Ontario budget slashes spending, freezes wages\

I like it!

What is there to like? He wants to cut $17 billion over three years but the problem the deficit is currently $16 billion! He totally ignored the Drummond report, which is the biggest wake up call Ontario has had in years. Dalton is completely incapable of making the hard decisions because he's so desperate to save his legacy programs. I can only hope the NDP vote against this debacle (PCs have already said they will vote against it) but seeing how the NDP are anti-private sector I'm sure the the promise to freeze corporate tax cuts is enough of a bone. Maybe deadbeat Dalton can keep blaming Alberta when his financial house comes crashing down around him. I find it amazing I cannot find anyone who is willing to admit after the election that they voted for this ballsless wonder.

Good. About time someone realized that living within your means is the best policy.

Alberta did the exact same thing in 2008 - many civil servants still haven't gotten an increase or anything else since then.

It may not erase the entire deficit, but it's a step in the right direction.

If you can't, then you should get out more! McGuinty has done a fair job of righting the train wreck of Harris, Flaherty, Clement and Baird. But, he can' do enough while the manufacturing sector in Ontario is being devastated by the petro-dollar. This government inherited a alrge deficit from Harris and had eliminated it with annual surpluses until the 2008 financial meltdown. The deficit now is from the stimulus and the near permanent recession that the Ontario hostile economic policies of the federal government have created.

That said, there is much not to like about this budget: a budget that has finally surrendered to the Right Wing ideology that has plagued the Western world for a generation. Instead of stimulus and the concomitant job creation, it adopts the strategies that have led to greater unemployment; greater underemployment and greater disparities in the financial condition of the populace in every Western democracy except for a few Northern European countries.

And to slower growth.

So all the debt and various spending scandals during the last 8+ years are all due to someone other than McGuinty?

What has McGuinty done to fix Ontario?

Turning Ontario into a have-not province all while ballooning the deficit to record levels as well as raising the corporate tax rate to the point where Ontario is losing employment is a fair job????

Your messed up worse than I thought.

-J.

Ah, it`s the corp tax that`s causing Ont to lose jobs. Of course, how blindingly obvious.

Turning Ontario into a have-not province all while ballooning the deficit to record levels as well as raising the corporate tax rate to the point where Ontario is losing employment is a fair job????

Your messed up worse than I thought.

-J.

Our corporate tax rate is just fine, McGuinty has lowered it numerous times.

I'd like anyone from any side to acknowledge that the worst thing to happen to Ontario was the collapse of the US dollar, not the so-called rise of the Canadian one. Corporate tax rates aren't to blame and the alleged Alberta-controlled "petro-dollar", as some troublemaking doofus around here has already called, it certainly isn't either. Ontario's going to tread water until the US is on firmer footing, and that's going to take a long time to happen. Prime ministers and premiers are going to have zero effect on this dynamic and that's the reality that everyone seems to want to ignore.

I am not sure what side I am on here but I would give the US/Cdn dollars trading at par The bulk of the blame for ON's malaise. If you are an exporter used to dealing with a Cdn. dollar trading at 63 cents it is a serious shock to to your cost/revenue system when they trade at par. Costs are mostly in Cdn. dollars, revenues in US dollars. Simple as that.

I think as well that the international Currency trading system is also a factor. The market seems to read the Cdn. dollar as a commodity currency so it's value can rise on the basis of factors that really have little to do with ON.

A high dollar is a blessing and a curse to Ontario manufacturers. The appreciated dollar does help to improve business efficiency rather than operating with the crutch of a 65 cent dollar. And commodities' prices do cause short-term fluctuations in the value of the dollar, but only within a very narrow range. Interest rates, domestic economic stability and export demand are still the determining factors of a currency's value and oil only represents about 10% of total export value. The Canadian dollar, in short, is too many things to characterize it as a "petro dollar". If we stopped exporting oil altogether, it would have little impact on our currency's value.

The reality is that manufacturing was in decline before the US dollar started going south. So we can't blame the decline in Ontario on currency value. Globalization has been the culprit and until the Chinese stop exploiting labour, the environment and their own currency's value to attract manufacturing, that trend will continue...even if our dollar goes back to 65 cents US.

As for austerity in provincial spending, it's a tough pill that needs to be swallowed. If Dalton isn't up to this task, then he needs to be replaced before we venture any further down the Greek garden path to bankruptcy. However, the way to reign in provincial spending is by slashing at all the ministries and agencies that provide special interest services only. Healthcare and Education need to be sacred. Those two areas of provincial spending are the ones that provide greatest external benefits and need to be protected (and after all, Healthcare and Education the two things that provincial governments were entrusted to provide under the Constitution). It's the plethora of other provincial government agencies that ought to be gutted. If Dalton makes the same mistake Harris made and attempts to balance the budget on the backs of teachers and nurses then he really needs to go. We've seen that film before and it was a horror-show.

I agree with everything you say, minus this last part.

Why is it that Harris gets blamed for billions cut in Federal transfer payments to the Provinces for Health Care?

And of the reform that Harris made to education, did Dalton made any changes, besides wages? No, he didn't.

Harris gets blamed for the billions in federal transfer cuts because, after he downloaded everything on the municipalities, he made up all that was lost in federal funding...and then some. You can't call the war Harris declared on education "reform". He slashed and burned at the profession he was run out of for incompetence. It was personal vengeance. As for Dalton, he's made some modest improvements, but wages aren't one of them. Teachers in Ontario haven't gotten a wage increase over cost of living in nearly 20 years. Dalton's poured a lot of money into post-secondary education and some into primary education...less so into secondary panels. And you're right, Dalton hasn't done much to undo what Harris did, such as slaying the redundant white elephant that is the Ontario College of Teachers.