Subsidize $160,000 Incomes?

The Liberal Ontario government is launching its throne speech. High on the agenda, of course, is job growth and the ailing economy. This is an anomaly minority government, something Ontario hasn't seen in decades. And the province's huge deficit, let alone the burgeoning debt, must be tackled. Restraint is the order of the day, but service delivery, given all those electioneering promises is also an item that is addressed.

Dalton McGuinty, the 'education' premier, who wants all of Ontario's youth to consider educating themselves beyond secondary school, feels his incentive promise of taxpayer subsidies to prospective college and university students who aspire to higher education should proceed. The projected cost is estimated around a half-billion dollars for annual tuition scholarships.

It sounds really good; encourage young adults to prepare themselves for the future and in so doing advantage the province by a truly informed, highly educated workforce. The trouble is in the details, as it usually is. Because Premier McGuinty's reality compass got kind of screwed up and he must most surely have misspoken himself. No, he did not. He was simply being expansively generous.

Premier McGuinty has not attempted to lose this particular promise in the fog of time and events. He has, instead, recently reiterated it in all its glory. The province to be committed to the tuition grant. Which would apply to families earning less than $160,000 per year combined. Anyone could be forgiven for gulping at that one: $160,000 represents a modest family income? In what dream world?

Any family that takes in $160,000 annually, or close to it, should be easily capable of sending a handful of their sons and daughters on to college or university without additional assistance of tax dollars. To begin with, attendance at Canadian colleges and universities is relatively modest in cost. Look to our southern neighbour to see what university/college tuition is like when it isn't state-subsidized.

As ours most certainly is. Our comparatively-modest university/college fees are a reflection of the fact that tax dollars are already heavily invested in making tuition affordable to middle- and low-income families - along with the prospect of student loans and scholarships. It is fiscal governing madness for the government to seriously lob this one at the taxpaying public.