Ontario needs an election
At long last, Ontarians finally have an authoritative estimate of just how much dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government cost them when it decided to cancel a gas-fired power plant in Oakville, west of Toronto, in the thick of the 2010 election campaign. According to provincial Auditor-General bonnie Lysyk, when combined with an earlier politically motivated gasplant cancellation in Mississauga, taxpayers could be on the hook for $1.1-billion.
The number is as staggering as the opportunity costs it represents — it’s about a 10th of of the projected provincial 2013-14 budget deficit; it’s three times the amount the Liberals committed to a youth employment strategy aimed at creating 30,000 jobs; it’s most of what the province offered for a brand new subway in the Scarborough area of Toronto (which was itself a cynical, lastminute sop to voters, incidentally).
Parties named Liberal are far from alone in flinging around taxpayers’ money in search of votes, whether it’s for gazebos or snowmobile trails. but usually things at least get built as a result, not un-built. The malady is the same: politicians treating public money as their own. but spending $1-billion to tear up a plan on precisely the grounds that its opponents had always advocated, and the Liberals had always rejected, takes things to a whole new level of cynicism.
Premier Kathleen Wynne’s signature is on the document authorizing the death of the Oakville plant. but even if it weren’t, the decent thing for Ms. Wynne to do at this point would be to call an election. This is a historic squandering of public resources, and it needs to be answered for in short order — as does the Liberals’ overall record of waste and mismanagement.
One note of caution for the Progressive conservatives: While it alleviates none of the Liberals’ guilt to note that the Tories also promised to kill the Oakville plant, it is worth the party’s while to do some soul-searching on that point. For Ontarians who are desperate for more careful and competent brand of governance, it is not especially encouraging that they made that promise.