“It is a good thing to follow the first law of holes: If you are in one, stop digging.”
- the late British Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey
QUEEN’S PARK – Now staring at a $30 billion deficit, Dalton McGuinty has not only done nothing to meet the Drummond report’s urgent call for less spending – he has actually dug a $4.3 billion hole in the opposite direction, Ontario PC Deputy Leader Christine Elliott said today.
“Don Drummond’s direction to the Premier was clear: If he turns down any one recommendation, it would need to be replaced with another of equal value, to balance the budget by 2017-18,” Elliott said. “We have been equally clear: Everything must be on the table.
“So what does Dalton McGuinty do with this advice? Coupled with his prior un-costed spending on home reno tax credits, he takes more than $4 billion out of the equation – without a word on what he will do to follow the advice he himself asked for, and replace it.
“The Premier must not get away with this. He was continually briefed on Drummond and had the report six weeks early. He knew long ago he would not touch certain recommendations. For every day’s delay, the pain will only get worse.”
Not including the home reno tax credit ($120 million), Elliott tallied the list of Drummond recommendations waved away by McGuinty as off-limits over the past week alone:
- Continuing full-day Kindergarten: $1.5 billion
- Maintaining capped class sizes: $500 million
- Keeping 70 per cent of non-teaching school staff: $600 million
- Maintaining the Ontario Clean Energy Benefit: $1.1 billion
- Retaining the tuition grant: $485 million
- Rejected Drummond recommendations: $4.2 billion
- Add home reno tax credit: $120 million
- TOTAL: $4.3 billion
All this stacks up against a fiscal problem that is much worse than Ontarians were led to believe, Elliott stressed: “By now, Tim Hudak would have acted on his commitments to make Ministers financially accountable for hitting targets, initiated a full program review, had briefings from Drummond and Finance officials, and tabled a fall action plan leading to an early budget.
“Ontarians are now staring at a completely unsustainable $30 billion deficit,” Elliott said. “It’s the McGuinty Liberals’ reckless, one-off spending binges and ad hoc approach to governing – and now playing one group off another – that got us into this mess.
“And it will not get us out.”
