‘Big Brother’ would be proud

Dear sir:
As another provincial election approaches, the citizens of Ontario are faced with a very difficult task determining what is really happening in Ontario.
If you read the material released by the government, you would be led to believe that a perfect world is being created. Millions of our taxpayers’ dollars are being spent telling us what a wonderful job the government is doing. Never before in the history of this province has so much time and staff been dedicated to image creation.
“Big Brother” in George Orwell’s novel, “1984,” would be proud of the ability of the Tory machine to turn fiction into fact.
A classical example of their expertise at distortion was creating a bill called the “Quality Education Act.” This bill cut millions of dollars from education and cut thousands of teachers’ jobs, completely demoralized the teaching profession, and then, for a joke, I presume, was called the “Quality Education Act.”
If I can find anyone who could accept that fabrication, I have some good swampland I am looking to sell.
This movement toward quality education is being pursued in the most recent budget with another $500 million slated for removal from the education budget to further improve the quality of education.
Is this making any sense to you? I could understand if they called it the “Transfer Money from Education to Tax Relief for the Well-to-Do of Ontario Act.”
When this government was elected, the provincial debt was $88 billion. It now is $113 billion. After pillaging education and health, and causing all sorts of agony to many people, taxpayers may have found this acceptable if they knew the debt were being reduced.
Instead, this government borrowed money and increased the debt so that tax relief could be given to those in the higher tax brackets. Some relief was given to lower-income earners but that was mainly eaten up by user fees downloaded from the province.
Is this making sense to you?
The latest and most clever move was to indicate they are pouring large amounts of money into health care. This is an indication of how sensitive and caring this government is. There is no mention of the fact this is far less money than they originally removed.
There also is no mention the federal government transferred $945 million to the province for health care and that only $322 million was used for that purpose in the recent budget.
I could give many more examples of factual distortion. The task for the taxpayer is to ask for the truth. I don’t feel you will get it from the Tories. Do we want another four years of confusion, excess propaganda expenditures, and increasing debt?
If not, vote for the party that has the best chance of unseating the present government and put an end to this reign of misinformation, intimidation, and confusion.
Yours truly,
Bob Fryer,
Fort Frances, Ont.