It's Crunch Time, But We Can Do It: Hudak
21 February 2012
“And his reaction since the (Drummond) report landed has hardly been encouraging: Mr. McGuinty seems to have fallen down a hole. Despite having received the report weeks before it was made public, he’s given no hint of how he might deal with it.”
- Kelly McParland, The National Post, February 17, 2012
QUEEN’S PARK – With today’s resumption of the Legislature, Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak pledged to lay down clear criteria to ensure progress on jobs and our economy, deficits and debt.
“Every day’s inaction from now on will only lead to more sacrifice down the road,” Hudak said. “We must compel Dalton McGuinty to act on the countless warnings he’s received – most recently last week’s red alerts from Don Drummond and DBRS – that he must reverse course.
“And we can do it by publicly laying out clear objectives that government policy must meet from now on – and be seen to meet – to assure Ontarians that action is being taken.”
To that end, Hudak vowed to subject the McGuinty government to a “stress test” to keep its focus on the top priorities of Ontarians: jobs and our economy, and an end to deficit spending.
“In the 2008 credit crisis, financial sector watchdogs created ‘stress tests’ for big banks to reassure markets and depositors that they’d stopped their reckless lending,” Hudak said.
“Today in Ontario, we face an economic crisis. So we need a different kind of stress test to reassure Ontarians that the Liberal government will stop its reckless spending.”
The Ontario PC Stress Test consists of three criteria, against which all Liberal initiatives in the coming session will be openly judged. Does the measure at issue:
- Reduce the size and cost of government?
- Contribute to private sector job creation? and
- Ensure accountability and value-for-money for taxpayers?
The Ontario PC Stress Test will keep the heat on Dalton McGuinty to start making government smaller and smarter, while standing up for hard-pressed Ontario taxpayers by ensuring the Premier doesn’t take his usual way out by increasing taxes, Hudak said.
“But it will also maintain a spotlight on the part of the equation that this government has also ignored – growing the economy to kick-start private sector job creation.
“I say again – not only are we running out of money. We’re running out of time. So if Dalton McGuinty won’t start us down the path to recovery today, I will.”