Both sides said that the meeting went well, but the next day, Wynne complained to reporters that Harper wouldn’t agree to her plan to expand the Canada Pension Plan.
In May, during a provincial election campaign in which Harper was pulling for Wynne’s opponent, Tim Hudak, she told the Toronto Star more about that meeting.
Wynne said Harper told her that people need to save for their own retirements. “He kind of smirked at one point and sort of said: ‘Well, they have mortgages and things to pay.’ ”
Harper’s office cried foul, pointed out that Wynne was complaining many months after the meeting, in the middle of an election campaign. “Presumably she made the comments she made today to distract from her mismanagement of the Ontario economy and the fact that she can’t run on her party’s record,” said Jason MacDonald, the prime minister’s director of communications.
But she won the election. Since then, she hasn’t been able to get a meeting with Harper.
On Wednesday, she complained in the legislature that Harper has refused to sit down with her.
“The issues at hand are of vital interest and importance to the more than 13 million residents of our province, and they have a right to expect a close and positive collaboration between their federal and provincial heads of government,” she said.
Harper returned fire in the House of Commons.
“We understand the province of Ontario has pretty significant challenges,” he said. “In the approach we are taking at our level, we have been able to balance the budget by lowering taxes and providing benefits to families. That is what the people of Ontario need.”
Harper has a point, in a way. Wynne’s government has a $12.5 billion deficit, thanks in part to her open hand with public sector unions. If she took a tougher line with unions, reduced program spending and cut services, that deficit would be significantly smaller.
But she didn’t campaign to do any of those things. She campaigned on a free-spending budget, and voters gave her a majority. Hudak, who promised to cut spending, is now a former party leader. If he had been elected premier, you can be sure that Harper would have met with him, as he met with new Alberta Premier Jim Prentice in Calgary last month.
And not all of Wynne’s financial problems are of her own making.
For the most part, Harper has taken a businesslike approach to federal-provincial transfers, providing fixed, predictable increases in health funding and avoiding first ministers’ meetings where the premiers can complain about how they’re getting shafted.
It is as predictable and tedious as cold November winds. The premiers go before the cameras, and either complain in a single voice that Ottawa hasn’t put enough money on the table, or, if that’s not believable, complain that their province has been shortchanged relative to the others.
But just because they always complain doesn’t mean that it’s always nonsense.
In his last budget, Jim Flaherty made a change to the equalization formula that took $641 million away from Ontario with the stroke of a pen. The Ontario government is getting $1.2 billion less in equalization payments this year than last.
The cut comes because the feds tinkered with the secret formula used to cut up the money, removing a floor that protects provinces from a dramatic drop in any given year. The feds say that was always intended to be a short-term measure, but that’s not what they said when they introduced it, and it sure looks like they made the change to take money away from Wynne, something they did to Danny Williams when he was Tory Enemy Number 1.
Flaherty often took potshots at Dalton McGuinty, but behind the scenes the two governments found ways to divide up infrastructure money and get roads paved and ribbons cut.
In contrast, Flaherty’s successor, Joe Oliver, hasn’t managed to get Wynne’s government to co-operate on infrastructure spending as they struggle over who should pay for Ring of Fire developments.
Harper is on thin ice here, and had best be careful.
Ontarians, unlike Newfoundlanders, Quebecers or Albertans, are not ready to rally against Ottawa at the drop of a hat, but Wynne is starting to build a credible argument.
This week’s Conservative byelection victory in Flaherty’s old riding shows that reports of the Tories’ demise in suburban Toronto may be exaggerated, but they know they’re in for a fight to keep the Ontario seats that will decide the next federal election.
Original Article
Source: canada.com/
Author: STEPHEN MAHER
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