“At a time when thousands of people in the private sector lost their jobs, this government gave away the store. They showed no restraint, no need to hold the line out of respect for taxpayers’ ability to pay. Now we’re paying the price.”
- Christina Blizzard, The Toronto Sun, September 21, 2012

QUEEN’S PARK – Ontario urgently needs an integrated and comprehensive plan to rein in nine years of reckless overspending and power-up the economy to create private-sector jobs, Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak said today.

“The bottom fell out in October 2008,” Hudak said. “Since then, the government has increased spending by $22 billion a year. It’s unsustainable and has led to an extra $100 billion in debt.

“The Auditor General, Don Drummond, credit rating agencies and my PC team have all warned the government. It’s unacceptable that they refuse to show recognition that their spending is directly compounding the problem,” Hudak added.

The government has failed to present a comprehensive and integrated plan that takes urgent action to address this overspending. The only way they can be taken seriously to turn the province around, is by conceding that their own managerial incompetence is responsible for causing Ontario’s jobs and debt crisis

What Ontario needs, and what the PCs have been demanding for a year now – is urgent action on two parallel tracks, starting with an across-the-board public sector wage freeze as well as measures to reduce the size and cost of government. “We also need to rebuild the economy by kick-starting job creation,” Hudak said.

“To do that, we must freeze spending and wages, then fix the cost drivers beneath them, with measures like our Ability to Pay Act that brings salary and benefit settlements back into line with what taxpayers’ can actually afford. Government employee unions continue to receive pay increases exceeding inflation and the average wage growth in the broader economy. Public sector wages have increased by 50 per cent since 2003 – or $60 billion total for this year.

“We call it Freeze, Fix, Reduce’ but instead all we’re getting from this government is ‘dither, duck and run’. They have spent themselves into a corner and are just making it up as they go.”

In November the government will bring forward its annual Fall Economic Statement. “It’s crucially important for the government to do the right thing, on behalf of half a million unemployment Ontarians, and reverse course.

“They need to implement the bold, new and transformative ideas that PC Caucus has mapped out to return Ontario to balanced budgets and bring new job-creating opportunities to the Ontario people because they have no plan,” Hudak concluded.