December 7, 2011
MPP calls for wage
freeze
by Terry Myers
The province of Ontario needs to impose a public sector wage freeze as
just the first step in getting its fiscal house in order.
That was the message MPP John Yakabuski brought home to the Ontario
legislature last week as he spoke in response to the McGuinty
government's recent throne speech.
The government opened the new session of the legislature with its
throne speech on November 22.
It's the first sitting of the provincial parliament since the Liberals
were reduced to a slim minority in the October election.
Yakabuski said that despite having just run an election campaign and
opening a new session of the legislature, the government came up with a
throne speech that was a “vacuous bit of nothingness.”
Instead of dealing with the difficult issues the province faces,
Yakabuski said, the government is hoping to “muddle along” with some of
its campaign promises and “avoid facing the facts that we've got a mess
on our hands.”
“It's time to get down to brass tacks and get down on the business of
trying to turn this province around,” Yakabuski said.
“You've created half this mess. Goodness gracious, see if you can't
help try and fix it.”
Yakabuski said the biggest issue the province faces is its finances.
Finance Minister Dwight Duncan announced in his most recent economic
update that the province will face a deficit this year of $16 billion.
“I'd be ashamed,” Yakabuski said.
“This province is in a financial mess. And what do you do - you know,
if one part of your expenditures (public sector wages) accounts for 60
per cent of that, how would you ever expect to get your fiscal house in
order if you don't deal with that 60 per cent?”
Yakabuski said many jurisdictions are imposing public sector wage
freezes, and while it may appear to be a “draconian” move, “all we're
saying is that we're asking the people who are working for the
government in the public sector to forgo a wage increase at a time of
terrible economic difficulty in this province.”
“That's what we're asking you to do.”
Yakabuski said the Liberals talked about a wage freeze in 2010 but
didn't follow through because they needed support from
“Liberal-friendly unions” to win the upcoming election.
“So they didn't (follow through) and now the problem has only gotten
worse,” he said.
Yakabuski said the province has racked up a debt of $250 billion, and
interest payments on the debt alone cost $10 billion.
“What's going to happen in this province... if interest rates go up a
point, half a point, two points? Who knows? What happens then?” he said.
“This is the situation you create when you fail to govern with
propriety and strength when you have to.
“They just let the thing - they're whistling past the graveyard and
letting the fiscal situation of this province deteriorate more and more
on a daily basis.”
But Liberal MPP Phil McNeely said the province's fiscal problems began
with the former Conservative government.
McNeely said the Tories left the new Liberal government in 2003 with a
deficit of $5.4 billion, “and that was in good times.”
“That was in addition to the tens of billions of dollars of
infrastructure needs that were left: unbuilt roads, unbuilt hospitals,
unbuilt colleges and universities.
“So in the last eight years, the infrastructure deficit has been paid
for by the province of Ontario,” McNeely said.
But Yakabuski said the government has been digging its own hole.
“It's reminiscent of the 1980s, of the Peterson government, while they
spent money like drunken sailors - with all due respect to the drunken
sailors,” he said.
“They wanted to make everybody their friend, so they took the rest of
the people's money and made as many people their friends as possible by
spending it.”
But, Yakabuski said, “you can't keep spending forever.”
“Sooner or later, the bills have to be paid.”
Yakabuski called on backbench Liberals to take a stand.
“Don't just line up like lemmings behind Dalton and Dwight and let them
lead you over the cliff, because that's where you're going,” he said.
“You've got to stand up to them. You've got to stand up to them and
say, 'Look, we want to act responsibly here in this province. We want
to do the right thing, and the right thing is getting our fiscal house
in order.' And it starts by doing the right thing and instituting a
public sector wage freeze.”
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