WATERLOO—Doctors, professors, teachers, and others on the public payroll will have do their bit in the new age of austerity, warns Premier Dalton McGuinty. “We’re all going to have a role to play,” the premier told reporters here in his first public event of the New Year.
“If we’re going to be as effective as we need to be in terms of strengthening this economy and ensuring that we’re getting ever more value for the public dollars that are being invested in our public institutions, whether that’s education at whatever level or health care ... then we’re all going to bring something to the table,” he said.
Against the backdrop of cuts czar Don Drummond’s new report that will urge sweeping reforms to eliminate the $16 billion deficit, that suggests public servants will have to be more efficient.
McGuinty stressed that the minority government (with some needed opposition help) — not Drummond — will ultimately determine what course to take.
“His responsibility is to advise. Ours is to decide. So there’s a distinction, first of all, to be drawn between his responsibility and our responsibility in government.”
Asked if he could assure Ontarians that the looming cuts would not have the fallout of those made by former Progressive Conservative premier Mike Harris in the 1990’s, McGuinty said: “What I can assure Ontarians is that their values will be our government’s values.”
“We will do everything we can to protect our health care, protect our education, and put in place the kinds of measures that will continue to support a stronger, growing economy,” he said.
McGuinty said he’s “not going to speculate” on whether the Liberals will scrap or delay plans to reduce corporate income tax rates from 11.5 per cent to 10 per cent by July 2013, which would keep $800 million a year in government coffers.
Drummond, the former TD Bank chief economist hired last March by the government to recommend efficiencies, told the Star’s Martin Regg Cohn this week that there will be “anger” at what he’s recommending and cuts will hit just about everywhere.
He said health spending increases would have to be capped at 2.5 per cent — below the 3 per cent threshold previously thought and half the current rate of growth.
The premier’s comments came at Wilfrid Laurier University where he was re-announcing the Liberals’ cornerstone campaign promise from last year that university and college tuition fees would drop 30 per cent as of Sunday for most Ontario students.
At Queen’s Park, Tory finance critic Peter Shurman said it’s ironic that Drummond’s dire warnings came Thursday as McGuinty was “out committing to yet more unaffordable spending” in the form of 30 per cent tuition cuts that will cost taxpayers $420 million annually at a time when the government is facing a huge deficit and will continue to bleed red ink until 2017-18.
“We hope Mr. Drummond has better luck making his case to the government than we have,” added Shurman, whose party has already called for overhauls such as having private contractors and unions bidding on contracts to perform government services.
“The answer has always been the same. It is ‘no.’…you can’t keep doing what Dalton McGuinty is doing and that is to spend.”
Shurman noted the Conservatives promised to cut spending in departments outside of health and education by two per cent across-the-board in their election platform last fall.
Original Article
Source: Star
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