Wellington-Halton Hills MPP Ted Arnott has been preparing for a provincial election he has called “inevitable” for the past year.
And with the May 2 announcement by Premier Kathleen Wynne that the legislature would be dissolved after the Liberal budget was rejected by the Conservatives and New Democrats, June 12 was set as election day.
Guelph MPP and education minister Liz Sandals said her party had early indications that NDP leader Andrea Horwath would reject the budget.
“I wasn’t surprised she voted against the budget, that she decided to have an election,” said Sandals.
She added the Liberal campaign will focus on the budget.
“We’re running on the budget because the budget encompasses so many things we want to do.”
The government stated the budget, which calls for a deficit of $11.3 billion this year, is part of a 10-year plan for the economy, which would see a balanced budget delivered in 2017-18.
Budget highlights include:
– a new 10-year, $2.5-billion Jobs and Prosperity Fund aimed at improving Ontario’s ability to attract significant business investments;
– $295 million over two years for the Ontario Youth Jobs Strategy;
– nearly $29 billion over the next 10 years for transportation infrastructure, public transit and other infrastructure projects ($15 billion for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) and nearly $14 billion for municipalities outside the GTHA);
– more than $11 billion over the next 10 years for elementary and secondary education infrastructure;
– $11.4 billion in major hospital expansion and redevelopment projects over the next 10 years;
– a provincial pension plan to be accessible by Ontarians without company pension plans;
– raising the minimum wage to $11 per hour and proposing legislation to index it to inflation; and
– proposing to remove the debt retirement charge ($70 a year for the typical user) from residential users’ electricity bills after Dec. 31, 2015.
Arnott and his campaign team met early Saturday and are ready to hit the pavement and talk to voters.
“I look forward to the campaign,” Arnott said prior to the official election announcement. “It will include visiting as many constituents as I can.”
The team was in the process of setting up a campaign office in the riding.
Arnott said he enters the campaign with three questions, “people need to ask themselves: who do they want to represent them in the next provincial government, do the Liberals deserve re-election… (and) which party offers the best ideas for the province?”
The veteran Tory MPP said the budget put forward by the minority Liberals with mass spending in a variety of areas would have seen the provincial deficit dip by about $400 million to $11.3 and jump another billion next year, with the Liberals stating they will have a balanced budget by 2017-18.
Arnott looks at it differently, stating the province’s 7.3 per cent unemployment rate and growing debt is why the Conservatives were willing to vote against the budget and trigger an election.
“They have doubled the debt since they took office,” said Arnott, who has been calling for balanced budgeting.
“They’re on the path to financial insolvency. You can’t get out of the debt hole by borrowing more money.”
Arnott said if his party forms the next government it will scrap the Green Energy Act, which has paved the way for several controversial wind turbine projects.
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said the “last-ditch budget” comes after the Liberals failed to deliver results on a series of promises made in the previous year’s budget, including reducing auto insurance rates, cutting home care wait times, and setting up a Financial Accountability Office.
“The same government that couldn’t fulfill three promises over the last year is making more than 70 new promises this year. How can Kathleen Wynne build a ship, when she hasn’t managed to build a raft?” said Horwath.
She called the budget “a mad dash to escape scandal by promising the moon and the stars.”
Perth-Wellington MPP Randy Pettapiece said the budget amounts to a Liberal election platform that doesn’t address the needs of residents of his riding.
“It says to me they are taking another kick at rural and small-town Ontario,” stated Pettapeice in a post-budget press release.
“Agriculture was hardly mentioned at all in the budget,” the Conservative MPP told the Advertiser.
“They’ve just introduced a budget of increased spending and no solutions for job creation. Certainly one of the things I’m concerned with as rural affairs critic with the party is try to make sure that rural Ontario not only kept the jobs we have, but trying to get industries and whatever else looking at rural Ontario for job creation.”
High energy rates in Ontario are another concern for local residents, said Pettapiece, one he said his party would deal with by cutting subsidies to alternative energy producers.
“The Green Energy Act would be finished,” Pettapiece stated. “We want to get rid of FIT, the Feed-in Tariff program … were paying too many subsidies to keep these things going. So it’s been a totally-failed initiative by this government and we need to get that addressed.”
Pettapiece said the government’s pension plan proposal would put pressure on both workers and businesses.
“It’s just another tax and people are already having issues paying their bills now. These monies that they are talking about come out of your paycheque – plus the small businesses are going to have to come up with it,” he stated.
“We feel we need to get Ontario back working. There’s about 600,000 people without a job in Ontario right now and those people wouldn’t benefit at all from a tax such as this pension plan tax,” Pettapiece added.
He dismissed the potential impact on jobs of the proposed infrastructure spending in the budget, stating, “The government has introduced a number of things which inhibit job creation — one being the college of trades. That’s something we’ve heard over and over again, about what is the college of trades and what does it do? Well, it doesn’t do anything other than it has increased fees for tradespeople.”
Pettapiece also said his party’s plans to improve Ontario’s apprenticeship system could create 200,000 jobs.
“We believe there’s ways of doing things and helping people in Ontario without raising taxes.”
In a joint May 2 press release, Pettapiece and Arnott criticized the government’s cancellation of the Connecting Link program, which has been in place since the 1920s and provided funding to municipalities of about 90 per cent of the cost of maintaining provincial highways through urban centres.
“These are provincial bridges, on provincial highways, carrying provincial traffic… How many times could this government have fixed our bridges if it hadn’t blown over a billion dollars on cancelled gas plants?” Pettapiece asked during question period in the house on May 2.
However, Pettapiece was non-committal when asked if a Conservative government would restore funding for the program.
“I advocate for my municipalities who have called me about this— and there’s been a number— so that’s what I am doing is advocating for my communities that this should not have been changed without their consultation, which it was,” he said.
“And it was a complete surprise to municipalities when they did this.”
Asked if the issue would be addressed by the Tories during the upcoming campaign, Pettapiece said, “It may be… We are going to bring out an election platform that would try to save municipalities money. This is what they are looking for.”
Pettapiece said the Liberals presented “a tax and spend budget.
“With all things combined they were looking at almost another billion dollars in tax increases.” He said the document “really pandered to the NDP, hoping the NDP would buy into it.”
Asked if there was anything in the budget he liked, the MPP laughed, then stated, “For almost two and a half years we’ve been seeing this government flounder around, whether it was under Dalton McGuinty or Kathleen Wynne. There’s two OPP investigations going on right now. There could be more.
“There’s been a lot of things come to light that we’re looking at. Why keep a government in power that hasn’t served the needs of Ontario?”
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) also gave the budget a failing grade.
“Budget 2014 fails taxpayers on absolutely every measure,” said CTF’s Ontario director Candice Malcolm.
A CTF press release stated the budget increases spending by $3.04 billion, projects Ontario’s deficit to grow to $12.5 billion, fails to clearly explain how the government will balance its budget by 2017/18, and shows net debt will inflate to $289.3 billion.
