LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO

Official Record of Debate
(Hansard)

Provincial Budget Debate
June 17, 2004

Mr Ted Arnott (Waterloo-Wellington): I feel privileged to have the opportunity this evening to speak briefly against the government's Bill 83, the budget bill, on behalf of my constituents in Waterloo-Wellington.

It was with a great sense of anticipation that the House convened on May 18 to hear the Treasurer deliver this first Liberal budget in many years. Certainly the government was expected to respond in an appropriate way to the comments and commitments the Liberal Party had made during last September's provincial election campaign. Promises had been made; promises were expected to be kept. Numerous interest groups had supported the Liberals and they expected to be placated. It was payback time.

This is the situation the Treasurer found himself in, having survived the controversy over his service as a director and chair of the audit committee of Royal Group Technologies, a firm which is apparently under investigation by the Ontario Securities Commission and the RCMP -- another shoe that has yet to drop.

As is our custom in this place, members assembled in the Legislature to hear the Treasurer's speech. Normally the galleries for a budget speech are packed. This time, many of the seats were curiously empty. The pages did an extraordinary job of quickly delivering the budget documents to the members. To say the least, I was shocked when I opened my budget speech and budget papers. Mr Speaker, you will recall the outrage that was expressed within this House that day, which was a harbinger of the reaction we would encounter in coffee shops and on Main Streets as the people of Ontario learned of its contents.

My first public statement was to suggest that the Liberal government's credibility was severely damaged. If anything, I understated the degree to which people felt betrayed, because last fall the Liberal Party campaigned with a TV advertisement in which their leader, Mr McGuinty, promised he wouldn't raise taxes. Because this ad was broadcast hundreds of times, in effect he made the promise hundreds of times.

With the May 18 budget, he broke that promise with a brand new tax on income -- not a premium, which they shamelessly and disingenuously continue to call it, but a new tax that they claimed they would put into health care.

With their unwillingness to embrace fiscal discipline, they are breaking yet another key covenant with the people. They promised to balance the budget; instead, they are adding to the provincial debt every year until at least 2008. In doing so, they are leaving our children and grandchildren an even greater financial burden because of their selfish inability to provide the appropriate fiscal leadership we need. Every household, every business, every farm, every going concern has to live within its means and balance its books, and the people of Waterloo-Wellington expect nothing less from this government.

Let's take a moment to deal with the government's defence. They claim they inherited a big deficit that they didn't know about; they assumed office seven months into the fiscal year and spending patterns were established. Nothing could be done. They hadn't found the washrooms yet.

Anyone who has served in government knows this is pure bunk. Our government, in its final year in office, presented the people of Ontario with a projected balanced budget. Admittedly, we might have chosen a more traditional venue for the budget speech, but the fact remains that every budget is a projected budget for the coming fiscal year. That spring and summer, the Ontario economy endured three significant shocks that no one could have foreseen, that no government could have avoided. One identified incidence of mad cow disease in Alberta devastated rural Ontario. A massive electricity meltdown originating in the state of Ohio effectively shut down our industry for a week with negative consequences for our GDP and obviously our revenues. A health care crisis that originated in China, severe acute respiratory syndrome or SARS, tested the limits of our health care system and killed our summer tourism season.

Did all of this have an impact on our budget in-year? Absolutely it did. But the fundamental question the House needs to consider is, does this absolve the government of responsibility for taking action when it took office in October? There were still five months left in the fiscal year, which of course ends March 31. Surely there was a responsibility on the government from the day it took office to deal with this fiscal challenge. I believe they could have balanced the budget if they had wanted to, if the political will had existed. They chose not to do so.

My colleague the member for Kitchener-Waterloo has served as our health critic since the election and has been passionate and tireless in supporting chiropractic patients, optometry patients and physiotherapy patients since this budget insulted them by taking away their OHIP coverage for these needed health services. No matter how you cut it, this is two-tier health care: one tier for the well-to-do and one where the poor can do without. There is still time for the government to extricate itself from this mistake, and they would do well to listen to the former Minister of Health.

I am conscious of the fact that this is a time-allocated debate. The government House leader has placed severe constraints upon the time allocated for this debate. Other members of our caucus wish to speak as well, and I don't want them to be shortchanged.

There is one other thought I wish to express to the House tonight. A few weeks ago in a column by Ian Urquhart in the Toronto Star, reference was made to the fact that in the 1995 election campaign I refused to sign the taxpayer protection pledge. This is true. In fact, I was the only Conservative candidate out of 130 who was unable to sign this pledge.

The pledge contained three elements: We were asked to commit to never raising taxes unless we were given explicit permission through a referendum; balance the budget within five years; and institute pay penalties for cabinet ministers if these promises weren't met. We were to bring this legislation in immediately.

The reason I didn't sign it was very simple. In 1994 and 1995, cynicism about politics and politicians was pervasive in our political culture, not unlike today. In response to this, from the time of my nomination meeting in 1995 through the pre-writ period and into the election campaign, I said hundreds of times to my constituents: "I will not be making any promises except one, that being to serve you to the very best of my ability if I'm re-elected."

It's true that I had misgivings about the idea of referendums on taxes because this is foreign to our British parliamentary traditions. Parliaments exist, and have existed for centuries, to set the appropriate level of tax for the public good. We accept responsibility for the decisions we make and are accountable to the people at the ballot box at election time. In any case, I had a choice to make and that was to compromise my integrity, sign the pledge and go along with the crowd or keep my word to my constituents. I chose the latter, and I don't regret it. Perhaps I paid a price, but if I did, it was worth it.

The Premier had the same choice. I believe as a candidate in the 1995 election he had refused to sign the pledge just as I did. I believe he signed it in 1999 as leader of the Liberal Party. With great fanfare and flourish at a staged political event in the 2003 election with the cameras rolling, he cynically signed it again, knowing full well he had absolutely no intention of keeping it.

I must confess, on a personal level I like Dalton McGuinty and always have since I first met him in 1990. I find it hard to believe he would compromise his reputation to this extent to acquire power. He himself has said repeatedly, "I didn't go into politics to make the people more cynical," yet this will be his lasting legacy.