Dalton McGuinty told me so and now I find out from Don Drummond that it was all a lie.
I would have been inclined to think Drummond was the liar, except for the fact that McGuinty now says Drummond is the one telling the truth. Imagine.
What a fool I've been.
A little history.
Readers will know that prior to the last Ontario Election I was an outspoken critic of our Premier - the Rt Hon. Dalton McGuinty. It will therefore come as no surprise that I did not cast my ballot for his candidate in my local Riding.
Once the Election was over however, and he was returned to power , I accepted my fate and indeed conceded that the Electorate At Large - EAL - knew better than me and therefore I turned my thinking around 180 degrees. McGuinty had been correct all along.
When he said, as he did in the many months leading up to the last Election, that Ontario never had it so good - post Election, I realized that the man knew of which he spoke. When he said manufacturing was booming in this Province, that new jobs were being created all over the place - the guy had to be right and I had mistakenly voted against him.
When he told us Green was good - that it not only saved the environment - but created 000's of new jobs - post election, I was now on side. The People had spoken and who was I to go against the grain.
Hydro rates too high - it was all nonsense.
Ontario's new Have-not Status was good for us since it provided us with Transfer Payments from the Feds for the first time in our long and distinguished history as a Province.
I could go on and on - but you are smart readers and will by now have gotten the drift. I was wrong to have suggested Dalton was lying - oh sorry - misleading us - he was right and I was wrong and the EAL could not - nay would not be fooled and saw the Premier for the upstanding gentleman that he was.
I say 'was' because again - that was then and this is now. With the Drummond Report - commissioned by the Premier and accepted as fact by the self same Premier - we now find out that I was right in my Pre-Election Suspicions all along.
Simply stated - the Province of Ontario is falling apart economically.
Unemployment is up - manufacturing jobs are becoming as scarce as hens' teeth. The Debt / Deficit is running out of control.
Indeed stats show that Ontario's financial situation is worse than California's a State that is considered for all intents and purposes as bankrupt. And not only that -our total debt is about $250 billion - just slightly less than Greece and yet our populations are similar. We are quickly becoming the Greece of North America.
I can feel some smirks out there - "exaggeration" I can hear some of you saying - but we'll not have long to wait to see how much of an exaggeration it is. The Ontario Budget will start to set the course to a leaner, meaner Province. And the Budget after that and the one after that will continue full speed down that road to solvency.
But just think, had Dalton and company started on this conversion earlier - say in his first term - how much less pain there would be.
I think some believe that I want to see Ontarians / Canadians lose their benefits but, in fact, the reverse is true. I want to see us all hold on to as many benefits and entitlements as possible, realizing that in order to achieve this - some restraint is needed on the part of each and every one of us. The longer it takes to seriously address our fiscal imbalance, the greater the loss of these benefits and privileges will be.
Dalton McGunity and his cohort have fiddle away years in delaying action but more sadly, they have gone off on expensive tangents - such as his Green Energy Program which has made our Debt Situation even bleaker, all the while encouraging business to move elsewhere to escape dramatically rising energy costs.
So I feel betrayed - but not surprises.
As I see it...
'K. D. Bell'
