Wynne’s $5.5M ad plan slap in face for Ontarians

There was a time when disputes sometimes were settled by duels.

An aggrieved party would slap another with an empty glove and the battle was on.

Duels have fallen out of favour, although a revival of the practice between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump has its appeal.

The slap in the face part of the duel has returned in Ontario where the premier and voters have an aggrieved relationship with each other.

Thus the Kathleen Wynne government has slapped residents of the province in the face with a credit card receipt for $5.5 million.

That’s the amount the premier plans to spend to advertise the fact her government has “reduced” electricity rates by 25 per cent.

It’s difficult to remember any government actions that were more widely publicized than the plan to provide energy cost relief after endless reports of people living in power poverty in the province.

The relief plan, by the way, kicks the costs down the road and then adds interest, all of which will be paid by our grandchildren.

Any voters in Ontario who don’t know about the 25 per cent reduction haven’t been reading their electricity bills, which point out the great savings we each have received due to the plan.

In fact, that’s the nub of the whole problem with the expenditure. Hydro One, and therefore Queen’s Park, communicates with all customers all the time through regular bills, so who needs advertising?

The brain surgeons at Queen’s Park would accomplish just as much by throwing the $5.5 million in front of a wind turbine on a stormy day.

This expensive plan is designed to help the few — Liberals candidates in next June’s election — at the expense of the many — every taxpayer in Ontario. Any other excuse we hear from the government, such as taxpayers needing to know, is so much gibberish.

Now, $5.5 million doesn’t sound like a lot of money in the days of multimillion-dollar lottery jackpots. .

But the spending issue is more important than that. The $5.5 million is on a credit card because the province’s finances have been decimated by this government.

The debt is rising so fast it’s hard not to get dizzy watching the numbers spin upward on the digital debt clock.

Today, we owe about $307 billion, three times the $110 billion when the Liberals came to power.

Government spending in the same period has doubled from $71 billion to $141 billion.

The interest on that debt is $11.6 billion a year.

So yes, $5.5 million is chump change to this government, but it would make a contribution, however small, to the interest payments.

Getting back to the duel, a Forum Research poll shows if the election had been held last week, the majority Liberals would win only 12 seats. The Conservatives would score 84 and the NDP 26.

So Wynne is in tough against the people she was elected to serve.

It seems an odd time to challenge them to a duel. However, there isn’t much about the actions of this government that make any more sense.