Ontario tackles deficit in budget while protecting services
Posted Mar 29, 2011 04:11:46 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Ontario Liberal budget offers few pre-election goodies as it tackles the deficit while protecting core services from the Opposition Tories.
Finance Minister Dwight Duncan focused limited new spending to an expanded breast cancer screening program, new risk management programs for farmers and 60,000 new spaces at colleges and universities.
Duncan says the budget strikes an appropriate balance between spending on vital services and paying down the deficit, which is projected to drop to $16.3billion in 2011-12.
The finance minister used the budget to warn voters that Progressive Conservative promises of tax cuts would mean massive layoffs of teachers, nurses and doctors.
However, the Opposition parties say today’s budget does nothing for Ontario families struggling to deal with the HST and skyrocketing electricity bills.
Conservative leader Tim Hudak says the Liberals continue to increase spending.
And he says the only way for Premier McGuinty to eliminate the deficit will be to raise taxes again after the October 6th election.
Hudak says his party will give families real tax relief but he won’t say exactly how or how it would pay for it.
NDP leader Andrea Horwath says despite putting the HST on everyday essentials, McGuinty is still giving a multi-billion dollar handout to rich corporations.
She says the premier’s brother David, a Liberal M-P, is calling for an end to federal corporate tax cuts and he’s got it right.
Health care remains the number one item in the budget, eating up 42 per cent of program spending.
The government has allocated $15million over three years to expand breast cancer screening to women as young as 30 who are at high risk of the disease.
There is also a promise of a new mental health and addictions strategy with $93 million in funding, but not until 2013-14.
And it provides $100 million a year for an existing program to improve pharmacy services for those covered under the Ontario Drug Benefit Plan — mainly seniors and those on social assistance.
Finance Minister Dwight Duncan says the province has also set aside $600- to $800 million over three years to help cash-strapped hospitals eliminate their deficits.
