TAY REPORT

MPP DUNLOP WARNS YOU WILL PAY MORE FOR WORTHLESS BUDGET

Ontario’s Liberal government was among the last provinces to bring down its budget this year.  Sadly, it was not a budget worth waiting for. Except maybe for historians.  Dalton McGuinty has now secured his place in Ontario history, by adding the largest deficit in history to the largest tax hike in history.

While some news stories have focused on what will be exempted from the combined provincial and federal sales taxes, the months ahead will be filled with unpleasant surprises, as people realize how much more they will be paying for everyday goods and services.

You will pay more every time you fill up your car.  You will pay more for home heating fuel.  You will pay more for your cable, internet and cell phone service.  You will pay more if you need a lawyer to close your house purchase or sale.

The $1,000 rebate that the Liberals are promising families will be more than offset by $1,100 or more in higher taxes. But this budget does not just mean more taxes today. It will mean more taxes tomorrow, as all of us will be called upon to service a public debt that will have doubled in seven years.

But don’t worry the Liberals say. They promise to have Ontario back in the black by 2015. There’s just one hitch: achieving that goal requires the McGuinty government to control their spending to a degree they have never once been able to do. The Liberals have increased program sending by about 8 per cent every year since 2004.  But they say they will cut that rate by more than half in the years ahead.  This is like Santa Claus saying he’s going to lose 100 pounds and run a three-hour marathon nine months from now.

Like the last five Liberal budgets, this one is full of promises.  But Ontarians are on to the Liberals.  They know what Dalton McGuinty’s promises have been worth.  He promised no tax increases, and then delivered the largest tax increase in Ontario history. He loudly and repeatedly promised parents full-day Junior and Senior Kindergarten. That promise has been quietly dropped.  He promised commuters a multi-billion-dollar plan for transit, through the so-called 2020 plan. That plan has apparently evaporated. He promised skills training. That program has been a failure. He promised 9,000 new nurses. Don’t bother pressing your “call” button: the nurses aren’t coming.

The only thing Dalton has always delivered on is higher taxes. And that is the one promise from this budget that you know he will keep.

Dalton McGuinty had the good fortune to inherit a good economy, an economy that was able to survive shocks such as SARS. But the Liberals seem to have played out the old joke about the guy who woke up on third base and figured he had hit a triple.

We in the PC caucus, along with many others, warned the Liberals not to take Ontario’s prosperity for granted. We warned them not to raise taxes on families and job creators. We warned them not to grow the public sector. But they did not listen.