In Hudak’s opinion piece in the December 13th National Post was an exercise in speciousness.
The PC’s just lost an election campaign where they promised MORE spending than any other party. Obviously there is a problem, but the electorate realized that the PC’s were just part of it.
Now, suddenly, Hudak has the “fiscal” religion and wants to start cutting for real…..or does he?
A look at what he’s talking about reveals that all he’s really doing is furthering the recent PC agenda ……ie attacking people who don’t support their agenda, while still promising to keep spending like a Liberal.
In a month which has seen Randy Hillier, one of Mr. Hudak’s erstwhile leadership rivals, apparently calling for more government spending to protect insurance companies from avaricious Ontarians, we see how out of touch with reality the PC party policies have become.
Apparently the insurance industry in Ontario is a helpless victim unable to protect itself and needs further government assistance. News articles detailing the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars already being shoveled into corporate pockets by the government must have drifted by Misters. Hillier and Hudak un-noticed or just un-welcome given their ideology…..and drowned out by the din of the plethora of lobbyists knocking on their doors.
News reports over the last couple of years about how badly injured Ontarians were being served by that same auto insurance industry didn’t catch their attention either.
They shouldn’t feel too bad, the Liberals also think the poor helpless auto insurance industry needs to be protected from Ontarians and has been rewriting legislation for years to help the poor (second only to the banks in profitability) industry.
So, let’s be clear about their ideology then. It is all about big government, the same as the Liberals and the NDP. They may not like seeing government involvement in some sectors but they just want to move more of it somewhere else onto some other backs that don’t support them.
But I digress.
Apparently, Tim has a “new” plan…..go after the unions that don’t like him anyway and cut (freeze) their salaries.
Wow Timmy, some leadership……gonna lead us right into some losing lawsuits over breaches of contracts and other mundane legal stuff. What leadership…..they don’t like us so we’re gonna get ‘em. High Noon and the OK Corral etc.
Real leadership works like this: The leader stands up and points out that the salaries are too high at the top of the civil service at a time when the government is in fiscal crisis. Then he/she at the first opportunity introduces legislation to cut the paycheques of all elected officials at Queen’s Park by 20%. Follow that with a 10% pay cut to everyone on the provincial “Sunshine List”.
Now, that’s called leadership, the kind that people can actually believe in and follow. Shared suffering and actually leading by example……that kind of hokey stuff.
It would also trim a couple of billion bucks off the bottom line……. The rest of the fiscal story is a little tougher.
At the Ontario Libertarian Party, we crunched real numbers during the last election and came up with real answers. The road to financial sanity in Ontario is as follows: STOP SPENDING MORE!!! SPEND LESS!!!!!
You would think that would be a no-brainer. Other than us (and we were drowned out by the 30 million of advertising by the others) did you hear that from anyone?
The NDP, Liberals, and PC’s all promised MORE spending with the PC’s leading the way while pretending they were going to cut spending…..somewhere……
The truth of the matter is that to balance the budget in this mandate (over the next 4 years) the government MUST cut spending by 6% per year for each of the four coming years, all other things being equal.
Have we heard that truth from any of the Queens Park denizens yet? Nope…..it’ll take a real leader to stand up and do that instead of just pointing fingers at their Enemy-de-Jour”.
Phil Miller
Ontario Libertarian Party
Eastern Ontario Region
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How does a real leader get elected in this province and country? People addicted to public money, from Teachers to those on social assistance, do not want to vote against an income source.
The most pressing concern should be reducing health care costs, but no one can say a word without the other parties using words like American style, reducing hospitals and such to scare us.
Anyway, should a leader not try to reduce contract costs with unions and employees? Perhaps perform an accountability assessment on these 630 agencies that the Conservatives were vocal about. A wage freeze is not pretty, but we need to spend less, and very soon!
Timmy is toast. He just blew an election in which he started with a huge lead. He’s not popular within his own party, and he sure as hell isn’t popular with the voters. The knives have been out since the day after the election.
Maybe they can get Rob Ford to “move up” 😉 It worked for South Glengarry….
Hudak never said anything about sending like a liberal Phil.
What they had proposed is more effort to trades and education, improvements in health care , better suport for seniors, which did not mention money….
I think you misunderstand the difference between responsible spending and liberal spending.
Ha! Ford is God to the Con crowd.
Furtz, you are not giving the Machine on Returning Liberal Staffing ( M O R L” S ) enough credit.
Anyway, the Gobe & Mail made a case for spring elections, we should look at it. Perhaps that would give the Auditor General more time to get this “insight” on how are money is being, well, I will say spent!