Ontario's $15-Billion Deficit

"The Liberals are headed toward a win. It's either a minority or a majority, but the reality is that the Tories are not going to catch them and neither is the NDP. that is a fact." Pollster John Wright, Ipsos Reid

The electorate most certainly is a strange beast. Uncertain and beset with concerns it turns this way and that seeking an answer to the vexing problem of whom it should award with the stewardship of the province. And in the final analysis, enough people have turned away from the alternatives, it would appear, having made the decision to permit Dalton McGuinty and his Liberal party to continue its depraved stewardship of Ontario.

An inconvenient reality that no one should take pride in noting is that Ontario - so long the engine of growth for the entire country, and which had generously funded a taxation pot out of which the federal government transferred equalization payments to the other provinces which weren't doing so well economically - has become one of those "have not" provinces. Last year, for the first time, Ontario went cap in hand to Ottawa to beg for funding.

This is a government fearful of confronting criminals in our midst who enjoy violating other peoples' rights on the basis that their own have been violated because Native Treaties have not been settled properly and adequately. A lot of people in the Caledonia area were subjected to criminal harrassment and Queen's Park informed the Ontario Provincial Police to stand back, do nothing, keep the peace. What peace? What civil rights?

Under the current provincial Liberal government a billion dollars of tax money was flung to the four winds with nothing to show for it, when the ehealth initiative failed as a result of improper oversight. Public service unions are flying high and their members well endowed with raises well above the cost of living, while the province's pool of unemployed lump it. The OPP was given a 5% wage hike ahead of a 2-year 'wage freeze', with a hefty 8.5% due in 2014.

Ontarians are paying whopping big power bills and are set to pay a whole lot more, thanks to the McGuinty government's green energy initiatives. The average ratepayer's electricity bill will climb from its current roughly $1,700 annually to $2,800 by 2015. Set to rise closer to $4,000 annually by 2018. This premier has gone somewhat berserk, spending tax money left, right and centre. The electorate has seen a hefty tax imposed on health insurance where none existed previously.

For all his vaunted investments in education in the province, the president of Higher Education Strategy Associates, Alex Usher, has informed the news media that "The intellectual centre of gravity of Canada is shifting west much faster than people realize. Twenty years ago, you could have made a case that three or four of the top seven or eight universities in the country were in Ontario. I don't think you could make that claim today."

Ontario has been slipping behind universities in Alberta and British Columbia, and the slide is continuing. Queen's, McMaster, Universities of Waterloo and Western Ontario are finding it harder to compete with their Western counterparts. "It's noticeable that more of the excellence money is heading west these days and with no new money (in Ontario), I just think that trend is going to accelerate", advised Mr. Usher.

"I am bleak about Ontario. This is what happens when you have a $15-billion deficit."