People are Finally Noticing Ontario's Spending Was Not 'Out of Control'
Contemporary politics in Canada can be crazy-making. A simplistic lie, repeated often and shamelessly enough, starts to take on the air of truth. And once a particular narrative takes hold in the public mind, no matter how divorced it is from reality, it can be extremely hard to dislodge.
Case in point: per capita public revenue and spending in this province were the lowest in Canada during the previous Liberal government, while the per capita debt grew fairly modestly during a severe recession and actually declined for the last three years of that government.
This directly contradicts the prevailing narrative that public spending was "out of control" under the Liberals and that the debt has reached crisis levels. Ontario Premier Doug Ford recently went so far as to claim absurdly that the province is "bankrupt".
Disproving these strategic lies was not difficult. It's not like I had to tap into some esoteric knowledge available only to the elect. The country's finances are all public information, available for easy download from the Statistics Canada and Department of Finance websites.
Unfortunately, stating an obvious truth in the face of a hurricane-force lie has little effect. It's almost impossible to be heard through the fervour of people whose hatred of the Liberals - and particularly former Premier Kathleen Wynne - was deep, visceral and vicious.
So I have to admit that it has been gratifying to hear a chorus of other voices starting to notice the objective facts in front of their noses, even if it took a year of repeated assaults on decency by the governing Progressive Conservative Party to shake people out of their complacency.
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