Blog

  • A Freight Train of Runaway Spending

    I could raise the scary specter of a coalition in Ontario, instead I will settle for the fact that this gives us even more reason to soundly defeat the Liberals.

    From National Post

    the prospect of Ms. Horwath’s NDP holding the balance of power in a minority government is one that should not be taken lightly by the province’s voters. The NDP, its platform says, would undo the corporate-tax reductions that have been the focus of the Liberals’ competitiveness agenda. It would embrace Buy Ontario schemes. It would remove the HST from electricity and heating bills, which is not terribly consistent with its plan to encourage public transit use by freezing fares. (Speaking of inconsistent, it would also cap gasoline prices.)
    As detrimental to the economy as any of these things would be, consider as well the prospect of Mr. McGuinty being at the negotiating table when the NDP outlined its conditions for support. The Premier, to put it bluntly, is a turtler. Whether it’s proposals for a natural gas plant in Oakville, changes to the sexual education curriculum, or the province’s remarkably supple rates and times that form part of its peak-timing electricity-price plan, Mr. McGuinty has shown a distinct flair for backing away from a fight.
    It’s enough to make one suspect Ms. Horwath would relish sitting across from Mr. McGuinty at minority-government bargaining time. Accept these terms, sir, or I will ask again that you do so.

  • Priority Number One is Jobs, Jobs, Jobs



    On the weekend the Ontario PC Party released their five-point plan for job creation to get Ontario working again.


    • Treat energy policy as economic policy – not as a social program.


    • Train 200,000 more skilled workers by expanding the apprenticeship system.


    • Reduce taxes on job creators.


    • Eliminate job-killing red tape.


    • Lowering taxes on families so they have the confidence to spend  again.


    These priorities are in clear contrast with the Liberal plan to make Ontario a green jobs leader. One plan is a realistic way to re-energize job growth and the other is a expensive scheme to subsidized an entire sector that has not come to maturity yet. Now I don’t know about you, but I rather vote for a plan that has practical solutions for the problems confronting the province.
  • Green Jobs Turn Out to Be a Disaster

    From Ottawa Citizen

    The fact that power derived from the green energy act forms such a small proportion of Ontario’s power generation mix raises questions about the pace of the Liberal party’s signature subsidy plan, known as the Feed-in Tariff (FIT).
    Those questions were amplified late this week when the National Post revealed that a solar plant used for a Liberal campaign photo op days earlier had temporarily shut down production.
    When pressed on the issue, McGuinty subsequently explained that the company “went through their inventory faster than expected.”
    But even staunch proponents of renewable energy say there are obvious problems with the Liberal plan, which pays green energy producers above-market rates on 20-year contracts in return for buying up to 60 per cent of their project materials domestically.
    The heavy incentive (also known as micro-FIT for smaller installations by homeowners) was designed to kick-start an entirely new green energy manufacturing cluster in Ontario.
    However, bottlenecks in the system, doubt surrounding the future of the program and a challenge to the domestic-content provision at the World Trade Organization, have reduced to a trickle the number of projects becoming a reality in the province.
    No less an authority than Ontario’s environmental commissioner, Gord Miller, remarked on the slow progress of the program this summer, telling a press conference, “There’s been an awful lot of discussion about something that’s fairly modest so far, I’d say.”

    Simply put the Liberals don’t seem to have any problem treating economic policy as a laboratory experiment. Meanwhile, the taxpayers have to pick up the tab for technology that has not yet come to maturity. No government can subsidize their way to prosperity.

Tory Redux

Stay informed with curated content and the latest headlines, all delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now to stay ahead and never miss a beat!

Skip to content ↓