Last week, Ontario Finance Minister Vic Fedeli announced that the previous Liberal government had saddled his province with a whopping $15 billion dollar deficit. He claimed that his predecessors had deliberately tried to "cover up" a "crippling hidden deficit." Martin Regg Cohn writes that we've seen this movie before. Each incoming government accuses its immediate predecessor of cooking the books. But Fedeli's claims are simply not true:
To be clear, no one “hid” any numbers from anyone, least of all financial analysts. To be sure, Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk disagreed strongly with the last government’s interpretations, and issued a “qualified” opinion of their recent budgets. But everyone was working from the same set of numbers and cash flows at the time. That’s why Fedeli’s fulminations about outright deception — not just different interpretations — don’t add up. In fact, his Tories quietly adopted the Liberal numbers as their fiscal framework for their own wild promises before and during the last campaign.
In any case, a partisan political cover-up isn’t as simple as it sounds. As Fedeli now knows, finance ministers and political staff don’t have sole signing authority for budget numbers, because they flow through the public servants who put their names to financial statements.
What is really at the heart of the matter is how the government accounts for public service pensions. The Auditor General, Bonnie Lysyk, reported that "a massive surplus, in excess of roughly $11 billion in jointly-controlled public service pensions, was improperly counted as an asset (which auditors had approved ever since the Tories were last in power)."
Whether one puts $11 billion dollars in the credit or debit column makes a huge difference. And the panel Ford hired to review the books -- headed by Gordon Campbell -- has recommended that "provisionally" Lysyk's contention that those dollars should be counted as a debit is the proper interpretation of where things stand.
It all comes down to how you count. And, the way Fedeli counts will enable him to slash and burn.
Image: The Toronto Star
8 comments:
Gordon Campbell headed this process? I seem to remember that he was handed a set of books with two successive audited surplus budgets when elected, then proceeded to cry that the province's finances were in deplorable shape as he took an axe to corporate taxes and public services. This is another instance where one finds oneself praying that there is, indeed, a hell, and a special place in it for the ilk of Campbell, Fideli and Ford.
.. argh.. into Ontario politics - Realm of Dough Ford
cometh Gordon Campbell..
like why not Christy Clark, Ken Boessenkool, Stephen Harper
and toss in Ray Novak & Jenni Byrne too ?
Like just go into full morman CPC backflip batshit
ReformaTory overkill, overdrive ?
Get an opine from Tom Flanagan .. Kouvalis ?
Hey don't leave out the serious evangelicals
Scheer et al need some righteous backup from up above
or Stockwell Day.. & those with gawd on their side
You know, the deep think thinkers n datawankers
right out of Shakespeare's Hamlet..
stirring the witchy brew at 4:59 on Friday's
just slip slide the idiocy in under cover of fatuous Trump whining
Ah.. when did the last vestige of 'public servants'
you know.. like Caroline Mulroney
Attorney General (& supposed 'Public Servant')
totally sell out for the 1 term former Etobicoke hashish dealer
(and his infinite sex ed wisdom.. and amazing oversight wanks ?)
These folks have an agenda, Danneau, and they will shade the facts to fit that agenda.
It's remarkable to see how cheaply souls can be bought amd sold these days, sal.
It is ironic that Mike Harris should be blamed for this but he should. Dug the Slug may not like it but blaming Wynne for everything will only go so far.
Saying the previous Con government started it is weak - Mike Harris did it!!
It's standard practice to blame the previous government, Ben. But there's a difference between truth and falsehood.
yes, good old el gordo. He played the same game when he became premier of B.C. Although he had been left a surplus by the federal NDP government all he and his B.C. Lieberals (cons) did was tell everyone, especially the MSM, it was a huge deficit. He then went on to rack up the biggest deficit in the province's history. The money which the province had once made from royalties for extraction of natural resources by corporations fell, because Gordon Campbell and his crones decided they didn't have to pay as much. If you check Norm Farrell's blog, In-Sight.ca you can see how much money B.C. lost because of all the breaks el gordo and his crew of B.C. Lieberalcons gave natural resource corporations.
Just wait until Ford (el gordo) starts the royalty reduction game in Ontario. Then Ford will declare because of the Liberals and Kathleen Wynne there isnt' any money and they have to reduce funding for education. They will implement a "new" method of "allocating" the funding. Then its up to the school boards to try and make things work. Its very clever. They reduce funding but the school boards have to make the decisions and get blamed. They'll do it with health care also. They'll put things at arms length from the provincial government and blame everyone else for defunding services. Ontario has a lot to look forward to. Might want to consider re locating to another province for a few years. Just to give you an idea of how bad health care had gotten. Since Horgan and the NDP took office, they've announced 4 new hospitals will be built and boy do we every need them.
What's frustrating about this movie, e.a.f, is that we've seen it before. It's not made from an original script. It's a reun. You saw it in B.C. under Campbell. We've seen it before in Ontario under Mike Harris. And the story always ends badly.
Post a Comment