On Thursday, March 26, we released a report card grading Doug Ford’s budget on his progress at fixing five very important issues facing Ontarians - health care, education, housing, affordability, jobs.
Did this budget pass the test? No.
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The Conservatives' budget did not pass the test to make everyday costs like rent and groceries cheaper.
Under a Doug Ford government, life in Ontario has gotten very expensive. Rent keeps going up. Food prices are very high, and at the same time, big landlords and grocery giants are making nice profit.
We would have liked to have seen the government intervene and bring in stronger rent control to stabilize rent, and meaningful action on grocery price gouging. But they didn’t.
In fact, there is no new meaningful policy in this budget that is going to make life more affordable. The budget delivers nothing for renters and nothing to bring down grocery prices.
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The Conservatives' budget did not fix the big problems facing health care
While we did see a decent increase in funding to build more hospitals, including long-term infrastructure investments, the investment in primary care and hospital operating funding is below the rate of inflation.
What this means is the issues we see in hospitals today will be the same issues we see in health care and hospitals tomorrow. A million people in Toronto will not have a family doctor. Emergency rooms will remain overcrowded. Staffing shortages will continue.
- The Conservatives' budget is bringing in cuts to public schools.
Come September, kids will be going back to school to overcrowded classrooms and teacher shortages.
They’ll be sweating it out in hot classrooms with no A/C and being told not to drink the water because there’s lead in the pipes because there’s no new funding to fix schools, despite a school repair backlog of over $17 billion.
We would like to have seen investment in health care and education, not cuts.
- The Conservatives are cutting funding to post-secondary education.
Since Ottawa announced caps on international students two years ago, colleges and universities have laid off 8,000 to 11,000 staff and shut down classes, departments and in some cases entire campuses to reduce costs.
After ignoring the problem for far too long, the Conservatives have allocated $1.6 billion more a year to the universities and colleges sector in this budget.
It's not enough. Ontario has lagged embarrassingly behind all other provinces in per-student funding for years, and while this investment will close the gap a bit, Ontario is still dead last by a long shot.
Ontario is also making colleges and universities more expensive to attend by permitting colleges and universities to increase tuition, and changing OSAP to mostly a grant program to mostly a loan program. Ontario tuition rates are already the highest in the country, and now they’ll be even higher.
Students from low- moderate- and middle-income households will be forced to make that impossible choice between not going to school, delaying school, or going further into debt at a time when youth unemployment is very high.
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The Conservatives are falling woefully short on addressing the housing crisis.
Housing is too expensive to rent or buy. Homelessness is just getting worse. Housing starts are plummeting, and are well below target.
We would have liked to have seen a real plan to get the government back into the job of building affordable housing, along with changes to speed up the construction of housing we need, such as affordable rental, senior and student housing.
What we got was a $347 million cut to the Municipal Affairs and Housing ministry, which funds affordable housing. We also got an HST cut on all new home sales, instead of just a HST cut for first-time home buyers. This is bad for two reasons: it means we’re losing valuable tax revenue, and first-time home buyers have lost their small advantage when they’re competing to bid on a new property, because inventors now benefit from the very same tax break.
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The Conservatives did not pass the test to reverse unemployment and stabilize the economy.
Unemployment is a huge issue. Over 700,000 people got up this morning without a job. Youth unemployment is very concerning. The unemployment rate is sitting around 7.6 per cent.
In this budget, we wanted Doug Ford to explain how he is going to protect and create jobs and stabilize the economy.
We wanted to see stronger Buy Ontario rules so our province’s full purchasing clout goes to giving Ontario businesses a contract. We wanted to see more strategic investment in public services and infrastructure to create good stable jobs.
Instead, this budget cuts $486 million from job creation and training and delivers no new investments in apprenticeships.
Doug Ford’s budget is putting all its eggs in the basket of programs like his tainted Skills Development Fund program and his Protect Ontario Fund – which is giving money to big business in closed door secret contracts.
- The Conservatives' budget does not stay laser focused on spending money on the things Ontarians truly need.
We have mega spas. We have studies for the fantasy tunnel. We have money in this budget for a new Ferris wheel in Niagara Falls. We have money for for-profit health care that costs a whole lot more but doesn’t improve health outcomes.
Why is Doug Ford spending so much on vanity projects, when our schools and our hospitals are overcrowded?
People expect government to spend money wisely on the right things.
I will continue to push for the changes we want to see in Ontario including:
- Affordable rent.
- More affordable housing.
- Good public schools.
- Good health care.
- Sound investment in public infrastructure and municipalities.
Measures that will actually make life more affordable - for the many, not the few.