A clown show? Oh please, after 15 years of cooking the books, the Liberals are the only ones who have any idea of Ontario's true financial situation. They've been rather intransigent with the Auditor General. We DO know they understated the deficit by 75% in their most recent budget so god knows how long that's been going on.
Congratulations to the people of Ontario for voting out the worst government in Canadian history.
After 15 long and painful years being ruled by incompetent busy-bodies (a deadly combination), Ontario voters have finally come to their senses and thrown the Liberal bums out.
Under Liberal rule in Ontario, the province not only slipped from “have” to “have-not” status in Canada’s archaic redistribution system, the Liberals racked up more debt than any other sub-national government on the planet.
Young and future taxpayers in Ontario are on the hook for $350 billion, thanks to the Liberals’ out-of-control government spending, blithering incompetence, and the type of criminal activity that sends insiders to jail. Literally.
Paying interest on this provincial debt is already the third largest expense in the budget. Only the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education are better funded than the Ministry of Debt in Ontario.
The Ontario Liberal government should be charged with crimes against the taxpayer.
Perhaps the worst of the Liberals’ fiscal crimes was introducing the racket they called the “Green Energy Act” – a disastrous scheme that led to soaring electricity prices, chased away businesses and further impoverished so many struggling families across of the province.
The Liberals devised a scheme to use taxpayer funds to subsidize their friends in the so-called green energy industry, under the ruse of saving the planet. The Liberals promised voters they were paving a new path towards a new kind of economy, and would soon be a model for the world.
Instead, Ontario became the poster child for a disastrous, dysfunctional system – a cautionary tale for other Leftist governments thinking of meddling with their own green energy plots.
Under this scheme, the Liberals shut down the province’s coal energy plants and attempted to replace them with highly subsidized, and highly unreliable, wind and solar energy sources.
Wind and solar energy sources predictably punched below their weight, failing to deliver enough energy and leaving the Liberal government scrambling to build new gas plants to make up the difference. These gas plants became increasingly unpopular, but the Liberals promised to build them anyway.
Then, during the 2012 provincial election, the Liberals did an about-face. They announced they would cancel the gas plants being built in Liberal ridings. This partisan decision – which helped the Liberals win that election – left taxpayers with a $2-billion tab.
In the 2014 election campaign, Liberal deception once again helped that party win another majority government. Premier Kathleen Wynne was elected without mentioning carbon taxes on the campaign trail, only to announce the devastating taxes shortly after being elected.
Ontario was once the engine of the Canadian economy, today, the province is dysfunctional basket case.
Doug Ford and the Progressive Conservatives have their work cut out for them and getting the books back in order will be no easy feat.
Not only do they face the fiscal challenge of a lifetime in digging Ontario out of deficits and chipping away at the mountain of debt, they will have to figure out how to undo 15 years of dishonest energy schemes.
Ontario took a huge leap towards fiscal sanity in electing a down-to-earth businessman dedicated to scrapping the dubious carbon tax and sorting out the province’s finances.
As for the Liberals – their position in Queen’s Park was decimated. They didn’t receive enough votes to qualify for official party status.
Goodbye and good riddance to the Ontario Liberals. May they never come back.
MALCOLM: Energy schemes siphon power away from Liberals | The London Free Press
