There have been arguments made that Dalton McGuinty either does not care about the countryside or he is completely ignorant about what goes on out here in the boondocks.
Onetime MPP and cabinet minister John Wilkinson used to drag a bunch of city MPPs out to the rural area to show them that not everything has to be paved over to be livable, and that farmers are people too. Given the latest emanations from Queen’s Park in the form of the budget, very few of those lessons stuck with those MPPs, and certainly not with McGuinty or Finance Minister Dwight Duncan.
We can recall about 14 years ago when we faxed Premier Mike Harris and asked him, in as nice a way as possible, if he was crazy. Harris was, at that time, contemplating selling the LCBO because a bunch of city slickers from Toronto felt it should be their God-given right to buy booze at the corner store at all hours of the day and night.
Privatizing the LCBO would place about $1.5 billion in the provincial coffers at a time it was really needed.
The only problem we had with that plan, and we told Harris just that, was the LCBO was showing a profit of nearly $700 million a year, was socially responsible, and there was no need to sell it. We suggested it was one of the few things the provincial government ran that not only worked well, but made a profit.
Far be it for us to claim we changed the premier’s mind, but a few weeks later Harris announced he was scrapping the sale. Since then, the LCBO’s profits have reached nearly $1.3 billion a year. Imagine that lost money for all those years in between missing from the province’s well depleted coffers today.
Alas, McGuinty has proved conclusively over the years he does not listen. The stubborn Premier Dad has decided a healthy and profitable partnership between slots and racetracks – and it was a partnership – should be spun into being called a “subsidy” so he could sell an abrogation of his agreement as being fiscally prudent, and kill the deal.
Ostensibly, his changes to the OLG and slot programs are going to create nearly 2,500 jobs, mainly in Toronto (500 are already gone at three closed slots facilities in western Ontario). Meanwhile, out here in the boondocks, where all we managed to do is keep the premier and his cohorts well fed, thousands of jobs and livelihoods are in jeopardy.
The Toronto Star did a magnificent article on Sunday about how far reaching the affects are. McGuinty, while not listening to anyone for advice (after all, Father Knows Best, eh?) cannot seem to see past his long nose. While he creates a handful of jobs, he is killing thousands in rural Ontario. Maybe he figures with the horses gone there will be less opposition to his turbine program.
Wellington County, for good or ill, has had a long standing love affair with horses. One can argue the county should be more focused on beef, hogs, sheep or some other product, but the fact is people here favour horses.
So McGuinty’s axe on the horse industry falls squarely on Wellington County. It falls on breeders who will see their sales drop. It falls on the racetracks and their employees. It falls on veterinarians, horse trainers, feed mill employees, the farmers that supply hay, straw and feed, the builders of horse trailers, the barn builders, the stable boys who clean those barns, those who supply rubber mats for horse stalls, and those who build barns for horses.
In a word, McGuinty’s axe has fallen on just about everyone in Wellington, and the ripples are going to move outward from here across the province – not quite reaching cities until the upload of social services hits and everyone will scratch their heads and wonder why there is a sudden high demand for welfare.
At some point, somebody is going to have to stop this guy. Unfortunately, we have to hope it is the NDP. Isn’t that a wonderful party on which to pin the hopes of this province?
David Meyer
