Politic?

This is a blog dedicated to a personal interpretation of political news of the day. I attempt to be as knowledgeable as possible before commenting and committing my thoughts to a day's communication.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Fair Warning

The more needful a course of action the more resistance accompanies it. The more bitter a medicine, the more we're informed it will do us good. A surgical procedure brings concerns, but they're allayed by the gentle 'suasion that 'this won't hurt a bit'. Act in haste, repent at leisure, true. But a stitch in time saves nine.

And Ontario is in a very bad place to be; our credit rating downgraded humiliatingly and even more humiliating, once the engine of the country, proudly proffering financial assistance to the poor 'have-nots'; while they've prospered, we've fallen on hard times. The manufacturing sector is on crutches waiting for someone else to kick the crutches out from under.

We're now officially receiving equalization payments from the federal government. How humbling an experience that has been. But everything's fine, because Premier Dalton McGuinty is still smiling, still telling his little lies, and promising the pot of gold under that rainbow that keeps bowing itself over the province.

He's been in charge of that gold-filled pot, and has discharged his duty in emptying it as fast as he can. And he can, he most certainly can. Transforming the province in unrecognizable ways. Doing nice things for selected groups that he can later count on to cast their votes for him. And they do, don't they; three consecutive governments.

And because even he and his cronies can no longer ignore the fact that we've a horrible deficit and a crippling debt load estimated to come in at a staggering $411-billion in five years' time (because things aren't getting any better financially and they won't for the foreseeable future), they appointed a commission to come up with cost-saving measures, because they don't want to be seen as the ones that made those decisions.

And now the other shoe has fallen. "This is not a smorgasbord from which the government can choose only the tastiest morsels and ignore the less palatable", warns the report. All 362 proposals for cost-cutting and savings are to be scrupulously followed to realize success in meeting the financial challenges ahead. Or else, the commission warns, we'll reflect the state Greece is in.

But the Premier will not kill full-day kindergarten. Ontario needs a day-care program, and parents like it, and they will be furious if it's no longer there and dependable, and won't vote Liberal. Linking drug prices to income instead of age for seniors reflects a need whose time has come.

Why didn't the commission focus on the redundancy and costly injustice of the secular education system competing with the Catholic one?

"The challenge and the solution will have to be pretty much unprecedented in Canadian post-war history. It won't work if you just have a mindset of, 'I'm just going to take some money out here and there and do it the way we've largely approached this in the past", warned commission head Don Drummond.

Fair warning.

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