Can Ontario stem the tide of job losses in 2007?

We are now a week into 2007, but I have a few more New Year’s resolutions I hope the Ontario Government will pursue. In 2007, government should do its best to break its addictions –high taxes, runaway government spending, and excessive red tape.

For most of Canada’s history, Ontario has been the country’s economic engine. But, over the past three years our province has suffered the fallout of an addiction to high taxes. Stifled by the burden of high deficits, increased public debt, and a burgeoning bureaucracy, Ontario is becoming the country’s anchor, rather than its engine.

With such large amounts of taxpayer money floating around Queen’s Park, a culture of entitlement has infected the McGuinty government. They believe they are entitled to tax, entitled to spend, and entitled to squander public money for their own benefit.

We saw this at year end when Ontario’s Auditor General revealed massive amounts of public money squandered on luxury vacations, credit card abuses, and fancy cars. This has infuriated taxpayers, and has also impacted our economy.

Nowhere has our economic decline been felt more than in Haldimand-Norfolk-Brant. Farmers – whether they be cash crop, beef, hort, or tobacco – are still waiting for government to come to the table with promised changes to agricultural support.

When we add the impending onslaught of rules and regulations and red tape associated with the new source water legislation, our rural communities and landowners will continue to be shackled.

At Caledonia/Six Nations, many have been left without work as their businesses suffer the double burden of Premier McGuinty’s high-tax, low-job economic model, and the continued disruption from the ongoing land dispute.

And across the province, families have been reeling as they cope with a government that seems disinterested in the loss of jobs in manufacturing. When Imperial Tobacco closed its doors in Guelph, a Liberal MPP gloated, saying the McGuinty government’s strategy ‘is working.’

With the manufacturing sector shedding close to 120,000 jobs in the past two years alone, CIBC World Markets is projecting another 50,000 job losses before the end of 2007. Something must be done before this government sends Ontario back to a recession like that of the early 1990s.

One solution would be for Mr. McGuinty to learn from economic success of the previous government. Between 1995 and 1999, Ontario created 540,000 net new jobs – all of them paid for by a strong economy, not a large government. All told, Ontario saw over 405 new jobs created every day under the previous government, for a total of 1.1 million new jobs between 1995 and 2003.

Clearly tax cuts create jobs! Our government was proud to create the Taxpayer Protection Act, which prohibits the provincial government from increasing your overall tax burden without getting your permission through a referendum or election. Regrettably this legislation was overturned by the current regime.

This year Mr. McGuinty should follow the previous government’s example and balance the budget. Rather than purposefully creating a deficit by spending $640 million in three hours, he should stop using taxpayer money like one would use Monopoly money.

We need true accountability, a return to spending restraint, and a new culture of respect for taxpayers. Jobs and the well-being of rural communities hang in the balance.