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EXCERPTS
Look through the smokescreen created by Premier Dalton McGuinty's $23 billion gap campaign and you see a provincial government that is in denial; one that has not been prepared to tackle the fundamental problems for which his government inherited responsibility when it took office.
If you only read the headlines, the record looks promising. The McGuinty government has increased funding significantly for health and education &emdash; two of its major priorities. But even that has not bought the real change that Ontario needs.
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Even the Liberals' promise to end the Harris government's clawback of the national child benefit from social assistance beneficiaries has evaporated. The Ontario budget focused on the $550 per year in benefit increases for a single parent with two children that has been passed through since 2004. It failed to mention that the more than $2,700 in child benefits clawed back by the Harris government is still being clawed back from the most vulnerable citizens. For every dollar in child benefits that the McGuinty government has chosen to pass through, $5 is still being clawed back.
Just as important is the government's retreat from its plans for early childhood education. In the face of the Harper government's announced cancellation of the national child-care funding agreements, Ontario has simply folded its tent. Funding for 2005-6 is to be spread out over three years and its plans have been scaled back to fit, leaving parents, child-care providers and municipalities scrambling to figure out what to do next.
The government's response to the federal child-care cuts is pathetic. Child care is Ontario's responsibility. The government's First Start early childhood education plan was in the Ontario Liberals' election platform in 2003 &emdash; before there was a federal program. And the crisis in child-care availability in Ontario has nothing to do with the federal government; it was created by cuts imposed by the previous Ontario government.
The McGuinty Liberals are governing in a state of perpetual denial &emdash; as if the legacy of public services gaps they inherited does not exist.
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There is an answer that involves confronting Ontario's lost fiscal capacity and filling the gaps in public services left behind by the previous government. That's what the Ontario Alternative Budget does. Released last week by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the alternative budget shows that by restoring about half of Ontario's lost fiscal capacity, these needs could be met.
Of course, for the McGuinty government the avoidance strategy is the more attractive option. But even within its avoidance strategy, the government has failed its most vulnerable citizens.
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* Hugh Mackenzie is a research associate of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
- reprinted from the Toronto Star