“The Progressive Conservatives slammed the bonuses as ‘outrageous,’ claiming it’s further evidence the Liberals can’t manage the province’s finances.”
- The Windsor Star, August 16, 2012

Recent revelations that the McGuinty Liberals have doled out nearly $36 million in salary bonuses for almost all managers is further proof the Liberals have failed to recognize the need for urgent action to rein in their nine years of reckless overspending, Ontario PC Finance Critic Peter Shurman said today.

“Dalton McGuinty needs to justify to the nearly 600,000 unemployed Ontarians why handing over bonuses to public sector workers of up to 12 per cent is a priority for the Liberals – and explain to them what he is doing to get this money back,” Shurman said.

“This newest example of reckless overspending is yet another sign that the Liberal approach to freezing salaries for government workers isn’t working, and is actually compounding the problem.”

The bureaucrat-bonuses-boondoggle, where 98 per cent of managers in the provincial bureaucracy received bonuses averaging 3.6 per cent, comes less than a week after Statistics Canada confirmed that Ontario had lost another 22,000 manufacturing jobs, for a total of 300,000 – while at the same time the Liberals have added 300,000 bureaucratic government jobs to the province’s bloated public sector payroll, compounding the structural deficit.

Shurman, who also serves on the Ontario PC Job Creation Task Force, said jurisdictions with crushing debt like Ontario can’t afford things that attract job creators to our province, including low taxes and economic infrastructure. To emphasize the gravity of the situation, Shurman added, “The credit rating agencies are watching all of this.”

“Dalton McGuinty claims he supports a public sector wage freeze, including his failed negotiations with the teachers’ unions that threaten chaos for parents come September, but doling out bonuses just for coming to work is hardly a freeze. It’s more like a flood.”

Tim Hudak and the Ontario PC Caucus have been calling for an across-the-board, legislated public sector salary freeze since last October and introduced legislation in May to get the job done, Shurman noted.

“But the Liberals pandered to their big labour special interest pals and voted against it. Now they have to scramble because of their bad decisions and inability to stop their reckless overspending,” Shurman concluded.