DALTON McGUINTY: A PRUDENT FISCAL MANAGER?

Jim Wilson, MPP Queen's Park Report

Dalton McGuinty's "Prudent" Leadership   Prudent is described in the Canadian Oxford Dictionary as meaning "careful to provide for the future" and "discreet or cautious; circumspect" or "having or exercising good judgement."  It is also what Premier Dalton McGuinty promises to practice during this time of economic uncertainty. Some of Mr. McGuinty's prudent spending includes the following: $6 million to remove the 'C' from the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation's logo; $2.3 million for the opening gala of Caesars Windsor casino - that's an addition to the $400 million for casino renovations; $2 million for an incomplete report on youth violence in Ontario; $219,000 to redesign the Ontario trillium logo so it looks closer to the trillium used in the Liberal Party logo; $200,000 in court costs to try to gag lottery fraud victim Bob Edmonds; and, $600,000 to fight the parents of autistic children in court. Mr. McGuinty's idea of prudent spending is to also increase overall provincial spending from $68 billion when he came to office to $96 billion today.  Now think about that.  It took 136 years for Ontario to achieve an annual budget of $68 billion.  It took Dalton McGuinty only five years to hike that annual budget by $28 billion - a 41% increase. Not unlike the budget, the public service has also seen a nice increase under Mr. McGuinty's leadership.    When he took office he inherited from the previous PC government a public service that had 48,163 employees.  In 2007 that number had increased by 17,837 or a 37% increase giving it just over 66,000 employees by the end of last year. In fact, he's hired so many people that he's increased the public service in Ontario more than all other provinces put together over the same time period. No joke. And the number of these people making over $100,000 has gone up by 27% -- all of this at a time when over 300,000 people received a 100% pay cut - they lost their jobs. Keep in mind that those figures do not include our valuable and needed teachers, nurses, firefighters, doctors and others who work in the broader public sector. Sounding prudent yet? Don't worry, by Mr. McGuinty's definition it's about to get even more prudent.  Have a peek at government advertising.  It went from just under $98 million in fiscal year 2004-05 to just over $153 million 2006-07.  That just includes the actual cost to place the ads in the newspaper, television, radio or magazines.  What it doesn't include is the agency fees (money that goes to fancy PR firms to create the ads), third party production, talent, distribution or other costs.  Imagine how high those costs went. Mr. McGuinty's "prudent" record is beginning to resemble David Peterson's tax and spend legacy and is in stark contract to the previous PC government's legacy.  That is when we went from a real $11.7 billion deficit left over from the NDP to five consecutive balanced budgets, including achieving our target to reduce provincial debt by $5 billion from the 1998-99 level. Under Premier Harris we went from worst to first in terms of economic growth and new jobs.  Now Mr. McGuinty has taken us back from first to worst.  Dead last in all of Confederation.  That's what Dalton McGuinty says is "prudent."

Comments

[unknown]

Right on Jim!
If you combine the quote I love from the previous post and Randy Hillier "I think probably my greatest moment (of realisation as working MPP) is finding out that government really is as bad as most people think it is. The politicians in government have abdicated their (democratic) responsibility (to constituents) to such a large degree, that many of them have become just figure heads" and McGuintys failure to google the meanings of certain words such as "prudent", "ethical", "moral", "justice", "constitution", "responsibility" or "pitbull" is it any wonder millions of citizens in Ontario are ready to go postal?

[unknown]

We have felt first hand in the last 4 years how bad this government is.
McGuinty is already trying to cover his arse, last week he was yapping that we will be in a deficit because of the recession. Technically we are not in a recession, obviously by the numbers Mr. Wilson has said, there has been a serious mismangement of funds.
Seems to me the first 3 years of McGuintys term he did nothing but bash Harris for the deficit left.
Oh, and how much did he piss away implementing the pit bull ban?
McGuinty will not survive this term by the end of it his political career might be over, he will not be able to handle the challenges ahead. He is to much of a pinhead.
Jayne

[unknown]

What did McSquinty & Minions do with the health care tax? That brought in potentially billions (dont have the exact numbers), where did the money go?
Deficit Dalton.