Breaking centuries of tradition, the Ontario government released a budget yesterday at a car-parts plant with promises of more money for health and education and a property-tax cut for seniors just months before an expected election.
With the legislative chamber empty save for a lone protesting member, Finance Minister Janet Ecker rose at the Magna International plant in Brampton 50 kilometres away to release a record $71-billion spending plan critics dismissed as a publicity stunt.
“This is indeed an historic occasion, not only because of the 21st-century process of delivering this budget speech but equally so for its content,” Ecker told about 300 invited guests under the glare of TV lights.
Her presentation was punctuated by commercial-like videotaped clips from key Tory cabinet ministers, including Health Minister Tony Clement and Education Minister Elizabeth Witmer, that ran on huge video screens flanking Ecker.
Polite applause from the invited guests occasionally interrupted the unusual presentation.
As usual, reporters were locked up in a room at the Ontario legislature to pore over the document. But the “21st-century” delivery of the budget faltered, when police refused to allow reporters to leave and file their reports as is customary when the finance minister starts speaking.
Officials also admitted they forgot to “flip the switch” that opens phone lines to allow reporters inside the lockup to electronically file details of the budget to television stations, radio stations and newspapers across the country.
The budget’s contents won’t take effect until the legislature approves the Tory government’s fifth consecutive balanced budget, a process that won’t occur until May given that the house remains on Christmas break.
Despite opposition predictions the budget would contain numerous “goodies” in anticipation of an election widely expected this spring, there were few big surprises.
However, in a nod to traditional Tory supporters, seniors who own or rent homes will get an unexpected benefit. As of July, they will be reimbursed the proportion-roughly one-quarter-of their property taxes spent on public education. The government estimates the average senior would save about $475 a year at a cost of about $450 million to the provincial treasury.
Ecker said school boards would not be hurt by the decision but New Democrat Leader Howard Hampton dismissed the measure as another sop to the rich because there is no cap on the rebate.
“This is another boondoggle,” said Hampton.
By far the biggest jump in spending would be for health care, which is projected to rise to $28.1 billion in the coming year, up $1.9 billion.
That means health would account for 46 cents out of every $1 in discretionary government spending-$59.4 billion in 2003-4. Despite the expected rise in health expenditures, the proportion is slightly smaller than in 2002-2003 given the big jump in overall spending.
Under the government’s plan, total spending on public education would rise “about $500 million in the coming year to $15.3 billion. Ecker said she was accepting the advice” of a task force on how the province funds schools, adding that overall education spending is projected to increase by $1.9 billion in 2005-6 from last year’s budget plan.
“You told me that health and education are your most important priorities,” said Ecker.
Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty called the document a “phony budget chock-full of phony promises.”
“It’s just another part of this cynical government’s desperate, pathetic attempt to try to cling to power by fooling the people of Ontario.”
To finance the additional spending, the government plans to rely on robust consumer spending and higher revenues from personal and corporate taxes.
In keeping with its philosophy of cutting taxes, the government announced a series of 17 personal and corporate cuts-most laid out in previous budgets and then delayed.
Higher-income earners-those making $75,000 or more a year-will get some relief starting Jan. 1, 2005 if the legislature approves the proposed increase in the threshold for the provincial surtax.
Social activists decried the budget as “more of the same” from a government that favours the already well-off with tax cuts and does nothing for the disadvantaged.
“How can a budget be called balanced, when it does absolutely nothing for housing?” the Ontario Alternative Budget Group said in a statement.
“How can a budget be called balanced, when it drives Ontario’s least advantaged citizens deeper into poverty by refusing to increase social assistance rates that are 21.6 percent below where they were in 1994?”
The government also said it would pay up to $1 million for a helicopter for Toronto police.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
