even. Isn't use-time and demand-based billing something that conservatives favour (supply and demand and all)?

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

Just because one guy did it before, doesn't make it anymore right this time around.

I'm not saying what McGuinty's done is right, but his record on shady contributions is much better than Harris'.

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

McGuinty was the guy who, behind the scenes, made changes to the law to give the police additional powers. Not Harper.

What would a Conservative government have done differently?

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

Typically, you don't bring forth a tax on millions of items in secret without telling the public.

Agreed, but he did the right thing in response to public outrage.

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

Paying more for an education is what I meant.

What's the alternative?

[OnTheIce]

Lemmy Lemmy:

What alternative did he have? I'm sure he didn't want to raise taxes.

Perhaps some incremental change? Perhaps not looking the people of Ontario in the face and lying during the election knowing full well the health portfolio was underfunded.

Lemmy Lemmy:

No question. What did McGuinty do wrong though? They discovered the problem and heads rolled. Same with Ornge. It just happened to be the Liberals in power when the story broke. It would have been exactly the same if the Conservatives were in power and I would expect that the Conservatives would have done exactly what the Liberals did in response to e-Health and what the Liberals are currently doing with Ornge.

In the business world, you monitor progress and have accountability. You don't shell out a billion and then decide to check up. I have a budget that I work with and we meet weekly to discuss the money being spent and results being generated.

Lemmy Lemmy:

I agree with you. But you want to hang McGuinty on his handling of native problems when Harris handled them at least as badly.

Exactly. I'd like to hang them both for their handling of the situations. Just because Harris screwed up, doesn't give the next guy a pass.

Lemmy Lemmy:

What would a Conservative government have done differently?

No clue. Doesn't make it right regardless of what side of the spectrum the party is on.

[BeaverFever]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

Perhaps some incremental change? Perhaps not looking the people of Ontario in the face and lying during the election knowing full well the health portfolio was underfunded.

Thanks to Harris's draconian cuts, Health Care was in a crisis state. McGuinty has built 18 new hospitals whil Harris closed them by the dozen. He rehired hundreds of nurses and health-care workers that Harris had terminated.

$1:

In the business world, you monitor progress and have accountability. You don't shell out a billion and then decide to check up. I have a budget that I work with and we meet weekly to discuss the money being spent and results being generated.

Ironically, Ornge was set up according to right-wing "private sector model" that Harris was so adept at: Hire exectuvies from the private sector and pay them to private-sector scale to run an agency "like a business" with minimal government oversight (or "interference" as they like to call it). Then set them up with incentives and directives to generate their own revenue to reduce the amount of taxpayer funding required. Very similar to what happened with OLGC.

$1:

Exactly. I'd like to hang them both for their handling of the situations. Just because Harris screwed up, doesn't give the next guy a pass.

So in the contect of your claim that McGuinty was the worst premier of your lifetime, this argument is irrelevant.

$1:

No clue. Doesn't make it right regardless of what side of the spectrum the party is on.

As above



"Eco-Tax"
Contrary to right-wing myth-making, this was not a tax or even a McGuinty government program- none of the money was collected by or payable to the government. This program was another Harris-Eves legacy program that was a "private sector" solution run by a private-sectory entity Harris-Eves created called Stewardship Ontario (Waste Diversion Act, 2002). The organization, which consists of retailers, importers and manufacturers, was responsible for developing and implementing the plan and collecting the proceeds from the eco-fee to fund "green" solutions. They cocked it up big-time with poor planning and inconsistent execution (similar products had different fees at different stores and even within the same stores). McGuinty's fault lies with the fact that he didnt kill the program sooner.

[OnTheIce]

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

Thanks to Harris's draconian cuts, Health Care was in a crisis state. McGuinty has built 18 new hospitals whil Harris closed them by the dozen. He rehired hundreds of nurses and health-care workers that Harris had terminated.

You can thank Chretien and Martin for the austerity measures that cut health care across the Country during the Harris era. The premiers get all the blame for Federal decisions.

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

Ironically, Ornge was set up according to right-wing "private sector model" that Harris was so adept at: Hire exectuvies from the private sector and pay them to private-sector scale to run an agency "like a business" with minimal government oversight (or "interference" as they like to call it). Then set them up with incentives and directives to generate their own revenue to reduce the amount of taxpayer funding required. Very similar to what happened with OLGC.

9 years.

Harris hasn't been in office for 9 years.

It's time to stop blaming a guy that hasn't been in the chair for almost a decade.

If there were problems then, they should have been addressed and fixed by now.

You can't come back after 9 years and blame your lack of oversight on a guy who's long gone.

[BeaverFever]

Harris massively cut taxes as well, so he made the deliberate policy choice to fund tax cuts that benefited business elites and wealthy rather than fund schools and hospitals. The cuts and closures he carried out were MASSIVE and unprecedented and already came in the wake of massive cuts made under Rae. That kind of dammage takes decades to undo. When close a hosipital or school, bulldoze the builings and sell off the land at firesale prices, it takes billions of dollars and many years for the sucessor governments just to get those services back to where they once were. Harris (and to a somewhat lesser extent Eves)was idelogically inclined to this behaviour, he had no regrets and Chretien did not drag him kicking and screaming to the chopping block, Harris sprinted there with a smile on his face.

With respect to Ornge, I'm not blaming Harris but the right-wing "arms length, "operate like a business" ideology that was so popular with Harris and still is with right-wingers is what led to problems there. To suggest that Conservatives would have set up an organization with heavy bureaucratic oversight and a greater reliance on taxpayer funding is ludicrous.

Harris reformed the OLGC with Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation Act that set the agency up as an autonomous entity that reports to an independent part-time board of directors, which in turn report to government.