Ummm...
here you go;
https://www.oma.org/siteassets/oma/media/public/hcp-factsheet-canada-health-transfer.pdf
Ontario, being 9th place in health spending, thanks to horrible liberal policy on refugees and immigration practices, saddling Ontario with an inordinate number to pay for...
Doug Ford always had a mandate to invest in Ontario, he just didn’t do his job
Jan. 19, 2025
By Ricardo Tranjan, Contributor
In response to
Donald Trump’s threat to impose high tariffs on Canadian products, Premier Doug Ford said he might have to call an early election to
secure a mandate to protect Ontario’s economy.
That’s a bad excuse to call an early election. It’s like firefighters saying they must ring the doorbell and ask permission to put out a fire and save the people trapped inside the house.
The current government already has a mandate to invest in Ontario’s economy and people. Given the province’s stable finances, it also had the means to do so. It simply chooses to stash money away and spend it on vain populist measures.
Take the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic, for example.
Ottawa picked up the tab for 92 per cent of emergency measures, giving provinces the fiscal room to invest in public services people needed more than ever. Instead, at the start of 2021, amid high death counts and economic turmoil, Ontario was sitting on $6.4 billion of unspent COVID emergency funds. The job was obvious. The money was there. But Ford chose not to spend it on Ontarians.
Fast forward to today, and we will see the same pattern.
The provincial government’s revenue is anticipated to rise from $205.7 billion in 2024 to $217.4 billion in 2025 — a solid 5.7 per cent increase. Spending is set to rise by 2.6 per cent, or less than half the revenue increase.
Does the current government have the mandate to expand child care provision, tackle the colossal school repair backlog, reduce emergency room waiting times and assist the more than 100,000 Torontonians relying on food banks and 80,000 Ontarians experiencing homelessness? It does.
Yet, that’s not the focus. Year in and year out, the Ontario government’s attention and dollars have been poured into populist and nonsense measures nobody asked for.
It’s a long list. Let’s look only at the three most recent ones.
Last May, the Ontario government announced it would
spend $225 million to breach a contract with The Beer Store and speed up the expansion of alcohol sales in the province. The measure is expected to result in higher alcohol consumption and lower sales tax revenues.
Last September, Premier Ford vowed to build a
traffic tunnel under Highway 401, even though Highway 407 is highly underutilized. The project is already consuming tonnes of planning hours and political attention that could have been invested in things Ontarians actually need.
Last October, the Ford government announced it would send a
$200 cheque to every Ontarian, rich and poor, for a total cost of $3.2 billion. Targeting the cash transfers to low-income families and investing the rest in universal public services would have been easy, but less popular.
If the house is on fire, people expect firefighters and majority governments to go in and deal with it. They don’t need to ask for a mandate to do what they are supposed to do.
ottawacitizen.com
