Wynne’s 8% cut to electrical bills will cost $1 billion
Consumer-friendly throne speech promises 100,000 new child-care spaces over five years
Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals will spend $1 billion annually to give electricity ratepayers an 8-per-cent tax cut on their hydro bills starting in January.
In a bid to jolt their flagging popularity with a provincial election less than two years away, Wynne’s Liberals delivered a consumer-friendly speech from the throne Monday that also promised 100,000 new child-care spaces over the next five years.
“Your government has listened and has heard your concerns,” said the speech read in the legislature by Lt.-Gov. Elizabeth Dowdeswell.
“It recognizes that the cost of electricity is now stretching family budgets.”
Eliminating the 8-per-cent provincial portion of the 13-per-cent harmonized sales tax on hydro bills for homes, small businesses, and farms should save the average household $130 a year.
Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown said it’s “a bit rich” that the Liberals, who ignored opposition calls to exempt hydro from the HST, are now promising a tax break that is “too little, too late.”
“We should be calling it the Raymond Cho hydro benefit,” Brown crowed, charging that the Liberals concocted the plan only after losing their stronghold of Scarborough-Rouge River to the Tories’ Cho in the Sept. 1 byelection.
Finance Minister Charles Sousa, insisting that wasn’t the case, maintained the government will still balance the budget next year because of higher tax revenues from growth in the economy.
“This is not something that just happened a week ago. We’ve been planning this for a number of months and we’ve been taking the necessary steps to accommodate this,” Sousa told reporters.
“The driving force behind this is the needs of the people of Ontario, not the needs of any political party.”
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath urged the government to quickly pass legislation making the rebate available immediately with hefty summer air-conditioning bills rolling in.
“People are going to wait for four more months. Just do it.”
Even some Liberals are privately expressing doubts. Sources told the Star that Grit MPPs gave the premier an earful in a private caucus meeting on Monday.
“There are concerns for sure that we are not doing enough,” one insider confided.
Other critics noted that the average household will be paying an extra $13 a month for gasoline and natural gas next year when the government’s new carbon-pricing plan is slated to take effect, offsetting any hydro savings.
“With this government, they give you a little bit from one pocket but take it out of your other pocket,” said Warren (Smokey) Thomas, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.
Many rural ratepayers cannot take advantage of the inexpensive natural gas used for heating that urban Ontarians enjoy.
They will receive an additional $540 annually off their electricity bills.
About 1,000 factories will be able to take advantage of the government’s industrial conservation initiative, which now rewards 300 companies with lower hydro prices if they shift power use away from peak usage times.
“Our government understands the challenges people face and shares their concerns,” the government said in the 17-page speech, vowing to “help more people in their everyday lives.”
Building upon the 56,000 new daycare spaces in the past three years, the Liberals will fund an additional 100,000 over the next five, starting in January.
Associate education minister Indira Naidoo-Harris said the additional spots will cost between $600 million and $750 million in operating expenses, with capital investments ranging from $1 billion to $3 billion over five years.
That means as much as $3.75 billion more for child care from 2017 to 2021.
Competition for spaces is tight, particularly in Toronto, where there are spots for just 21 per cent of children under the age of 5.
Ontario already spends more than $1 billion a year on 350,000 licensed daycare spaces.
Stinging over the recent Education Quality and Accountability Office tests that found half of Ontario’s Grade 6 students failed to meet the provincial mathematics standard this year, the government plans to emphasize math skills.
“To help students improve their mathematics skills, your government is implementing a renewed math strategy, including having up to three math lead teachers in all elementary schools.”
The falling scores — 58 per cent of Grade Six students met the standard in 2012 — has been blamed on kids’ anxiety over math and teachers’ lack of proficiency in the subject.
Beyond math, the government is “also setting a goal for every young person to have at least one opportu- nity for experiential learning.”
Pocketbook issues such as hydro and daycare dominated the speech.
The Liberals remain committed to selling the Hydro One transmission utility to bankroll public transit and roads and bridges.
The government’s carbon-pricing scheme to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change, which will cost the average household $13 extra a month starting in January, is still on track.
All government legislation on the order paper when the house was prorogued Thursday will be reintroduced, starting on Tuesday.
The first bill will be the campaign finance reform law sparked by a Star series last March.
Under the legislation, corporate and union donations to political parties will be banned, MPPs and candidates will be forbidden from attending party fundraisers, and contribution limits will be reduced to $1,200 from $9,975.
The new law will introduce public subsidies of the major political parties by giving them $2.71 for every vote they received in the 2014 election.
Starting in January, annual payments will be $5.06 million for the Liberals, $4.09 million for the Conservatives, $3.1 million for the New Democrats, and $630,000 for the Greens.