Sousa sees plenty in budget for Ontario,

Finance minister ‘concerned’ about job grant but ‘happy’ overall

Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa is taking heed of the old adage that you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

In sharp contrast to his predecessor, Dwight Duncan, who took to Twitter and the CBC to pan the federal budget, Sousa was surprisingly generous in his assessment of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s spending plan.

He said it shouldn’t have a negative impact on the April provincial budgetand even resisted the opportunity to gloat at Flaherty missing his deficit target, saying only that Ontario remains on track to eliminate its shortfall by 2017-18.

“Overall, the federal government has . . . made some progress in moving Ontario forward. In many respects, however, they have merely relaunched and rebranded existing programs,” the rookie provincial treasurer told reporters Thursday at Queen’s Park. “We were looking for action on four key areas . . . the closing of corporate tax loopholes, combating the underground economy, skills and training, and infrastructure. We are happy to see the federal government has taken action on each of these,” he said. “However, we have some concerns about the way in which some of this action is proposed to be taken.” Sousa, a former Royal Bank of Canada executive who succeeded the retired Duncan as finance minister a month ago, stressed the importance of “co-operation and a strong partnership” between Pre- mier Kathleen Wynne’s government and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s administration. He offered Flaherty some constructive criticism on the new $15,000-per-person training grant designed to be covered a third each by Ottawa, the province and the private sector. “We are concerned that the conditions on a large portion of the renewed funding to deliver the new Canada Job Grant could force the province to divert existing resources that serve under-represented groups, to this new federally designed program,” Sousa said.

That removes “much of the flexibility we need to adapt federal funding to meet the specific needs of the Ontario economy and labour market,” he added.

Such muted criticism was in stark contrast to Duncan’s blast on Twitter that “skills training funds cut back to 2007 levels. Hmmm.”

“Flaherty’s ‘job grant’ — feds only contributing a third. Used to be half. Hmmm,” the former treasurer, now working on Bay Street, tweeted.

While Sousa expressed concern about how infrastructure money will flow to the province, he praised the “long-term funding commitment.”