A Liberal Majority

[puckstopshere]

A Liberal majority - you've got to be effing kidding.

I guess the people of Ontario like politicians that are the biggest crooks.

Squander a billion dollars for political gain - and they reward you. 

Well, my guess is that we won't have to look at Hudak much longer.

[brandeentertainment]

sorry imeant sense 2003 i am not sure why i wrote 5 years

[brandeentertainment]

Actual NDP Specifically Andrea Was all for the Auto Sector because that how her daddy made his living she was also all about transit down south... students in onatio .... people cost of living abroad.. and Ndp has always faught hard for the north along with the south As Toronto Star or sun put it in a cartoon... Liberals rough waters, Conservatives dangerous water and Ndp Uncharted waters...  IT was time for change and hope not time to do the same **bleep** we have been doing for 10 years ....

It is really sad to see liberals win majority ... It sad the Unions were allowed to put money out for political war... It's sad that instead of speding money and time telling us about changes that they are allowed to attack each other ...

The record the liberals have is horrible and I am sad about what could happen to ontari in the next 4 years and scared ifor my kids future...

There needs to be laws in place for next Provincial election to keep things fair and tasteful.. There needs to be cuts in our spending and nobody is going to do it which bogglers my mind ...

[pierrelebel]

Where does that 300,000 provincial civil servants added to Ontario (since 2003) come from?

About 1,331,000 Ontarians are employed in the public sector, according to Statistics Canada.

But nearly half of those are jobs with another level of government: about 224,000 work for the federal government, 275,000 are employed by local governments, and 56,000 more work in enterprises owned by local governments.

Those are out of bounds. And in making his job-cut pledge, Mr. Hudak said that doctors, nurses and police would all be spared. Based on the latest data on the province’s total number of doctors, nurses and Ontario Provincial Police officers, that’s another 128,000 jobs that would be excluded from the cuts.

What’s left? Just shy of 650,000 provincial public-sector employees. For this pool, Mr. Hudak would be looking to cut almost one in six jobs, or more than 15 per cent of this work force. And he says he’ll do it in just two years.

Where do most of those 650,000 people work? About two-thirds work in education. The province’s public school boards employ 266,000 people; about half of them are teachers. The province’s universities, colleges and trade schools employ another 140,000. Most of the remainder work in health and social services. There are more than 110,000 of them, even after subtracting cut-exempt doctors and nurses.

[puckstopshere]

Pierre - I wonder why all the university, college and trade school jobs are paid by the Provincial government.

Universities and colleges are shunning Ontario students in favor of foreign students.  Both Western and Fanshawe here in London have stated that they are focusing on foreign students.  Why?  Because they are not subsidized by the provincial government and pay full fees.  They make more money off of these students.

And, although we do not subsidize the foreign students, we taxpayers do put up much of the money for new buildings, land, etc.  Recent expansion at Fanshawe was mostly accomplished on the taxpayers backs. 

Ultimately, we are expanding our universities and colleges so that they can cater to foreign students.  Therefore, we are subsidizing foreign students.  Most of these students take their educations and return to their homes - contributing little to our future.

[pierrelebel]

From the London Free Press (editorial page)

Tim Hudak and the Progressive Conservative party are regularly quoted saying that Ontario added 300,000 new government jobs since Dalton McGuinty became premier in 2003, the implication being that Liberals are to blame for too many public servants. But the truth is much more complicated.

It’s true that 300,000 public sector jobs were added in Ontario, but that includes federal and municipal governments, Crown corporations, colleges and universities, and government business enterprises, such as the LCBO, Hydro One and the OLG. When you subtract job gains by other levels of government, you’re left with close to half of 300,000, a percentage of which are not full time.

Also important is that growth in Ontario’s public sector happened between 2003 and 2009, and since then the number of public servants has been declining. The population of Ontario rose by at least 1.3 million since 2003, a trend normally matched by an increase in the public service to handle the extra population. On a per-capita basis Ontario’s public service is smaller than any other province.

I admit the whole truth doesn’t make quite as good a sound byte.

[pierrelebel]

"Therefore, we are subsidizing foreign students.  Most of these students take their educations and return to their homes - contributing little to our future."

Did any of the three provincial political parties have a policy on the subject?

Did any of the three parties proposed to ban or limit foreign students to Ontario colleges and universities?

I am curious.

[puckstopshere]

If we continue to build our public sector jobs, we will end up like California.

At the peak of their problems, California could not meet its payroll and was on the verge of bankruptcy.

What was the reason for this?

According to what I read, the state had 11 public sector jobs that produced nothing saleable - to every one private sector job that contributed a marketable item to boost the states economy.

Here in Ontario, we continue to lose productive manufacturing jobs while the public sector increases in size.  This needs to stop.  Hudak had the right idea - he just presented it in a totally unpalatable form. 
He should have reduced those 100,000 jobs slowly - many by attrition - over the eight years in which he said he would add a million jobs.  Do we need things like all day kindergarten/paid daycare?  Certainly, the public sector employees can afford daycare.  It is the minimum wage famlies where both parents have to work in order to survive.  They are the ones who need subsidized daycare.

[pierrelebel]

I took a quick look at domestic and international tuition and other fees at U of T (a few years ago):

http://www.utoronto.ca/about-uoft/measuring-our-performance/cudo/cudo_2008/annualexpenses.htm

I do not know but would think that whatever is charged to foreign students covers all costs.

Also, I would think those foreign students - spending so much to learn here - would also benefit the general economy through their other spending (eating, entertainment, clothing, etc...)

[pierrelebel]

"Do we need things like all day kindergarten/paid daycare? "

I take it you are not a mother of two or three young children wanting to earn a living.

[pierrelebel]

I took a quick look at federal statistics as to the size of the "civil service" in relation to the growing population:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Service_of_Canada

I am curious how that compares to provinces.

[valve37]

Premier Wynne: What's Your Plan?

When the new session of the Legislature starting on July 2nd, we already know that Premier Kathleen Wynne will have to focus on our economy.

This past May marked the 89th consecutive month since 2007, the province of Ontario has exceeded the national unemployment rate and is among the worst in the country. We have all heard about the Liberal Ontario pension plan, but it isn't going to work if you can't find a job in the first place. One thing for sure is that Kathleen Wynne won the provincial popularity contest, and the Ontario Progressive Conservative leader was the least popular. It is now time to give Premier Wynne a chance to present a new economic plan, new strategies to create jobs, and deal with all the unions representing one million public sector jobs here in Ontario. Premier Wynne will be tested this August when the teachers contracts expire along with expired contracts of community colleges, OPP, firefighters, nurses, and other public sector unions.

Premier Wynne will be facing some hard times ahead and will have to confront some hard truths about this province we call Ontario.

It all starts July 2nd.

[prior-of-verity*shake-hands-with-your-devil]

Some days I just get tired, tired of the focus on some people and the lack of focus on others.

For weeks I went into news sites and read the comments which were attacks on the civil servants and attacks on unions and attacks even at people on assistance. It seems we have become a society that we need someone to blame and we always blame the average worker, or others on the bottom of the food chain.

The reality is to me anyhow that these are NOT where the real problems lie. We have politicians and governments wasting our money in so many areas and we may say something about it on occasion but feeling powerless to actually do anything about it, it is most often forgotten. We have a system where government departments are not rewarded for saving money, they are actually in a sense punished for it. Our basic internal system is so messed up it needs a complete housecleaning and some people who will actually start to say NO to some of these expenditures.

People complain about the debt in Ontario and yet the same people are applauding a rapid transit idea from Windsor to Toronto and other new rapid transit in the works in Toronto. If you want to live in TO then deal with the transit because objective #1 is to cut that debt and provide other services. I could go on and on about waste but suffice to say the real waste is not some public employees or someone on social assistance, it's government entitlement waste.

Then I could go into corporate wealth. Do people have any idea how many loopholes corporations have to avoid paying their real share of taxes? Oh it's all 'legal', but not necessary. I met a man who has a corporation and to avoid paying a 100,000 in taxes he somehow invented a company owned by his teenage daughter and invested money in that which he will later somehow manage to sell to another company in the US. Don't ask me the details because I don't know them exactly, but it's like a huge chess game and others are not invited, unless you happen to employ his accountant.

So when we add up government waste (all areas of government from municipal to federal) and we add in corporate loopholes, there is a MASSIVE amount of money lost, but for some reason we feel it will give us some form of satisfaction or maybe a sense of diminished power to cut back on jobs for civil servants or punish the poor and needy even more. It's a real frikken mess out there and we have all our priorities totally mixed up!

[pierrelebel]

Valve, why don't you look at the big picture, the national picture.

According to Stats Canada, in the twelve months period May 2013 to May 2014 the population of Canada (15 years and over) increased by 1,3% (28,965.100 to 28,996.200)

In the same period, the number of full-time employment has decreased from 14,425.500 14,396.400.

That is correct: over a one year period we have fewer full time jobs in Canada!

Thank you Mr Harper.  Your Reform extreme right "Action Plan" for which we spend millions of dollars in advertising every year does NOT work.

In fairness, hundreds of thousands of part-time jobs (at or near minimum wages) have been created.  Youpiiiiii!

[valve37]

Isn't this thread re Ontario Liberals? Liberals probably the biggest contributor to the national scene. But then that's the Liberal way, borrow and spend. Debt 132B when Libs started in 2003 and now 289B with a 12B deficit/yr to service it. Cash in your Ontario bonds Pierre and help lower the debt.

[brandeentertainment]

Could End up like California...

We have surpassed that but about 100 billion in debt with way smaller population

[brandeentertainment]

I am a father of 2 and  I have 3-4 babysitters that allow me and my wife to work full time she is mon-friday and I am shift worker ...

I agree with Puck on that one ..

Even before We had 3-4 people to watch our kids we used an array of things to get by .. 1 Daycare combined with sometimes me having to work 12hr **bleep**ch the kids and go back to work for another 12 with no sleep or using sick days when we have no other option ....

People do not need everything to be easy at a price

[brandeentertainment]

I have to agree on 90% of what your saying but about the little people ... Our laziness creates much uncalled for spending that is so not needed...

Lots of people these days don't care what things cost as long as it is easy and nobody ever loses anything .... This cost us alot of money too...

[brandeentertainment]

I just thought of a perfect example ... My bros family is upgraded to control all the lights and electronics in his house to be controlled by iphone or ipad or something like that ....  Will cost over $1000 ... Like pressing power on the TV or flipping a light swtich was hard or  something ..

If this Province or country kept on track with what people need and not what we want alot of this debt would not be around ....

Most people changed the definition of need after the first Tv was invented ....

This new Railway system that is costing Tax payer billions is not a Need it is a want ... It is not going to put money in your pocket or food on your table which means it is a want .. Some may say well fair is cheaper then driving  well I would have to drive for a long time to spend a billion dollars 😉

Convience at a cost

[valve37]

All of Ontario will pay for upgraded roads in the GTA something the city and municipal taxpayers are responsible for and use everyday. High speed rail to Kitchener and London a little different story.

So Brand, to get your moneys worth leave the great white north and come down to Southern Ontario to enjoy the ride on all the new roads and rail!  

[brandeentertainment]

Here is a good place to read about Ontario Handouts to create jobs ...

http://globalnews.ca/news/1306627/ontario-gave-109-companies-765m-over-8-years-so-where-are-the-jobs...

The 1 COmpany was giving 13 Million to create 28 jobs... Why no just give 28 people $450,000 each ...

This is sad and that is a understatment...

This Province is a joke We create jobs where there not needed hand out money for nothing ...

Liberals want to Decrease your hydro bill by 77 a year but at the same time it will increase $180 .plus rates will continue to go up on top of that which makes for a savings of ???? Apparently They think were as dumb as they are... My 3 year old has about 1000 Times the amount of money Ontario has ... Awesome ..

So I guess were in for another year of giving companies money for nothing .... Give Kellogs millions of dollar to lay off 550 workers not to long after ... Job creation is not define as laying off 550 workers...

I wonder if it is just stupid people voting for stupid  people.. The person or goverment we need is someone who will stand up to goverments and the public and say shut up cry me a river too bad sooo sad  we making cuts deal with it .... (Realistic cuts not hudak cuts) Even though Hudak was the only 1 smart enough to know we need to stop spending he was also dumb enough to go a little crazy with his numbers..