NDP still don't get it.

I have to tell you that these political leaders will say and do anything to get votes. The NDP plan to remove the HST from our Hydro rates might be a pipe dream.

The reason I say that is because when the McGuinty Liberals decided to merge the PST with the GST, the Federal Government took over the collection of the combined tax. A couple of years ago, the late Jim Flaherty as an incentive to the Ontario government gave billions to Ontario to merge the 2 taxes into the HST. Both the NDP and the PC Party voted against the merger of the tax system.

For the HST to be removed from our Hydro rates, and for that matter any changes to what's charged HST, is made at the Federal level. The Province has to request that Ottawa make any changes to the HST, and given the fact that Ottawa gave billions to Ontario, don't expect that to happen anytime soon.

So Andrea Horwath and promise to remove the HST if elected, but that would most likely be a promise she won't be able to follow through on.

Hudak can't cut a break!

I received this press release in my inbox this morning......

TORONTO, May 10, 2014 /CNW/ - PC candidates and grassroots members from across Ontario are clearly uncomfortable with Tim Hudak's promise to fire 20 percent of their teachers, fire fighters and first responders, undermining his already-weak leadership.

Hudak has said if he gets a chance he will fire 100,000 people who deliver frontline services like paramedics, food safety inspectors, and early child education workers.

Harold Wilson, PC candidate in Thunder Bay Atikokan, is having a hard time supporting his leader's position. He told people his constituency would be exempt from these cuts and states: "I don't see this as having an impact here." He then goes on to contradict Hudak, who says the cuts will definitely include teachers. Wilson says he would like to see no cuts made to providers of frontline services. (http://bit.ly/1oBxfVx)

This hasn't been the only challenge to Hudak's leadership recently. Frank Campion, PC candidate in Welland says he will "fight tooth and nail" against his own leader's plan for Welland hospital closures.  (http://bit.ly/1ldpwMs)

And the Windsor Star reports "The new Ontario PC party candidate in Essex shares the same view that got the last one kicked out." More dissention in the ranks. (http://bit.ly/1sdOwEt)

Former Progressive Conservative candidate Tamara Johnson says she may throw her hat in the provincial election as a Libertarian candidate in the Thunder Bay-Superior North riding. She doesn't support Hudak's leadership. (http://bit.ly/RzrXia)

Tim Hudak, PC leader for now?

To be honest the source was the NDP, so I really don't know how true this above is. Don't forget it's an election and all of the parties tend to lie about nearly every issue.

The 3 Political Stooges

In order to show that I'm not just picking on poor Tim Hudak and the PC Party, here are some funny pictures from the first week on the campaign trail.

Tim Hudak, Job Killer!

I received the information below from another blogger which I found to be very interesting. It has to deal with Hudak's plan to create 1 milllion jobs, while cutting 100,000 public sector jobs.

Have a read and please feel free to post your comments.

Posted by Toby Sanger
May 11th, 2014
 
It’s a bit of a headscratcher.

First, Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak builds his whole campaign around a promise to create one million new jobs in Ontario over eight years, then one of his first campaign commitments threats  is to reduce the number of Ontario government employees by 100,000, together with a wage freeze for every government workers and lower spending in every area except health care.   As revealed by David Reevely, in keeping with his choice of great locations for campaign announcements, Hudak made this austerity announcement at a Barrie country club, where the initiation fee is $9,999 for a single membership, with close to another $4,000 or so in annual fees and expenses.
Hudak claims eliminating 100,000 jobs is equivalent to a reduction of ten percent.  Cutting the number of government employees by ten per cent would literally decimate the Ontario public service (1).   But would a 100,000 cut really cut the Ontario public service by just ten percent?

There are in fact less than 100,000 direct provincial “government employees” in Ontario. According to the latest data from Statscan there were only 92,700 provincial general government employees in Ontario in 2011 (2).  But of course Hudak uses the term “government employees” to attack the whole public sector, to feed the false impression that government is stuffed with overpaid bureaucrats who don’t deliver real public services.
In reality, Hudak would also eliminate tens of thousands of jobs in education, post-secondary education, health care and social services, vindictively attacking those who campaigned against him in previous elections even though these are areas in need of increased investment to address economic and social challenges.   Most provincial public sector employees work in these areas, with 236,500 Ontarians working in health care and social services, 139,600 in universities, colleges and trade institutions, and 265,800 in local schools.   This adds up to 734,600.
To this we can add provincial government business enterprises, such as the LCBO and Hydro (another 41,300), which wouldn’t escape Hudak’s axe, even though they’re profitable.  However, Hudak says he’d spare nurses (107,900 working in Ontario, according to the 2011 Census National Household Survey table 99-012-X2011033), doctors (31,000) and policemen (32,400).  About 2/3 of police officers work at the municipal level, so this brings the total affected Ontario public sector workers down to 626,200.  So on this basis, Hudak would eliminate about one of every six public sector employees of those not in his protected occupations.
When pressed further the CBC, a senior Hudak advisor said they’d also cut funding to municipal governments.   Now if this led to job cuts at the municipal level, with their employment of 274,600 (less ~22,000 police officers) the total affected would amount to about 879,000.  However, the base is calculated, even including the municipal workforce, Hudak’s plan would eliminate at least one in nine of every affected group of public sector employees in Ontario, still worse than the Roman army’s practice of decimation.  
It’s not clear how Hudak would force municipalities to layoff a tenth of their workforce: provincial transfers in Ontario amount to only a quarter of the total municipal revenues (3) and most of these are specific purpose program transfers and some are the flow through of federal transfers through provinces.  Would he force municipalities to slash their workforce as a condition of receiving any funding, slash provincial funding by half to force thoem to make these cuts, or use provincial powers over municipalities to issue some sort of dictatorial decree that municipal governments must deciminate their workforces by a tenth? 
Why is he so intent on destroying (public sector) jobs when his whole campaign is built around creating a million jobs?  Of course he wants to create private sector jobs, but his austerity program ignores the fact that spending by public sector employees also generates tens of thousands of jobs in the  private sector.   Every public sector jobs at the state and local level generates about 0.67 jobs in the private sector, according to Jared Bernstein, former chief economist to U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden.  Similar multipliers likely apply to Canada, which means Hudak’s elimination of 100,000 “government employees” would also lead to the destruction of 67,000 jobs in the private sector.
This elimination and destruction of 167,000 jobs in Ontario, all for the sake of austerity and more corporate tax cuts, would increase unemployment levels in Ontario by an astonishing 30 percent, from current levels of 556,000  to 723,000 and increase the unemployment rate from its current rate of 7.4 percent to 9.6 percent (4).  That would be a record level of unemployment for Ontario, with its jobless rate higher than the worst unemployment rate Ontario reached during the recent economic crisis and recession (9.4% in June and August 2009).
In fact, these policies would force Ontario back into recession.   It really is crackpot economics.   Austerity policies have been discredited around the world.
Apparently Hudak has a plan he’ll be releasing later to show how he’ll create jobs.  All we know so far is some of it involves corporate tax cuts that will supposedly magically create jobs.  As Canadian corporations wallow with over $600 billion of excess cash in their bank and offshore accounts, it’s clear corporate tax cuts have done little to nothing to either stimulate investment or create jobs in Canada.
In the only other province in Canada that planned to cut corporate taxes down to 8 percent, the CEO of the New Brunswick Business Council had this to say:

“I think we were proven out that those (corporate tax) reductions didn’t stimulate the economy the way that they anticipated. So business council members believe that similarly returning the corporate tax to where it had been will not cripple the economy given that we didn’t see the gains from the reduction.” ”We didn’t go out publicly because we didn’t want to hang (former Premier) Shawn (Graham) out to dry but we didn’t think that (the corporate tax cut) was a move the economy needed at the time.”
“[The business] council is comfortable with the idea of increasing the corporate income tax rate back to the previous levels (of 13%) under the guise of keeping it competitive,” Holt said.  ”It doesn’t have to be the lowest in Canada but we still believe it has to be at a competitive level with other provinces and states but we think there is room to move.”

New Brunswick’s Conservative government only partly heeded this request , restoring its corporate tax rate to 12%, but not up to the previous level of 13% the NB Business Council has suggested.
By any rational economic or fiscal perspective, Hudak and his fellow-minded politicians are living in a bizarro world, still planning discredited austerity policies that would plunge Ontario back into a recession with possibly the highest unemployment rate in two decades, while planning deep corporate tax cuts that most corporations neither need and many don’t even want.
More to come on all this…
_____________________________
1. The word “decimate” comes from the Roman army’s practice of killing out of every ten soldiers in their mutinous ranks.
2. Unfortunately and ironically, Hudak’s friends in Ottawa cuts t0 Statistics Canada led to the termination of these reports on public sector employment, so we don’t have more up-to-date numbers, but Labour Force Survey figures (Cansim series 282-0011) show that overall public sector employment in Ontario was 2.2% lower in the first four months of 2014 than in the same period of 2011.
3. Statistics Canada Cansim table 385-0024, also sadly terminated, latest figures for 2008.
4. Incidentally, this is almost exactly the same  increase in unemployment (-165,000 jobs) Jim Stanford recently calculated would result from Hudak’s spending cuts.

The Toronto Sun - An extension of the PC Party?

Christina Blizzard of the Toronto Sun wrote a very partisan piece in the May 9th, 2014 edition of the newspaper. Here's the link to the article:

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/05/08/unilever-closure-proof-ontario-needs-hudaks-job-growth-plan

Unilever announced yesterday that they are closing their plant in Brampton, and putting 280 people out of work. Blizzard and her PC masters would have you believe that the reason they are closing their plant is because of high hydro rates, and high taxes in Ontario. This is far from the truth, and to prove this one just has to do a simple Google search on all the plants that Unilever has closed in the United States over the past several years to see that it's not just a result of higher energy costs.

Another simple Google search produced another article from the Toronto Sun written by Shawn Jeffords, on May 8th, 2014 and states the following:

"Logistical issues caused the death-knell of Unilever Canada’s local food mix facility, the plant director says. When we look at the facts, unfortunately for the employees of Bramalea, 80% of what we produce here is actually shipped back to the U.S.,” he said. “It just made sense to make the investment in the U.S.”

Production will move south to Independence, Missouri.

Browning said the company broke the news at a 10 a.m. meeting held off-site for all employees. They were told the plant will ramp down operations in 2015 and ultimately close in March 2016.

“Our thoughts are with the employees today,” he said.

The company did not request any financial aid or incentives to stay from the provincial or federal governments, Browning said, adding they wouldn’t be asking for any in the future.

“When we looked at the logistical issues it really wouldn’t matter what the incentives were to stay in Ontario,” he said. “When 80% of our consumer base is in the U.S., that was the overriding factor.”

Browning said the company had not ruled out finding some employees work at Unilever sites in Simcoe and Rexdale. Those sites will not be affected by this closure, he said.

Nowhere in this article does it state that they are closing the plant because of high energy costs, or the possible Ontario Pension Plan that Blizzard would have you think. Blizzard, much like Sue-Ann Levy have such a hate on for anything Liberal that they can't be called reporters in my eyes. They twist the facts to support the policies of the Conservative movement at the Municipal, Provincial, and Federal Levels of government.

Tim Hudak and the PC party if elected plan to cut 100,000 public sector jobs. How does that fit into the PC's plan to create 1 million jobs, when you start off my cutting 100,000?

Here's the link to the article: http://www.torontosun.com/2014/05/09/hudak-vows-to-cut-100000-public-sector-jobs

At the Toronto Sun you have one "reporter" claiming all these false facts, while another "reporter" actually reporting facts regarding the Unilever closing from the plant manager.

Tim Hudak lacks proper leadership

A sign of a good leader is a person who can connect with other people. A good leader is one who takes the time to listen to other people. A good leader is a person who stands behind their own people, and does not throw them under the bus. A sign of a good leader is not Tim Hudak!

An incident took place last year involving former PC, MPP of Thornhill, Peter Shurman. The incident involved Mr. Shurman claiming living expenses, which every MPP is entitled to claim if he or she lives 50km away from Queens Park. While Mr. Shurman was the elected MPP for Thornhill, he did not live in the riding and was therefore entitled to claim the living expense.

When the story broke in the media this created a firestorm for Hudak, as he was going after the government for all the money they've wasted over the years. Mr. Hudak claims that he knew nothing about Mr. Shurman claiming the living expenses, and had asked him to pay the money back. Mr. Shurman claims that he spoke with Mr. Hudak and advised him that he was in fact claiming the living expense months before the story broke. I know this boils down to a he said, he said type of situation.
As a result of this being revealed, Mr. Hudak removed Mr. Shurman as Finance Critic for the PC party, a position that Mr. Shurman held for several years, and was extremely good at.

Mr. Shurman felt that Mr. Hudak throw him under the bus to save his own political butt, and therefore resigned as of December 31st, 2013. Recently Mr. Shurman was on a local radio station giving his own personal assessment of this election, and he said he felt that Ontario is headed for another Liberal Minority Government. It should be noted that Mr. Shurman is now a private citizen who gets paid to give his assessment on political issues.

Needless to say this started a storm on social media and calls for Mr. Shurman to take back his assessment, and also to refrain from talking about the election. The storm I'm talking about is mainly from the PC party and the campaign team of Tim Hudak. All of this could have been avoided had Mr. Hudak been honest about his meeting with Mr. Shurman, and stood beside one of his loyal and most trusted MPP's. Instead Mr. Hudak did what any power hungry person would do, and that was to throw Mr. Shurman under the bus.

Is this the type of person we want leading the Province? Is this the type of leader the people of Ontario deserve? Mr. Hudak will do and say anything to get elected, and he knows that if he does not win this election his days as leader of the PC Party are numbered.

Leadership is about team work, and that my friends is something that Mr. Hudak lacks.

Ontario Pension Plan...Say What!!!

So the Ontario Liberals want to introduce a Ontario Retirement Pension Plan, or ORPP for short. Is this a good idea or a bad idea?

Currently all working people in Canada will receive upon retirement a Canada Pension Plan which in today' dollars pays a whopping $ 6800.00 a year on average. The Prime minister when he retires will receive over $ 200,000 per year as part of his retirement package. Now this does not include Old Age Security or any supplement that the Federal government might give you.

As you can see from the picture above, the Ontario Liberals if re-elected will put into place a made in Ontario retirement plan whereby those working for a company that does not have a pension plan of their own would have to contribute 1.9% of their earning towards the ORPP.

Some think that this is another tax grab by the Ontario Liberals, while others think it's a very good idea. I'm on the fence when it comes to the ORPP. I feel that if you want to contribute to the ORPP then you should have that option. It should not be forced upon you by the Provincial Government.

I do have to give the Liberals credit in coming up with this plan as part of their election platform. In Quebec they've had a Provincial Pension plan for years, and it's worked very well for them. So readers what's your take on the ORPP? Good idea, or bad idea?