With just over two months until the June election in Ontario, the promises are flying left and right. In any given hour we have promises of cutting taxes, controlling gasoline prices, firing the Hydro gang, free dental work, emptying the hospital corridor beds, bringing back the Northlander, sharing resource revenues, fixing Toronto transit problems and building GTA houses on the Green Belt (okay, that one is under reconsideration).
The Fake News videos have surfaced, trying to make leaders look good or others bad. That face-recognition thing works on Facebook, but does it last until the voter gets to the ballot box? Who was it that promised me . . . Oh, yeah, it must have been that “None of the Above” party candidate.
The thing is, there are hardly any of those promises that I don’t like. What’s not to like? We would be getting close to Utopia if we could collect on all those promises. Work and wealth for everyone, healthcare when you are sick, and a nice affordable assisted-living home when your days are winding down. The reality is that we likely cannot afford most of those promises. Oh, in the short term, we can give them a test run, but we ought to think beyond tomorrow.
If you missed Don Drummond on the TVO Agenda program last evening you would be wondering how we are going to get ourselves out of the financial mess we have made for ourselves in Ontario. (Oh, yes, Ford has denied he will cut TVO as may have been mentioned in earlier days). Drummond, now from Queen’s University, holds with the auditor that the debt is almost double what the current government says. So whichever party inherits the debt after June, they have some serious pencil work ahead of them.
Drummond spoke clearly and in words that even I could follow, explaining why the debt forecast is not very good. He explained, aside from the scandalous conniving in recent years, that the problem was our lack of recovery from the 2008 downturn AND budgeting as if we would recover AND that interest rates would stay low (where they were).
The problem was that the expected growth in the Ontario economy (upon which our tax revenue was calculated) did not happen, and indeed, does not look like it will meet the government’s hopes in any Party’s platform (excepting the Green Party who are cautious about their financial plans). And now we are seeing a slow rise in interest rates (which Drummond expects to continue to increase) which means we are paying more tax dollars just to service those billions of debt.
What are we to do, Paikin asked the professor? Well, we can defer the Hydro costs but they must be paid eventually. We can cancel or change the carbon tax, but we ought to adopt BC’s method of using those taxes. Yes, we can cut or find efficiencies of 3% or 4% of government spending, although realistically it is a bit of a mug’s game because you are taking money out of the economy when we need that money circulating. We could raise business taxes, or personal taxes but we are already the highest taxed region in North America. Don’t even think about following Trump’s cutting of corporate taxes to spur the economy because they are already finding that they needed those tax dollars.
The most logical place to find more money to service the debt and get back to a balanced budget is by raising the Provincial portion of the Harmonized Sales Tax. Yikes.
That was not what I, or any of you, wanted to hear. I guess we should all be asking ourselves which of the parties can we afford. We need to get that Debt under control and down to a level that future generations can afford. So every time you hear a new or repeated promise in the coming months ask yourself, and the candidate, if we can afford it. Just saying.
