A budget is not a budget when it is being offered as an election program. While overly exploited and old news, Finance Minister Sousa’s budget yesterday was stolid and basically ho-hum with a veneer of concessions to the New Democrats. The real question for the Wynne government is whether it has any staying power as an election program?
The best guess is that the budget cannot do the job. Conservative Leader Timmy Hudak is going to complain long and loud about the deficit that nobody really understands. In fact Timmy should know that because he acts as though he does not understand it either. He just says he does.
Timmy will attack the Liberals on the general premise that the budget is bloated but keep as far away from specifics as possible.
An exception is that we can expect him to keep swinging against the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan (ORPP). He will call it a payroll tax and an imposition on peoples’ rights but you can be sure the Liberals have tested it thoroughly in focus groups and are ready with easy answers.
With much of the budget goodies aimed at the New Democrats, one would hardly expect them to be overjoyed with the Liberal generosity. Sousa’s budget nickel-dimes them on the programs that need much higher investment. How much improved is the situation for the poor with another $8 a month in the Ontario Child Benefit?
While many writers are seemingly impressed with the left leaning nickels and dimes in this budget, it does not by any stretch indicate the reform of Ontario’s Liberals. They are still the mean penny-pinching bastards of the Dalton McGuinty era. Ms. Wynne is certainly no reformer and she remains the reactionary, boring choice of the Whigs who have been in control of the Liberal Party in Ontario for the past 20 years.
As things stand at this moment, if New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath had not pulled the plug on this terrible government, Kathleen Wynne would have done it herself. You really did not expect her government to want to live with all this left-wing stuff did you?
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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