Ontario budget: Liberals, NDP move closer to a deal
By Rob Ferguson and Robert Benzie, Toronto Star, April 20, 2012
Further below, see article Thousands descend on Queen’s Park to
protest McGuinty budget.
Ontario moved another step closer to a budget deal averting a snap election as Premier Dalton McGuinty courted NDP support Friday with $275 million in cash for child care and the disabled. The money will come from the education budget and by taking “immediate” action to lower generic drug prices paid by the government. It now leaves open the question whether the government will accept the New Democrat push for a wealth surtax on incomes over $500,000.
“Over the weekend we’ll continue to analyze how else we may be able to work together to make the budget stronger,” McGuinty said after speaking with NDP Leader Andrea Horwath. He has asked her to meet with him Monday and “come prepared . . . to reach an agreement” on supporting the budget before it goes to a crucial vote Tuesday.
Horwath could not be reached for comment on the premier’s proposals. Ontario would be plunged into a second election in six months if the minority government’s budget is defeated. Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives have vowed to vote against the fiscal blueprint, saying it doesn’t do enough to control spending or create jobs.
McGuinty promised to inject another $242 million in unspecified “assistance” to child care operators over three years, taking the money from the existing education budget. The disabled will get the one per cent increase in payouts from the Ontario Disability Support Plan that the NDP had sought, McGuinty added.
The government intends to lower the price it pays for the top 10 generic drugs to 20 per cent of the prices for equivalent brand names. This follows legislation two years ago to force generic prices down to 50 per cent of brand names. This move will raise $55 million and will help pay for a one per cent hike in disability support payments starting in the fall, which will cost $33 million a year.
McGuinty’s gambit comes as labour groups that failed to convince Horwath to toughen her conditions for supporting the minority Liberal government’s budget are pressing for corporate tax and welfare hikes. Ontario Federation of Labour president Sid Ryan said Horwath shouldn’t be afraid to force a vote. “We’re asking our friends to be tougher with this government and if Dalton McGuinty wants to call an election because he thinks he’s got a majority right now he should then take a look at the polls,” Ryan told a Friday news conference.
Ryan made a push at last weekend’s NDP convention in Hamilton for Horwath to make higher corporate taxes and welfare rates part of her conditions for a deal. But that didn’t happen and this week Horwath instead withdrew one of her key demands — that the 8 per cent provincial portion of the 13 per cent HST be taken off home heating bills.
“At the end of the day, the NDP will make up its own mind on what they feel is doable,” Ryan said, noting: “As a political party, if you believe in these principles, we should never be up for sale.”
Horwath told CBC Radio that budget talks were stuck and dropping the HST demand was the only way to make progress toward a deal with the Liberals. “If we do end up in election next week it will be because the McGuinty Liberals, in their arrogance, weren’t prepared to work with anyone else.”
The NDP is also demanding a wealth surtax of 2 percentage points on incomes above $500,000 which would raise between $440 million and $570 million a year to preserve 4,000 child care spaces and raise payouts by 1 per cent for the disabled under the Ontario Disability Support Plan.
Poll: Andrea Horwath’s tax-the-rich scheme ‘hugely popular’
New Democrat House Leader Gilles Bisson said he’ll be buoyed in weekend budget talks by a Saturday rally on the Legislature’s front lawn by the OFL and almost 90 labour and social groups, from teacher unions that usually support the Liberals to the Community Party and Occupy Toronto.
The negotiations are “progressing” but Bisson added in a nod to Ryan that “there’s only so much you can do in the current fiscal situation.” Ontario is facing a $15.2 billion deficit and annual interest payments on the debt are $10 billion, the third-largest expense for taxpayers after health care and education.
“We’re trying to do the best that we can to find a way that doesn’t cost the treasury more money . . . that we don’t increase the deficit and that we’re able to find a way to make this budget fairer for people,” said Bisson.
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Thousands descend on Queen’s Park to protest McGuinty budget
By Niamh Scallan, Toronto Star, April 22, 2012
More than 15,000 protesters from labour unions and community organizations across the province rallied outside Ontario’s Legislature Saturday afternoon to vent their fury over the minority Liberal government’s austerity-focused budget. “We’re sending a signal to Dalton McGuinty that the budget he’s introduced is grossly unfair,” said Sid Ryan, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour, the group responsible for organizing the “Day of Action” event.
A sea of flag-toting protesters arrived by the busload early in the afternoon to demonstrate against the proposed budget, a belt-tightening fiscal blueprint that calls for wage freezes for more than a million public servants and pension plan changes as a way to rein in the province’s multi-billion-dollar deficit.
Gathered on the grassy stretch facing the Legislature, the group of public servants and other labour supporters jived to a Bob Marley cover band as union and community group leaders prepared to take the stage for speeches, sporadic cries of “Shame, shame on McGuinty!” filling the air.
“McGuinty has gone too far. We need to support the public sector,” said Don Guest, a Brantford-based millwright and United Steel Workers member. “They need to step back. Touching pensions, it’s just not the right way to go,” added Cephas Kotei, a Dufferin Peel Catholic District School Board employee and president of CUPE Local 1483.
The rally then shifted from the Legislature to the streets as the throng of protesters marched toward Toronto’s Yorkville neighbourhood. A handful of cement trucks, parked near a construction site on Bay St., honked their horns as protesters marched by, eliciting cheers from the crowd.
The protest came just three days before a crucial budget vote that, if defeated, could see Ontarians headed back to the polls for the second time in six months. The Progressive Conservatives under leader Tim Hudak have said the proposed budget fails to create jobs and control spending, and have vowed to vote against it.
Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, one of more than a dozen speakers at Saturday’s event, called the proposed budget “profoundly flawed” and told to the crowd she planned to continue to press McGuinty for further concessions prior to Tuesday’s vote. “When this budget was introduced, we saw a lot of things that we certainly did not like. This budget left workers behind. It left people who are looking for work behind,” she said, bystanders chanting “Vote it down! Vote it down” as she left the stage.
The New Democrat leader later told reporters she hoped to avoid another election, but said her party still had a number of unmet concerns. Horwath said she was “pleased” with McGuinty’s announcement of a number of budget-related concessions on Friday, including the plan to put $275 million toward child care and the disabled. But her party hoped for further compromises, including a wealth surtax of two percentage points on incomes above $500,000, she said.
With hours before Tuesday’s vote dwindling, Horwath said she planned to meet with McGuinty on Sunday to review her party’s concerns. “I’ve been very, very careful not to have a ‘my way or the highway’ attitude in this process,” she said. “All we want to see is a little bit of fairness. The very least we can ask for is that the very top earners in Ontario put in a little bit more when times are tough.”
“Corporations should be paying their fair share,” added Ryan, noting he hoped Horwath would “stick to her guns” in the coming days.
