Results tagged “dwightduncan”

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.

Copper theft in Toronto has reached record levels. Thieves just can't get enough of that golden-brown stuff. You can do anything with it—sell it for four dollars per pound, or...well, actually that's pretty much all a copper thief can do with copper, come to think.