Since Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne keeps telling anyone who will listen she wants a meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a word of advice.
It probably wasn’t a good idea for her to have come out of the last meeting she had with Harper characterizing him as a smirking frat boy who didn’t care about the retirement dreams of Canadians.
Particularly so since Wynne didn’t characterize their meeting in that way when they actually had it in December, 2013.
Instead she waited for five months — until the middle of the 2014 Ontario election campaign — to drop her time-delayed stink bomb on Harper, claiming he “smirked” before she outlined her idea of an Ontario pension plan, and said people should save for their own retirements.
In response, an aide to the prime minister told the Toronto Star Wynne misrepresented their meeting, as evidenced by her positive comments emerging from it when it actually occurred, adding she was presumably trying to divert attention from her party’s dismal record of fiscal mismanagement in Ontario.
In fact, Wynne does this all the time.
She’s a master of distracting attention away from the Ontario Liberals’ appalling record in government — complete with more billion-dollar scandals than you can shake a stick at, along with huge annual deficits and record debt.
In fact “running against Ottawa” is a time-honoured tradition among provincial premiers, especially when they can’t defend their own records in government.
For months, Wynne had been complaining the feds shortchanged Ontario by $640 million in 2014 transfer payments, until Federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver announced earlier this month that Ontario’s transfers would be increased by $1.25 billion in 2015.
The real problem is there isn’t enough public money in Canada to get us out of the massive sinkhole of debt the Liberals have created since taking over the government in 2003.
As Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk noted in her latest report, even if Wynne manages to balance the budget by 2017-2018 as she has promised, Ontario’s debt at that point will be $325 billion, or $23,000 for every man, woman and child.
Meanwhile, the province’s debt-to-GDP ratio — a key indicator of overall economic health — has skyrocketed to 40% under the Ontario Liberals, dramatically up from 26% just a decade ago.
Worse, this massive level of debt acts as an anchor on the provincial economy.
It’s no accident, for example, that Ontario’s unemployment rate has been above the national average since January, 2007 — meaning for eight consecutive years by next month.
That’s Ontario’s big problem right now, not whether Wynne gets a meeting with Harper.
But this strategy of diverting blame is par for the course for Wynne and the Ontario Liberals, who routinely blame everyone but themselves for the problems they created through their chronic mismanagement and waste.
Wynne’s ‘blame Harper’ act getting old | EDITORIAL | Editorial | Opinion | Toron
Joanne BlueLikeYou @JoanneBLY @sunlorrie OntariOwe's "debt-to-GDP ratio...has skyrocketed to 40% under the Ontario Liberals..up from 26% just a decade ago" Yikes! #onpoli
Kathleen WynneVerified account @Kathleen_Wynne 