Crombie slams Ford’s ‘pocketbook gimmicks’
Liberal leader vows to boost education, health-care funding
Setting the stage for her plan to defeat Doug Ford in 2026, Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie says the premier is jeopardizing jobs of the future with “reckless” underfinancing of colleges and universities.
“It is imperiling our economy,” Crombie said Thursday in a 20minute luncheon speech to the Empire Club, her first since taking the party helm in December.
“If I were premier today, I’d spend less time on pocketbook gimmicks and more time on the fundamental differentiator for our economy — education,” she added in a shot at Ford measures, including a 5.7cent-per-litre gasoline tax cut and scrapping of licence plate renewal fees.
Although Ford’s Progressive Conservatives recently announced a $1billion, three-year funding boost for post-secondary education, struggling colleges and universities warned it’s not enough to put them on solid financial footing, given the government’s extended tuition freeze, rising costs and a looming federal cap on international students.
Eight of Ontario’s 23 universities are running deficits, and colleges are expected to lose $3 billion in revenue from international students over the next three years.
Colleges and Universities Minister Jill Dunlop has defended the $1-billion increase as the biggest “in over a decade” and noted tuition can be raised five per cent next fall for students from other provinces.
But Crombie said limiting revenue for colleges and universities will stifle their ability to research and innovate, and pointed to how University of Waterloo graduates helped spawn a “global revolution” with the BlackBerry smartphone two decades ago.
“Between 2025 and 2030, our economy will undergo a massive disruption. Technologies like (artificial intelligence) will continue to change how we live, work and learn. Retirements will soar, shrinking our workforce,” she noted in a reference to baby boomers.
Crombie, whose party is a distant third in the legislature’s standings with nine MPPs, did not say how much a Liberal government would boost post-secondary support other than to say “we need to fund them properly.”
However, she noted in a questionand-answer session following her speech that “pocketbook gimmicks” like the gas tax break are “really reducing the fiscal capacity” of the provincial treasury.
“I keep thinking, would people really miss that or is that money that could be better invested in education and our health-care system?”
The gas tax cut, for example, costs $1.2 billion annually. Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy’s budget last week included a $9.8-billion annual deficit.
Crombie, a former three-term mayor of Mississauga, said she passed on a chance to run in the upcoming May 2 byelection in nearby Milton to travel the province, meet voters and revive the Liberal party after stunning election defeats in 2018 and 2022.
“If a Mississauga seat comes open, we could have another conversation,” she said.