Too-political budget is piling up our debt load

THE EDITORIAL REACTION by three Toronto dailies to last week's

Ontario budget was as predictable as the budget itself.

The invariably pro-Conservative Toronto Sun had nothing good to say about it, in an editorial headed

Shameless spending spree" which accused Premier Dalton McGuinty of shovelling much of a $3-billion windfall from unanticipated corporation tax revenue and lower debt charges into "pie-inthe sky infrastructure projects."

At the other extreme, the normally proLiberal Toronto Star said Finance Minister Dwight Duncan "deserves praise for starting to repair the infrastructure deficit," and suggested he "still must address another deficit left behind by the previous Conservative government - the huge social deficit that has been borne entirely by Ontario's poorest residents."

Between the two extremes was the reaction of The Globe and Mail, which compared Ontario's projected $2.4-billion deficit for the 2006-07 fiscal year unfavourably with Quebec's plan to balance its books.

Clearly, all three editorials made some good points. Despite problems in our manufacturing sector that can be traced to a soaring Loonie, Ontario's economy is in relatively good condition, and certainly in as good shape as Quebec's. That fact alone removes any justification for running a deficit.

As the Globe's editorial pointed out, tiny Prince Edward Island was the only province other than Ontario that didn't balance its books in 2005-06.

As we see it, the only reason the McGuinty government didn't show a surplus in the current fiscal year is that that would have weakened its campaign for more cash transfers from the federal government, based on the "fiscal deficit" argument launched against its Liberal cousins at Ottawa and continued against the new Conservative administration.

It surely goes without saying that the province's infrastructure is currently in bad shape, thanks mainly to the cuts in personal income taxes instituted by the Mike Harris government which led to the Province downloading roads and social programs on already cash-strapped municipalities.

Just how bad the situation is can be witnessed daily by anyone travelling anywhere in or near the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).

In Dufferin, property taxes are rising spectacularly, with most ratepayers in Orangeville now facing increases several times the current rate of inflation, and perhaps with the added challenge of much higher user fees for a range of municipal services, including waste collection.

At the same time, infrastructure improvements have been virtually nonexistent. The last construction season saw no new work on any of the remaining provincial highways in Dufferin or Caledon, and although some provincial money went into Orangeville's new south bypass (Dufferin 109), that roadway clearly ought to have been built and financed by the province as an important part of Highway 9.

A cynic will quickly observe that with the next provincial election campaign likely to be under way a year from now (with the election already set for October) the provincial budget is overwhelmingly aimed at where the votes are.

In fact, more than half of the $1.2 billion in transportation announcements last Thursday was for projects in Toronto, among them an extension of the Spadina subway to York University and eventually into York Region. Toronto also gets $200 million to help run its existing subway operations. The "Move Ontario" fund will also help transit development in Mississauga ($65 million) and Brampton ($95 million).

Beyond that, the government plans to spend $400 million on thus-far unspecified road and bridge improvements elsewhere in the province.

To date, the only benefit commuters from the new Dufferin-Caledon riding have been promised is a start on the longoverdue extension of Highway 427 into Brampton.

It will be interesting, indeed, to see whether the coming construction season will see any work in a riding perceived, rightly or wrongly, as the safest Conservative seat in the province.

Of the many needed projects in Dufferin-Caledon, the most pressing are clearly the widening of Highway 10 between Orangeville and the southern outskirts of Caledon Village, the extension of Highway 410 to the BramptonCaledon boundary in Snelgrove and the construction of bypasses in Bolton and Shelburne.

In contrast to the huge outpouring of provincial cash to Toronto, there was precious little in the budget for Ontario's farmers, many of whom are currently facing individual cash crises that make the government's pale into insignificance.

The reason, again, lies in the old numbers game. The sad fact is that farmers today constitute a tiny and still-shrinking minority of the population, even in places like Dufferin and Caledon which used to be almost entirely rural. And when it comes to election time, farmers have traditionally favoured the Conservative candidates.

(In fact, 13 of the 22 seats the Conservatives currently have in the Legislature are predominantly rural, and they have no seats in Toronto. The Liberals, meanwhile, have only about seven of their 71 members who might feel threatened by a backlash from the agricultural community.)

One thing sadly missing from the government's planning is a bold plan to battle the GTA gridlock problem by making it possible for long-distance commuters to work closer to home.

Except for a few shining examples such as Honda's selection of Alliston and Toyota's of Woodstock, neither the public nor the private sector has seemingly acknowledged Ontario's desperate need for decentralization.

Think about it. How much provinciallyowned real estate and how many government jobs have you seen created recently in Dufferin-Caledon?