Politics: Tim Hudak's Plan for Ontario if he becomes Premier

[TheTigerMaster]

I truly believe Horvath has hit on a winner when she says she'll carefully looks after the money of all Ontarians.

All three levels of government has "gravy" that can be cut. We all know this.

Rob Ford ran on that and won ... and with good reason.

That kind of message rightfully resonates with people like me.

I still have to laugh whenever I hear a Rob Ford supporter talking about waste at City Hall. This Ford guy is always going on about all the waste at City Hall. He promised to get rid of billions of dollars of waste all without cutting a single service. As usual people fell for the nonsense. When it came time to actually cut the waste, KPMG's report showed that the municipal government was very efficiently run. Yes, there was "waste" (as there is in any system), but the amounts were tiny. Any meaningful cuts in spending would have to come from cutting services.

There are two things I've leaned about waste in gov't over the past few years:
1. There's always waste.
2. The waste is rarely as much as people think it will be. Believe it or not, governments don't like shovelling bags of money into furnaces.

I truly believe Horvath has hit on a winner when she says she'll carefully looks after the money of all Ontarians.

I for one will never vote for a candidate that claims to find billions of wasted dollars. I'd hope that other people would have learned their lessons from the Ford bros. The only situation where I'll be voting for a "cut the waste" candidate is if they're able to outline where exactly the waste is and how much waste there is. If they can't do that then I'd say that their promise to cut waste is 99% nonsense.

 

[Adjei]

She's even promising more government bureaucracy to find 600 million in spending efficiencies every year.

 

[ksun]

I still have to laugh whenever I hear a Rob Ford supporter talking about waste at City Hall. This Ford guy is always going on about all the waste at City Hall. He promised to get rid of billions of dollars of waste all without cutting a single service. As usual people fell for the nonsense. When it came time to actually cut the waste, KPMG's report showed that the municipal government was very efficiently run. Yes, there was "waste" (as there is in any system), but the amounts were tiny. Any meaningful cuts in spending would have to come from cutting services.

There are two things I've leaned about waste in gov't over the past few years:
1. There's always waste.
2. The waste is rarely as much as people think it will be. Believe it or not, governments don't like shovelling bags of money into furnaces.

I for one will never vote for a candidate that claims to find billions of wasted dollars. I'd hope that other people would have learned their lessons from the Ford bros. The only situation where I'll be voting for a "cut the waste" candidate is if they're able to outline where exactly the waste is and how much waste there is. If they can't do that then I'd say that their promise to cut waste is 99% nonsense.

I wouldn't trust a KPMG report, which is very unlikely to be conducted impartially. OPG regularly hires KPMG/PWC etc to conduct benchmark studies which usually put the company in very good light. But can you trust a study on OPG's efficiency commissioned and paid by OPG itself?

I am one of those who firmly believes any level of government has significant gravy to cut. I am an employee of a "Crown Agency" myself and all I can say is that while everyone is not being paid excessively high as the hydro employees, we probably need half of the headcount for the work load we normally have. The result is most employees don't have enough work to do consistently, year after year but remain on the payroll for $60-$100k a year, until they retire. And trust me, there are hundreds of such agencies within our three levels of government.

If you want to believe those "studies" pretending our government is very efficient when it comes to headcount and money spending, that's your choice. but as someone benefiting from the system, I can tell you that there is huge waste of tax payers' money on a daily basis and there is a lot to cut if one really wants to. But hardly any politicians want to because there is little to gain in terms of support from firing people and losing "jobs" (which shouldn't have been created in the first place). To give you an example, some organization, after some "study", determined that Iphone is better than blackberry for work and therefore replaced all the old blackberries which work just fine with a shining $900 Iphone 5S for each of its 100 employees. How do you like that? And I am sure this is not just some individual cases. We pay those lawyers and consultants $800-1000 an hour to read/reply some emails and provide "comment" for some everlasting "projects" every day. Remember the new budget in which it says the government is considering selling/privatize some provincial assets (hydro, LCBO, OLG etc)? There is close to zero chance Ontario will actually do it (privatization so somehow is a F word in Ontario vocabulary) yet a famous consultancy made half a million dollars (money from you and me) for their models and presentations which in the end, is completely useless. This is how "accountable" our government really is.

Wonder why taxes are so high and building a subway is so expensive and takes so long? It is not economics that are in play now. It is how our government works nowadays.

Think our government is basically "efficient". We are just kidding ourselves.

 

[nfitz]

She's even promising more government bureaucracy to find 600 million in spending efficiencies every year.

That reminds me of one of Bob Rae's daft schemes. The replacement with the old red and white health cards with the photo health cards - supposedly to reduce fraud.

They started bringing in the new photo cards in 1995. And not long after, the auditor-general released a report showing the cost of the replacement program was going to be more than the estimated cost of healthcare fraud.

 

[Tewder]

No public service in this province should be privatized. Privatization has failed again and again and the PCs are wilfully turning a blind eye to that to promote their own twisted agendas.

Blanket statements are always so objective and helpful right?

Why would the province give up revenues from the LCBO and OLG? Why would they give control of those agencies regulating vices to private business?

How about because governments shouldn't be involved in running booze and gambling? It's called a conflict of interest... and this always leads to great things! How about letting the private sector purvey and let the government regulate and control? Wow, novel concept I know!!

You're right though that there is a 'twisted agenda' here, governments want the enormous revenue stream with little regard for whether it's legitimate/fair or not, the monopoly hold that allows them to double dip through taxation and profiteering. The result is that Canadians are exploited, playing enormously inflated prices for product (with no choice) and getting compromised services in return... you know, spending tax-payer money to promote gambling and drinking all the while ostensibly being responsible for people not doing these things (and spending tax-payer money on services for those who do these things too much). It's a mess of a system, quite frankly.

... and calling these things 'vices' is irrelevant. The moral judgement doesn't excuse the monopoly or justify the unreasonable tax grab on the part of government. They are all legal products in our society. Regulate, yes... or ban them, but any government with any shred of integrity should get out of the business of it all!

By the way, i'm not necessarily endorsing the PC platform... or condemning all public services (many of them are perfectly appropriate). I'm just tired of polarized partisanship debasing the political dialogue.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

It's probably because so much of what she says sounds identical to what Rob Ford and other conservatives has been saying. They both spew anti tax, anti transit, anti gov't waste rhetoric. Even Rob Ford has taken what is arguably a more progressive stance than the NDP RE transit issues. At least Ford supports some transit taxes on "taxpayers". I haven't heard Horwath support any revenue tools beyond increased corporate taxes. The fact that Ford Bros. have a potentially more progressive stance than the NDP regarding public transit disturbs me. I suppose this similarity in rhetoric is because both Ford and Horvath are targeting "lunch pail" workers.

Anyways I think that Horvath would have been smart to go after "downtown progressives" by not dropping the ball with the transit issue. She could have just said "we recognize the importance of public transit to working class families and support The Big Move". The NDP would have come across as the party that can work with others to achieve progressive goals. And this would have satisfied both the downtown and lunch pail progressives. The downtowners get their transit, and the lunchpailers get transit to help their "working class" family get to and from work/school. I guarantee that if she did that NDP support within the City of Toronto would not have been totally destroyed.

Anyways I suppose it's for the best that the NDP dropped the ball. It means that the PCs are less likely to win due to vote splitting. Hmm... maybe this "failure" was actually intentional, to stop the PCs (haha I doubt it)

I still have to laugh whenever I hear a Rob Ford supporter talking about waste at City Hall. This Ford guy is always going on about all the waste at City Hall. He promised to get rid of billions of dollars of waste all without cutting a single service. As usual people fell for the nonsense. When it came time to actually cut the waste, KPMG's report showed that the municipal government was very efficiently run. Yes, there was "waste" (as there is in any system), but the amounts were tiny. Any meaningful cuts in spending would have to come from cutting services.

There are two things I've leaned about waste in gov't over the past few years:
1. There's always waste.
2. The waste is rarely as much as people think it will be. Believe it or not, governments don't like shovelling bags of money into furnaces.



I for one will never vote for a candidate that claims to find billions of wasted dollars. I'd hope that other people would have learned their lessons from the Ford bros. The only situation where I'll be voting for a "cut the waste" candidate is if they're able to outline where exactly the waste is and how much waste there is. If they can't do that then I'd say that their promise to cut waste is 99% nonsense.

No offense, you'd make a horrible politician. In Ontario, the elections are won and lost in the 905 and Hamilton Suburbs. People don't like taxes and some don't like transit, but admittedly the 905 has much higher transit usage then it's us counterparts. See the importance of the DRL and either think it's for the downtown elitists (false) or it's too expensive or it does not go far enough. People don't care about ridership projections on Sheppard or density, they see an uncompleted subway and feel it should be completed. Horvath is trying to broaden the party appeal and shake the label of Hampton and Rae. She's trying to win an election, and she has to appeal to north of Saint Clair if she is going to do that.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

No offense, you'd make a horrible politician.

I don't take any offence to that. Some may take it as a compliment.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

I don't take any offence to that. Some may take it as a compliment.

People want the world, not the truth.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Hudak’s plan to upload subways is a raw deal for Toronto

...

This is a disastrous idea for Toronto, one that would dramatically hurt the TTC’s ability to offer quality service across the city. If Toronto voters needed another reason not to support the Ontario PCs, this is it.

...

 

[gweed123]

Hudak’s plan to upload subways is a raw deal for Toronto

Matt's analysis is bang on. Personally, I favour either uploading the entire system (surface routes and all), or leaving it alone. The PCs seem to have a bad habit of separating the parts of an entity that make money from the parts that don't, leaving the parts that don't to either require a larger subsidy or to wither and die.

If Hudak wants to tinker with who is delivering what, I think he should start by uploading Burlington, Oakville, and Milton transit (Halton being one of the two regional municipalities in the GTA that doesn't have an upper level system) to Metrolinx, so that it can be fully integrated with GO transit. Let those areas benefit from the same type of RT-surface route synergy that the TTC has now.

Then, once you have all of the 'upload kinks' worked out, move on to other 905 agencies, and eventually the TTC. Tackling the TTC first IMO is a recipe for disaster, because it would likely be biting off more than Metrolinx can chew. At least a smaller 905 agency could be a manageable undertaking.

 

[MrsNesbitt]

Matt's analysis is bang on. Personally, I favour either uploading the entire system (surface routes and all), or leaving it alone. The PCs seem to have a bad habit of separating the parts of an entity that make money from the parts that don't, leaving the parts that don't to either require a larger subsidy or to wither and die.

If Hudak wants to tinker with who is delivering what, I think he should start by uploading Burlington, Oakville, and Milton transit (Halton being one of the two regional municipalities in the GTA that doesn't have an upper level system) to Metrolinx, so that it can be fully integrated with GO transit. Let those areas benefit from the same type of RT-surface route synergy that the TTC has now.

Then, once you have all of the 'upload kinks' worked out, move on to other 905 agencies, and eventually the TTC. Tackling the TTC first IMO is a recipe for disaster, because it would likely be biting off more than Metrolinx can chew. At least a smaller 905 agency could be a manageable undertaking.

I can agree with this a lot. There's no question that uploading transit agencies to be taken under the Metrolinx fold is a good idea, but rushing into it could destabilize our transit situation pretty quickly. Start small, and do it in wholes - don't just upload subways and leave the surface system that's been configured around those subways high and dry.

Of course, we do need to progress towards gradual uploading. I'm a staunch anti-PC, anti-Hudak man, but it is true that we'll never get beyond the "subways subways subways" mentality as long as there's a clear divide between proper regional networks like GO and rapid transit like the TTC subway.

 

[TOareaFan]

In case anyone needed any further evidence that our (growing) deficits and (growing) debt levels are something that needs addressing:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BoLSPv-IIAEWFcQ.png

 

[gweed123]

I can agree with this a lot. There's no question that uploading transit agencies to be taken under the Metrolinx fold is a good idea, but rushing into it could destabilize our transit situation pretty quickly. Start small, and do it in wholes - don't just upload subways and leave the surface system that's been configured around those subways high and dry.

Of course, we do need to progress towards gradual uploading. I'm a staunch anti-PC, anti-Hudak man, but it is true that we'll never get beyond the "subways subways subways" mentality as long as there's a clear divide between proper regional networks like GO and rapid transit like the TTC subway.

Agreed. People want subways because they haven't been properly explained what a true regional rail network can do. If you were to break down what aspects of "subways subways subways" people actually want (speed, comfort, frequency), for most suburban trips a GO REX type system is actually a better answer. But unless they've travelled to places like Berlin or Paris, they probably don't know about that type of service.

There are a whole host of issues that need to be worked out when it comes to uploading as well, which is why the gradual but whole approach works best. Things like: Where does the funding for this service come from? Is it just an expansion of the GO Transit funding pot? Is it a new dedicated revenue stream? Is it a fixed funding formula that is levied by Metrolinx via municipal property taxes, effectively using the same money that's currently funding municipal transit, just depositing it into a different account? Not to demean smaller 905 cities, but it's a lot easier to work out those kinks in Milton or Burlington than it would be in Toronto.

 

[salsa]

There's no question that uploading transit agencies to be taken under the Metrolinx fold is a good idea, but rushing into it could destabilize our transit situation pretty quickly.

It's unclear if Metrolinx will even exist under Hudak. He is considering abolishing Metrolinx altogether.

 

[gweed123]

It's unclear if Metrolinx will even exist under Hudak. He is considering abolishing Metrolinx altogether.

I know that was mused about at one point, but I would think it would be pretty hard to upload the subway part of the TTC if there was no corporation to upload it to. It would seem pretty foolish to abolish a regional transit agency just to turn around and create a new one. Although I suppose it could always just be rolled into GO, although I would think that would have a lot of other transit agencies crying foul, because that would mean complete Provincial subsidies for the system.