Province can not afford Wynne’s Liberals at helm

Conventional wisdom says electors don’t vote governments in as much as they vote governments out.

The smart money, and current polls, would suggest that is the fate awaiting Kathleen Wynne and company when Ontarians go to the polls next June.

There are as many reasons to vote Wynne and government out as there are wind turbines that caused deep and lasting rifts in rural Ontario and that’s a lot of reasons.

At the top of the anti-Wynne list is the fact we simply cannot afford her and her old-style vote-buying form of politics.

The level of spending that this government has undertaken in recent weeks is not sustainable.

Wynne is spending as if the province actually has money. It doesn’t.

The Liberals’ balanced budget is used as a reason, but more correctly is an excuse, for all the recent spending. That much-ballyhooed balanced budget, however, is smoke and mirrors.

The figures are skewed by the onetime sale of shares in Hydro One. In addition, the debt has increased enormously under this government, to the point it is now heading toward $320 billion.

To be fair, the Liberals are not the only ones to have increased the debt. But they are the folks who don’t seem to think there’s any ceiling when it comes to borrowing money to buy votes.

During the recession of the 1990s, the NDP increased the debt from $35.4 billion to $90.7 billion during five years.

The Harris Conservatives boosted it to $132.6 billion by 2002-2003.

Under the Liberals the debt more than doubled to $288.1 billion by 2013-2014. And we know how fast it’s been growing ever since.

But that doesn’t seem to matter much. The great minds at Queen’s Park think they can buy the votes of young folks with free drugs for those younger than 24.

They try to impress voters with a modest increase in spending on health care, even though it’s not enough to move the province out of last place in terms of per capita spending on this file.

And then there’s more daycare spaces and over-the-top raises for civil servants and teachers to keep them on side during an election. The list goes on.

Ben Eisen, director of the Fraser Institute’s Ontario Prosperity Initiative, and Charles Lammam, director of its fiscal studies, summed it up when they wrote: “The decisions in the last decade to increase spending faster than the provincial economy’s growth, and faster than was needed to keep up with a growing population and rising prices, contributed to Ontario’s dire fiscal problems. And when a nasty recession hit the province, the government found itself with spending levels it could not afford and big deficits quickly emerged.

“Now, the government is making the same mistakes and exposing Ontarians to the same risks all over again.”

Which brings us back to the original thought here. This province cannot afford to have Kathleen Wynne and her party of big spenders in power any longer.

It’s really that simple.