Daltoni

Kelly McParland: The Amazing Daltoni reveals Ontario’s new non-Drummond plan for debt reduction

Kelly McParland  Mar 14, 2012 – 9:55 AM ET | Last Updated: Mar 14, 2012 12:54 PM ET
 

Ontarians are starting to get a picture of the Liberal government’s strategy for reducing the huge deficit it ran up in its first eight years in office.
It turns out it has little if anything to do with the 362 recommendations offered up in the year-long analysis it commissioned from economist Don Drummond. That report — much anticipated and released to great fanfare by members of the media who had been fooled into believing the government actually planned to treat it seriously — has evidently been assigned to some remote shelf deep in the dusty underground storage area used to keep MPs from being infected by good ideas. Instead, Premier Dalton McGuinty and his capable financial henchman in chief, who goes by the alias Dwight Duncan, have concocted their own game plan.
One key element was revealed Tuesday, when Mr. McGuinty reprised one of his favourite moves. Remember when he was first elected premier, and pledged — in writing — not to raise taxes, only to fool everyone by jacking up healthcare charges anyway? The charges weren’t a “tax”, he insisted, therefore weren’t a violation of his promise. Well, welcome back: Mr. McGuinty has been telling everyone there’s no way he’ll introduce “new” taxes to raise money. But that doesn’t mean he can’t cancel a promised tax cut (see: corporate tax pledge), or hike existing “fees” and “levies.” Presto: watch carefully folks, my hand never leaves my arm. On Tuesday The Amazing Daltoni (Knows all, Spends all) revealed that drivers’ fees, licence fees, examination fees, trailer fees, renewal fees, fee-increase fees, ugly licence-photo fees and any other fees they can find on the books will be increased forthwith. I may have invented a couple of those fees, just as Transport Minister Bob Chiarelli invented the justification that fee hikes were a “thoughtful” way to raise money. No Bob, they’re what governments do when they’re as bankrupt of ideas as they are of cash.
The Big Fee Trick came a day after another part of the non-Drummond plan was revealed: The Education Premier plans to pay for some of his various big-spending programs by extracting more money from people who were never educated enough to realize that trying to finance your retirement by playing blackjack is not a winning strategy. Ontario’s gaming program will be revamped in hopes of emptying billions more from the pockets of casino lovers, including a big new casino in Toronto and easier access to lottery tickets by placing more of them in the kind of commercial locations in which ticket-buyers like to hang out. There is a real logic to this: if people want to waste their money by losing at the card tables, why make them travel long distances to do it? The casinos are there, as are the lottery tickets. It’s not like gamblers who can’t get to a roulette wheel will use the money wisely instead. And it fits with one of the province’s most reliable sources of revenue: booze taxes. Every year like clockwork the LCBO hands over a fat “dividend” to Queen’s Park to blow as it sees fit. In 2010 it was $1.55 billion, up from $975 million when McGuinty became premier. Easy money or what? The great thing about casinos is that they can also be used to stimulate even more drinking, which in turn further loosens wallets, a win-win for a government that needs money and isn’t fussy about where it comes from.
If only Mr. Drummond had appreciated some of these realities he could have avoided a wasted year spent on such dead-end ideas as better-managed health care. Here’s another McGuinty brainwave: let’s stop paying absurdly high prices to suppliers who generate power under alternative energy programs. Whispers from inside government ranks suggest feed-in tariffs will be reduced when a review of the government’s much-beloved alternative energy scheme is released. Now that’s a good idea: paying ten times the going rate for power never made sense in the first place. It just increased the price to consumers, scared away real businesses (as opposed to the subsidized kind that are thick in the alternative energy sector) and forced more borrowing. Like, whose idea was that anyway? Anyone remember? If the premier ever finds out, you can be sure a stern lecture will be delivered.
These aren’t the only proposals the Liberals have been working on. Mr. Duncan has suggested the government stop paying a “subsidy” to Ontario racetracks (which is actually the tracks’ share of slot machine revenues), and keep the money for itself. OK, so a few tracks might close down in an industry that supports 60,000 jobs: rural Ontario doesn’t vote Liberal anyway, so who cares?  And teachers are going to face a two-year wage freeze, unless they make a big enough fuss to scare the government into backing down. Which would in turn encourage doctors to make an equally big fuss about plans to freeze their pay as well. There are suggestions the government wouldn’t mind a teachers’ strike, since you can save a lot of money by not paying teachers. But a doctors strike? That wouldn’t be good.
Let’s see, how to avoid it? I know, let’s ask Don Drummond. Then we can kill a year waiting for his report, and another year burying it somewhere we’ll never have to think of it again.
National Post