More Conservative lies and Ontario bashing

Finance Minister Joe Oliver should stop blaming Ontario: Editorial

In three and a half months on the job, federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver has missed no opportunity to berate and insult Ontario.

Finance Minister Joe Oliver is compiling a perfect record when it comes to dealing with Ontario and its government. In his three and a half months on the job, he has missed no opportunity to berate and insult the province.
 

The latest salvo came late last week in the form of an article by the minister in the Financial Post. He dismissed arguments by Ontario’s Liberal government that the province is receiving less than its fair share of federal money as “both false and sad.”
 

As usual, Oliver didn’t bother to engage with the actual facts of the situation. It’s a tedious and hideously complex subject – but the bottom line is that Ontario is being handed the dirty end of the stick when it comes to fiscal transfers from Ottawa.
 

It’s not just an abstract concern. The rigged system costs Ontario a lot of money – about $11 billion a year by one authoritative estimate – and that has a serious impact on ordinary people. It means leaner services and much more pressure on the province to cut back even further or raise taxes to do away with its $12.5-billion deficit.
 

Oliver did throw out some numbers in his Financial Post article. Transfer payments to all provinces will be a record $65 billion this year, up 56 per cent since the Conservatives were elected eight years ago. And, he wrote, federal funding to Ontario “has increased to a record $19.2 billion, up 76 per cent since we took office in 2006.”
 

Declared Oliver: “The numbers speak for themselves.” In fact, they don’t.
 

As Matthew Mendelsohn, director of the respected Mowat Centre, points out, a big part of the rise in federal transfers is due to the extension of the Canada Health Accord, which provided for annual 6-per-cent increases in health transfers. Essentially, Oliver is taking credit on behalf of the Harper government for the fact that it extended a deal worked out by the previous Liberal government of Paul Martin.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2014/07/07/finance_minister_joe_oliver_should_stop_blaming_ontario_editorial.html