Historicist: "The city that nobody loves"
The Daily Photoist: November 23, 2009
Newsstand: November 23, 2009
Urban Planner: November 23, 2009
The Hon. Dwight Duncan, Minister of Finance, has just wrapped up Ontario's 2009-2010 budget announcement at Queen's Park. Surprising nobody, the theme of his speech was the need to address Ontario's declining economy: Duncan began by saying that "our province is in the middle of a global economic and financial storm... we have seen a serious deterioration in our fiscal position." Ontario's deficit will come in at $14.1 billion in 2009-2010, and a return to balanced budgets is predicted to take several years. To tackle the province's weakened state the Liberals are proposing a stimulus package ($32.5 billion over the next two years for infrastructure projects, predicted to create 300,000 new jobs, and $300 million for green economy initiatives); tax relief ($10.6 billion spread over personal and business tax cuts); assistance measures (social assistance rates will go up by 2%); and a new harmonized federal-provincial value-added tax. So far, commenters are noting that Ontario's budget follows the pattern set by the federal government, perhaps signalling that relations between the two are improving somewhat.
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Am i the only person who is amazed that Ontario voters gleefully ushered in McGuinty and his idiots for a second term?
do people forget that he lied on all of his initial campaign promises?
and name 3 positive (read: significant) things he's done since in office?
you surely cannot blame Ontario's have-not statues solely on the world recession.
Have you seen the alternative?
Even I don't like the alternative!
Even I don't like the alternative!
"See how terrible Mike Harris is?"
Hey, Dalton is a guy who will do anything and say anything to stay in power -- a separate school grad, with a wife working in the separate school system, who pretended for the cameras that the public system was all anyone needed.
Ontarians chose this guy over the other because Tory's bad political instincts and the memory of Harris.
I'm relatively sure the seperate board is still public. Yes, it's "Catholic", but it's still paid for by taxpayers based on the box they check on their property tax form.
I went through the system and there were non-Catholics in my classes. It was admittedly rare, but not unheard of.
So perhaps the indignation needs to be refocused a bit?
Two ad hominem attacks on the premier and his party, and nothing in the way of critiques of—or even alternatives to—the budget itself. Well done.
The federal government shouldn't get too much credit for pattern-setting; deficits and infrastructure spending are a theme across the US, in the UK and elsewhere.