Ontario Delivers Balanced Budget

mentalfloss

Prickly Curmudgeon Smiter
Jun 28, 2010
39,778
454
83
Boom.


Ontario to table first balanced budget since the recession on April 27

TORONTO -- Ontario's first balanced budget since the recession is set to be delivered April 27.

Finance Minister Charles Sousa announced the date today in a speech to the Empire Club of Canada, saying that gives the government room to make new investments.

Even though Ontario's Liberal government has managed to knock down a deficit that was at one point more than $20 billion, the province's debt continues to grow.

It has swelled to more than $300 billion and in last year's budget interest on that debt was more than $11 billion and was growing twice as quickly as any program spending area.

The Progressive Conservatives have accused the government of artificially balancing the budget, through the use of one-time money from asset sales and the use of a reserve fund.

Sousa has said he intends to put measures in the budget to address the red-hot housing market in the Greater Toronto Area and beyond. He is set to meet with federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Toronto Mayor John Tory on Tuesday to discuss housing in the region.

Ontario to table first balanced budget since the recession on April 27 | CTV Windsor News
 

B00Mer

Keep Calm and Carry On
Sep 6, 2008
44,800
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Rent Free in Your Head
www.getafteritmedia.com
Boom.

The Progressive Conservatives have accused the government of artificially balancing the budget, through the use of one-time money from asset sales and the use of a reserve fund.

Ah yeah.. have to agree with the Conservatives..

[youtube]arEMXG40c48[/youtube]

Cap and Trade money to balance a budget.. guess it's not about emissions, but tax revenue after all.
 

mentalfloss

Prickly Curmudgeon Smiter
Jun 28, 2010
39,778
454
83
Ah yeah.. have to agree with the Conservatives..

[youtube]arEMXG40c48[/youtube]

Cap and Trade money to balance a budget.. guess it's not about emissions, but tax revenue after all.

Yes, that's why the Conservatives are proposing a carbon tax.

 

petros

The Central Scrutinizer
Nov 21, 2008
108,915
11,195
113
Low Earth Orbit
Even though Ontario's Liberal government has managed to knock down a deficit that was at one point more than $20 billion, the province's debt continues to grow.

It has swelled to more than $300 billion and in last year's budget interest on that debt was more than $11 billion and was growing twice as quickly as any program spending area
Boom
 

Murphy

Executive Branch Member
Apr 12, 2013
8,181
0
36
Ontario
The Wynne government is desperate to blow sunshine up everyone's butt, in the (vane) hope that they can hold onto power. The Liberals only ally is Patrick Brown, leader of the PC party. He's such a putz that he will no doubt drive some votes over to the Liberals next year.
 

spilledthebeer

Executive Branch Member
Jan 26, 2017
9,296
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Here is an article illustrating yet again why we call them LIE-berals- with some comments of my own in brackets):

Debt with dishonour.

By Mike Strobel, Toronto Sun. First posted: Thursday, January 19, 2017 07:02 AM EST | Updated: Thursday, January 19, 2017 07:10 AM EST

Better sit down. Pull up a chair at the kitchen table, you and your spouse and the two kids. Keep everyone away from sharp objects. I’ve got a shocking number for you.

A Canadian family of four — yes, you — pays $7,009 a year toward government debt. JUST IN INTEREST. I don’t know what the extra $9 is for. A tip? It’s criminal. Or should be.

Together, we poor Canuck schmucks spent $62.8 billion last year servicing debt racked up by our glorious leaders, or $1,752 for every Tom, Dick and Harriet of us. Did I mention?: IN INTEREST ALONE.

(The key part of the statement is “every Cdn”-that means all the kids too-so that’s $1,752 yearly debt parents pay for each kid they have-BEFORE they feed house or clothe the kids.)

The grim stat was calculated by the Fraser Institute, an independent think-tank, in a study released Thursday. How, you ask, could it be so much? How did we get to this sorry state?

Easy. Federal and combined provincial debts jumped half a trillion dollars between 2007 and last year, to a gob-smacking $1.4 trillion.

(In other words our debt has increased by 40 percent in10 years-so much for controlling govt inflation!)

As an Ontarian, you’ll be proud to know Queen’s Park is the undisputed king of provincial debts. The Wynne government squats on a $318 billion IOU, doubled since 2007. Our share of what the feds owe is $288 billion, for a grand total of $606 billion, or about $43,300 for each man, woman and child. Only Newfoundlanders have it worse.

(Of that 500 billion dollar debt increase since 2007-Ontari-owe LIE-berals can claim well over HALF of it- so much for any claim for LIE-berals to be good money managers!)

Yes, we are governed by drunken sailors. And you felt guilty putting that hamburger on your Visa?

OK, think of it as hamburgers. A Big Mac combo meal is about $9 in Toronto. It will take 67.3 billion combos to pay off our government debts, with relish.

A Toronto cabbie would need to drive 600 billion km, at the current rate of $1.75 per, to do the same. In other words, 64 round trips to Uranus. The planet, silly. And good luck getting Uber to Uranus.

Speaking of holes, if Ms. Wynne and Monsieur Trudeau dig us any deeper, we’ll be paying off in yen or yuan.

Why should we care?

“Because there are immediate consequences,” says Fraser report author Charles Lammam. “(Interest payments) take away resources from education, health, social services or reducing taxes.”

I’ll say. Here’s a gem: Our hapless leaders’ debt payments ($21.3 billion) are nearly what the Wynne crowd collects in HST ($23.8 billion) all year. And you thought the HST paid for silly things like roads, trains and windmills.

“The sad reality is there’s no end in sight,” says Lammam. “No government is taking this seriously. (Ottawa) plans persistent deficits and Ontario has been running them for a very long time.”

How can they get away with it? It is illegal for City Hall to run a deficit — so what makes QP and Parliament Hill so special?

True, cyclists, socialists, tax-and-spend liberals and lobbyists would squeal, but, hell, so do piglets when cut off from the teat.

The racket was earsplitting when Mike Harris (remember him?) outlawed budget deficits — but the contented suckling resumed about five seconds after Dalton McGuinty became premier.

(LIE-berals always squeal with scorn when the Harris name is mentioned and point to increasing debt under the Harris regime. But it was NOT Harris debt–it was LIE-beral CHRETIEN DEBT! Prime minister Jean Chretien had hit his own debt wall and needed to cut costs-and he was fearful of how well Harris and Ontari-owe were doing so Chretien cut Harris off at the knees-drastically cutting back on federal transfer payments and forcing Harris to cut something in HIS budget. Federal payments to Ontari-owe dropped from 57 percent of health care costs down to 17 percent-yes Chretien GUTTED the single largest Cdn health care system and forced Harris to raise debts levels in the short term to cover LIE-beral greed. And Ontari-owe LIE-beral premier McGinty and successor McWynnty want to blame Harris for Ontari-owe debt? HAHAHAHA! HYPOCRITES!)

Back then, I proposed an amendment to the Criminal Code, to wit:

Subsections B and S: “No government shall accrue a debt with more than six zeroes. Penalty: Three zeroes off the salary of each member of said government.”

The proposal did not exactly receive universal acclaim in the halls of power.

No wonder. Demanding that politicians police their own abuse of our money is like asking a sex addict to stand watch at the bordello. Or a pig to guard the trough.

(And no wonder LIE-berals did not like the Strobel debt solution! LIE-berals cannot get elected without the civil service behind them- and that support requires LOTS of gravy-and we just don’t have it any more! One has only to look at the build up of civil service Hog demands this spring of 2017: college and university heads want a fifty percent raise immediately! Metrolinx boobs want the same. Clowns at ORNGE and E-health have their hands out for similar gobs of gravy. And all through 2016, we saw a succession of Hog unions offered new contracts with modest raises included-and these contracts have ALL been rejected as inadequate!)

(Now Hogs and LIE-berals are playing poker with our money-Hogs refusing to offer support to LIE-berals unless MUCH MORE gravy is GIVEN NOW and LIE-berals trying to tell union Hogs to cool it-LIE-berals offer assurances that Hogs will get their gravy after the next election. LIE-berals are being forced by public opinion to rein in their mad spending for a while and stop handing out gravy to avoid enraging the entire private sector and thus destroying LIE-beral re-election hopes.)

(LIE-berals want Hogs to shut up and sit down till after LIE-berals are re-elected and then the gravy train can roll on under LIE-beral patronage. Hogs have two problems with this-first-public rage at LIE-berals is such that LIE-berals are quite likely to lose their majority govt and either become a minority or get thrown out and replaced by another party that wont honour LIE-beral back room deals. Hogs are also worried that LIE-berals will not honour those back room deals even if they get re-elected-after all there is a reason we call the `LIE-berals`!)

(The only thing we are assured of is that if LIE-berals win another election, we will endure an unprecedented economic blood bath as LIE-berals seek to pay off all their VAST ARRAY of gravy promises to Hogs!)

mstrobel post media












Go easy on mentalfloss. He thinks 50 is more than 80, so numbers are obviously a problem for him.
 

spilledthebeer

Executive Branch Member
Jan 26, 2017
9,296
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Of course its about taxes......AND GRAVY! LIE-berals need another fifty five billion dollars to buy the love of Ontari-owe high school teachers......with another eighteen unions waiting in line for their billions as well! On a related theme-LIE-berals are desperate to buy the love of formerly LIE-beral friendly Toronto Hogs who are finding their gravy supply inadequate-and without union Hogs and Hog town in their pockets LIE-berals are toast in the next election!

Hogtown greed is so great and their entitlements so huge they really believe they are being treated unfairly! Consider this:

|Here is a nice article illustrating the hypocrisy of Toronto politicians-along with some comments of my own in brackets):

Toronto pays more than its ‘fair share’. By Jerry Agar, Toronto Sun

First posted: Monday, February 13, 2017 05:15 PM EST | Updated: Monday, February 13, 2017 05:26 PM EST
downtown

In fact, Toronto is contributing more tax money than it takes back in services, so it is either uninformed or greedy to suggest Torontonians should pay even more. (TORONTO SUN/FILES)

A popular argument across Ontario is that residents of Toronto don’t pay their fair share of taxes, based on the fact the city has a lower property tax rate than surrounding communities.

Some people outside Toronto have contacted me to say if Toronto residents paid more in property tax, the city would not need so much money from the province, which would be better for everyone.

Indeed, there are many people who love to insist that “other” people do not pay their “fair share”.

It is always these “other” people they believe need to pay more.

In the real world, few of us ever say: “You know, upon review, I am just not being taxed enough.”

If someone does ever say that to you, ask them if they have taken advantage of the opportunity afforded to them to send extra money to the treasury of one or more of the three levels of government — municipal, provincial and federal — to which we all pay taxes.

In fact few people volunteer to pay more.

Toronto itself, for example, offers taxpayers this opportunity and the Toronto Sun reported that in 2013, “218 voluntary donations added up to $19,951”.

But what we can say about Toronto taxpayers is that they pay more in provincial and federal taxes than they get back in provincial and federal services.

(This is utter NONSENSE! This is like the guy who steals your car giving you cab fare to get home! Toronto collects TEN DOLLARS per citizen for every ONE dollar given to other Ontari-owe municipalities in provincial transfer payments. Toronto home owners are the greedy pigs that motivated govt to force MPAC-the municipal property assessment rip off on us-with Toronto IGNORING ORDERS to bring its property tax rates into line with other Ontari-owe municipalities! Scarborough has TWICE the number of hospital beds per population that Durham Region does.)

(Toronto happily pays its cops more than other municipalities-with the same deal for fire firefighters and all other Toronto civil servants. Toronto happily gives out a nice array of costly grants to the "arts community" and to assorted loonie un-civil rights groups such as Black Lives Matter. If Toronto needs money so badly then maybe they ought to cut back on funding for idiot artists and lunatic lobby groups! And what about Gay Pride-nobody is throwing this man a party simply because I prefer playing with vaginas!)

(Toronto claims the Pride Parade and Carribanna bring in more money than they cost-but this looks a lot like the same sort of accounting that permitted LIE-berals to hand out HUGE bonuses for Pan Am Games because the Game facilities were completed on time and on budget-and of course they were NOT!)

(City of Hamilton is discretely launching a lawsuit against construction companies and Ontari-owe LIE-beral govt because of the number of short cuts and shoddy work that were done at the new Hamilton arena to get it ROUGHLY completed on time. With other municipalities in southern Ontari-owe lining up to discreetly claim for their own Pan Am troubles-the Games have left a trail of shoddy work and sports facility deficiencies that govt does not want to talk about!)

Studies on this issue are not regularly done, so the numbers I have are not up to date.

But I am told by a reliable source at City Hall that the situation has not changed significantly since the study I quote from below was done.

It was by University of Calgary economics professor Ronald Kneebone, in a paper published by the C.D. Howe Institute, reported in 2007 by the Globe and Mail.

People seem to have forgotten it.

It said that, “based on averages between 1986 and 2002, Torontonians each paid $1,717 more in taxes every year than they received back in provincial and federal programs and services.”

That means Toronto residents are already paying more than their “fair share.”

(NO-this is NOT what it means! Toronto taxes must be properly defined! Toronto pays LOWER PROPERTY TAXES than other municipalities. They pay HIGHER INCOME TAXES because there are so many excellent civil service jobs in Toronto thanks very much- in part- to the presencve of Queens Park in Toronto-complete with a horde of highly paid hacks, flacks and flunkies-there is also the matter of the big banks all having headquarters in Toronto and those people are laos nicely paid thanks to relentless fee gouging! There is also the ten to one funding model set up by LIE-berals which allows for higher pay of all connected to govt! One way for over governed Toronto to save would be cutting the number of numbskull city councillors in half-and cutting he number of hacks and flacks by two thirds!)

(Bring Toronto civil service Hog pay back to levels paid in surrounding municipalities and watch the rate of tax paid by Toronto denizens drop and watch Toronto tax rates plummet! Cops, parks employees and bus drivers all do the same job across southern Ontari-owe- with NO reason for Toronto workers to be paid as if they had won a municipal lottery!)

In fact, Toronto is contributing more tax money than it takes back in services, so it is either uninformed or greedy to suggest Torontonians should pay even more.

(What a fine LIE-beral JOKE! LIE-berals INSIST that those who have more money should pay more tax-and then have a melt down when that philosophy is applied to THEM!)

The second widely held belief is if property taxes were raised in Toronto it would mean the province would have more money.

(ANOTHER LIE-beral joke-tax Toronto more and civil service Hogs will go on strike more often and black mail LIE-berals into giving MORE raises in pay! Govt DRIVES inflation!)

But that money would not go to the province, since property tax stays in the city.

(Toronto grandly hands out all manner of grants and gifts and vote buying treats-if they want the reward then they should be using THEIR own money and not money thrown to them by the LIE-beral provincial govt in a gross vote buying scheme! And that`s why we are talking about this now! LIE-berals and Toronto Hogs are terrified they have pushed us too far and that LIE-berals are about to be bombed out of office in the next election-with catastrophic results for Toronto finances as the new govt balances it books by giving Toronto a FAIR DEAL for a change! LIE-berals made this mess and now they are afraid they will drown in it!)

Whether Toronto should charge property taxpayers a higher tax rate for city services is a fair topic for discussion.

But even if it did, it would not benefit Oshawa or North Bay. It would just mean people in Toronto would pay more in property taxes.

(And higher Toronto property taxes would mean MORE money to fix roads and bridges in the city-it might even mean that Toronto Housing Authority SLUMS might get some fixing up?)

The only way the rest of the province would benefit would be if property taxes were raised in Toronto and the province simultaneously reduced its contributions to the city by the same amount.

(Yeah! And that is called FAIRNESS! AND ITS COMING to a dead broke city near you!)

But how would that be “fair” since Torontonians already pay more in provincial taxes than they get back in provincial services?

(OH dear-|LIE-beral policy just backfired on itself! LIE-berals insist that those with the most money should pay a FAIR- read LARGER SHARE than poor people-and its doubly fair when the "rich" are getting a larger share of govt transfer money than others!

The fact is that provincial services in the rest of the province are funded in part by the massive amount of money flowing to Queen’s Park from Toronto.

(IN case you have not noticed-Ontari-owe is stony broke LIE-berals and their Toronto municipal friends are merely re-arranging the deck chairs on their fiscal ship Titanic.)

Instead of pointing the bony finger of blame at someone else, we should all cooperate in demanding politicians stop misspending so much of the huge amounts of money all of us already give them.

(OH there is a JOKE! LIE-berals have repeatedly won elections based entirely on turning one group against another! Its why Toronto so loyally votes LIE-beral so often! Its Toronto Hogs against the rest of the province-with that nice Toronto deal maybe coming to an ugly end if McWynnnty cannot smooth the troubled political waters and remedy her current place as most unpopular premier in Cdn history!)

Ah yeah.. have to agree with the Conservatives..

[youtube]arEMXG40c48[/youtube]

Cap and Trade money to balance a budget.. guess it's not about emissions, but tax revenue after all.
 

Danbones

Hall of Fame Member
Sep 23, 2015
24,505
2,197
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...so why do we have a central bank that's supposed to lend for capitol projects and infrastructure at no or low interest again?
 

Danbones

Hall of Fame Member
Sep 23, 2015
24,505
2,197
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Because using it limits the cash in circulation making inflation go nuts.

hahhah
and borrowing doesn't?
;)
with the plus the interest on top?
lol, you should read "the eleventh marble" by Mike Revero

some people like being debt slaves though...gives their lives meaning I guess
 

Vbeacher

Electoral Member
Sep 9, 2013
651
36
28
Ottawa
Boom.

Ontario to table first balanced budget since the recession on April 27
]

No, it actually won't. What it's done is, over the years, transfer more and more spending off the books to what it's calling a capital budget. Presto! It no longer counts! So Wynne will proudly announce a "balanced budget" then call up the bank and borrow billions more.

But don't worry. It doesn't count.

Of course, it will still add to the debt load and to interest payments.
 

petros

The Central Scrutinizer
Nov 21, 2008
108,915
11,195
113
Low Earth Orbit
hahhah
and borrowing doesn't?
;)
with the plus the interest on top?
lol, you should read "the eleventh marble" by Mike Revero

some people like being debt slaves though...gives their lives meaning I guess
You don't get it. We don't have anything to "borrow from ourselves". Hahaha