Hudak: Ontarians understand cuts needed,
PC leader believes taxpayers accept tough choices ahead
Tim Hudak is staking his political future on the belief that voters understand there’s a need for austerity and are willing to accept deep spending cuts to put Ontario back in the black.
The Progressive Conservative leader says people expect the provincial government to spend within its means just as they must do every month.
“People understand that our debt crisis needs to be fixed and it’s not going to go away on its own no matter how much the Liberals or the NDP try to wish it away,” Hudak said in an interview.
“It’s time the government was just more honest about the depths of the problem we face. The sooner we get at it, the better it’s going to be for all of us.”
The governing Liberals have yet to announce when Finance Minister Charles Sousa will unveil a budget.
But that hasn’t stopped Hudak from offering his own ideas about how to slay the province’s $12-billion deficit.
The Tories propose a twoyear wage freeze for all government workers, including MPPs, to save an initial $3 billion. “That gives you the time and the room to go about reducing the overall size and cost of government,” Hudak explained.
He wants to tackle publicsector pensions and eliminate Ontario’s Feed-In Tariff program for wind and solar projects, a $2-billion initiative he called “corporate welfare.”
Hudak also pledges to balance Ontario’s budget by 2017 — a year earlier than the Liberals. Balanced books, he says, are a signal to businesses that the province has its fiscal house in order and will attract further investment. It will also put more Ontarians to work, generating additional tax revenue.
But spending cuts are only part of the equation.
The Tories are talking tax cuts in the form of reducing the corporate tax rate from 11.5 to 10 per cent, taking two percentage points off the HST, or cutting income tax rates.
They want to slash all kinds of government red tape and regulations, attract more immigrants, abolish the College of Trades and hit the reset button on the province’s energy policy.
Hudak accused Premier Kathleen Wynne of being cut from the same cloth as her predecessor Dalton McGuinty because she hasn’t shown any inclination to rein in spending.
“Premier Wynne seems to be significantly backpedalling even on the most modest changes,” he said.
Hudak said the recent changes made to the contract imposed earlier this year on the province’s public secondary school teachers — which Tories say could cost up to an additional $63 million — are “going to make it even more difficult to negotiate any kind of deal with government unions going forward when you reward the behaviour of the activist teachers’ unions.”
Wynne has said repeatedly that money was moved around but that no new funds were added.
Another key concern for the Tories is the rising cost of annual interest payments on the province’s debt, which surpassed $270 billion in December 2012.
Ontario is forecast to spend $15.4 billion to service its debt in 2017/2018, up from $11.2 billion this year.
The Liberals created the “deficit hole” and don’t have a clear plan to dig the province out of it, Hudak says.
“Taxpayers are way ahead of the politicians. They know we have to take a new and different course to get Ontario back on its feet.”
Whenever the budget comes, Hudak has already said the Tories won’t support it.
NDP leader Andrew Horwath has made her party’s support of the budget contingent on several issues the party would like to see addressed, including auto insurance rates, corporate tax loopholes, youth unemployment and home care for seniors.