Here is a note I sent to my local PC candidate upon reading the PC platform, and realizing there was, and still is, no commitment to balance the budget to any discernible time line. This is consistent with Ford's own comment that he would only balance by the fourth year of his mandate.
E-Mail to PC Candidate...
Hello,
"We will return to a balanced budget on a responsible timeline."
I will return to voting PCs when they put the long term fiscal health of Ontario before short term tax cuts and spending offered to buy votes. Ford is not Trump. He is Wynne on the tax cut side, and both leaders would put the fiscal health of Ontario at risk. Yes, I realize that the NDP is as bad. We have a crisis of (nb) political culture in this province.
We have met on the campaign trail, and I do appreciate the fact that you got out there to actually meet people. I did ask you, words to the effect, "Tax cuts or deficit?" You said "deficit", and to be fair, I don't think you knew the plan at that time as it had not been released.
Ford's utterly reckless and irresponsible opportunism has cost you my vote.
Yours,
Ron Heale
I have been active in politics off and on for 30 years. I do not recall a time when a conservative party in Canada issued a policy platform with no commitment to balance a budget in a defined period of time. Even Trudeau put a time frame on this - which he has since carelessly breached, and for which he will pay a very significant political price.
It is crucial that parties tell us what they intend to do with our money, especially what they intend regarding the government's finances, because without such a commitment and time line there is no way for voters to hold politicians accountable. The public's money is the one essential issue in democratic politics.
This is the response I received...
This is the response I received...
E-mail from PC Candidate...
Hi Ron,
Thanks for reaching out and sharing your concerns with me.
As a young conservative, our province's debt and deficit situation is very concerning to me. After all, it will be our children and grandchildren who suffer from the wasteful spending of today's governments. I share your concerns about the fiscal health of Ontario.
As a young conservative, our province's debt and deficit situation is very concerning to me. After all, it will be our children and grandchildren who suffer from the wasteful spending of today's governments. I share your concerns about the fiscal health of Ontario.
The fact is that our party is the only party with a realistic plan to get our budget balanced and start to pay down the debt. Regardless of what they say, the Liberals and the NDP will drive our debt up.
Having worked for the late Jim Flaherty when he was Minister of Finance, I am well aware of the difficulty of getting our finances under control. Part of our challenge right now at the provincial level is that we have no reliable data for our provincial finances. The Auditor General of Ontario has said that the numbers presented by the Liberals are likely off by as much as $6 billion.
That's why we've committed to two things: (1) hiring an independent team of auditors to go through each departmental budget and determine the true state of our finances; and (2) once that is completed, we will establish an independent fiscal commission to develop a plan to return to balance in the short term and start paying off the debt. We will use previous work such as the Auditor General's report and the Drummond Report as a starting point.
I understand your frustration with this issue. But the conservative record is clear here. We balanced the federal budget and paid down $36 billion worth of debt. We're going to bring the same level of commitment to our provincial finances.
Thank you once again for reaching out and I hope you will consider supporting me on June 7th.
Best wishes,
The PC's will not balance the budget, apparently because they have NO IDEA what the provincial books look like. Except that they do have the entire history of the Legislature's scrutiny of budgets, and the Auditor General's report - which looks at the last budget in detail, and to which they actually refer - which clearly outlines the state of the province's finances. Until a commission tells them what is going on, they apparently just can't make a commitment.
Welcome to the "duck and cover". Usually, political parties scream "We had no idea how bad the books were!!!" after they take over power from another party, and use that excuse as the reason why the cannot keep their promises. These PC's are well practised in the black art of politics. Rather than wait to get elected to claim that they can't keep their promises because they "had no idea how bad it was!", they have simply moved this excuse into the actual campaign as a pretext for not making any actual promise at all concerning the financial health of the province.
The tome provided to me by my candidate is no doubt cribbed from party-generated propaganda - the "party line", so to speak. It is very likely that my candidate did not write the two essential aspects of it - that they cannot make a specific commitment regarding deficits and debt, and that Harper's conservatives cut the national debt by $36 Billion (more on this below.) This is straight from Ford and the loyal Ford minions who now run the party.
What does this say about Ford and what a Ford government may look like?
The Fordians have been tasked with the simplest and most essential demand of any politician in a democracy - tell voters what they intend to do with their money. In this day and age, especially when Canadians are personally in debt to the tune of over 165% of their income (their "wheelhouse of worry"), it is crucial that we know what any party intends to do regarding debt and deficits. We demand and deserve firm commitments so that we can know that politicians take the long term fiscal health of the province seriously. This is decidedly not what we are getting from Ford an the PCs.
Point - if they truly don't have a clue what the state of the government's books may be, to the point that they claim that they cannot make any specific commitments regarding what deficits they may run, how can they possibly offer buckets of tax cuts and new spending!? Could they be any more irresponsible!?
From what I can see, the Fordians will spend more time and effort figuring out "the angle", than they will on good and competent governance. A Ford government will be mostly "show" and very little "go" - propaganda over substance. They may be following in the shoes of the old PCs in Saskatchewan, who of course, no longer exist.
And about this claim..."But the conservative record is clear here. We balanced the federal budget and paid down $36 billion worth of debt." Do my PC candidate and the Fordians think I'm brain dead?
When Harper came to office, the national debt was about $481 Billion. When he left office a decade later, the debt was about $612 Billion. This is an addition of $131 Billion to the national debt, not a subtraction of $36 Billion.
In his first years of his time in office, Harper inherited a budget surplus, and therefore benefited from years of competent Liberal government, cutting the debt by some tens of billions himself.
Then the Great Recession hit like a thunderbolt. Canada, like other G-20 countries, committed to pending 3% of GDP to jump-start world economies, and Harper started running deficits, including a $55 Billion deficit in 2008-09.
When Harper left office, the federal government was back in surplus - just about the only major industrialized country on Earth to get back to surplus after the disaster that was that recession. Say what you want about Harper - that was no mean feat.
But that is not the tall tale that my PC Candidate and the Fordians tell. Apparently, the federal conservatives didn't add to the debt, they cut the debt by $36 Billion! Let me quote it again..."We balanced the federal budget and paid down $36 billion worth of debt."
No they didn't.
Which gets us to my last comment about Ford.
Where Ford may be like Trump is in his penchant for distortion and lies. What Trump appears to know, as did Gobbles was that if you tell big enough lies and if you tell them enough, people start to believe them - more so in the age of social media.
"The Conservatives under Harper paid off $36 Billion in debt!!" Will we soon be told this again, and again, and again by subservient conservative sycophants across the media spectrum in the fervent hopes by the propagators of this utter falsehood that it may become the new "received truth"?
If this does come to pass, what does it say about the prospects of a Ford government, given that he may be completely comfortable with myth-making like this - as long as it benefits him and his party?
If this does come to pass, what does it say about the prospects of a Ford government, given that he may be completely comfortable with myth-making like this - as long as it benefits him and his party?
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