DEAR PREMIER FORD ... ONTARIO CANNOT AFFORD YOU!

On the weekend of February 21 - 22, 2020, you stood cocooned with your supporters in the Scotiabank Convention Centre for a "policy convention" inviting your supporters and other select individuals.  Media were specifically disallowed from the convention, nor were any observers from other political parties, as is the norm in actual democratic countries.  You spoke from your throne like you still speak for "the people".  Again, I ask you, "What people?"

In the meantime, thousands and thousands of "the people" gathered en masse outside in the cold February winter to give you a message that your policies are not working for the people of Ontario.  Education workers walked out en masse.  Health care workers are getting laid off en masse, right after you promised us you would stop 'hallway medicine".  Many small business owners were also in that crowd, as they are bright enough to know that when our government attacks people at the bottom, their businesses will soon pay for it.  I noticed in the past several months several business closures in my region, particularly those sensitive to local economic fluctuations.  Ontario "open for business", my ass!

When all people can get are low-wage, part-time jobs, they are not going to be spending their money at local restaurants, clothing shops, gaming shops, the pool hall, the dry-cleaner, the bookstores or the pub.  They will certainly be getting less haircuts, manicures and probably will be re-using some of their old accessories.  Many of these people are also paying 35, 45, 60, 70 percent or more of their monthly income on housing alone.  These people cannot "go shopping", Mr. Ford as they have no money to shop with!  Did you know that we have a housing crisis, Mr. Ford?  I presume not because you are well housed and pampered, probably assuming everybody else in Ontario is living the same charmed life that you do.  Every summer, your family has put on Fordfest and invited all your well-to-do supporters to gather for free beer and burgers at your mother's backyard, while using security to keep out "the people" that do not benefit from your policies.

Somebody ordered security to chase the media out of your policy convention that cold February day.  Why was this done, Mr. Ford?  What were you afraid of?  Do the people of Ontario not have a right to know what cuts you are planning next for them?  I don't know why you don't resign, Mr. Ford, because so far your government has been one unmitigated disaster after another.  Hallway medicine is up, mental health supports have been cut with longer wait lists, housing lists are longer and rents are way up, where even middle class families cannot afford decent housing.  When it touches the middle class, can you at least act then, Mr. Ford?  Or do we have to wait until it hits you, your family and your wealthy friends first, before any of us other minions get relief?

Even your attempt at making one dollar beer failed, as well as your attempt at changing the colour and makeup of Ontario's license plates.  Sometimes, Mr. Ford, it is better just to leave enough alone.  We don't need partisan coloured plates anyways.  Or was this all one big distraction from what you are really planning to do to Ontarians?  What further cuts do you have in mind?  What other services normally delivered by public services will now be handed over for profit to your friends, donors and lobbyists?  It is so easy to get your friends to do things, so when your own policies fall flat, you can always point to the private company you gave the work to and blame them, right?  It is so easy to cut, cut and then cut some more, but not so easy to actually lead a diverse democracy such as the one we have here in Ontario.

How about your major pilot project your government is testing in three parts of Ontario to help get unemployed and social assistance recipients into jobs?  Your Minister complained that what was being done now is not working.  Well, let me suggest that this pilot project is nothing new and will not work either.  It has been tried before many times and failed every time - yes, every time!  One wonders what your party's connections are with the successful applicants who were picked to run these programs.  What were your promises to these companies, Mr. Ford? Your government claims less than 1% of people leave the social assistance rolls for a job?  Perhaps, you should be looking at some of those 800 rules that your government has chosen to keep and add to as the source of the problem, as opposed to the work of employment services agencies.  

These rules discourage people from working too much.  Perhaps, you should try these same 800 rules on your corporate friends first to see if they find it to be an "incentive".  Call it a pilot project, Mr. Ford.  See which billionaire squawks first about not being able to invest when anything they receive is clawed back after the first $200 they get every month.  Is your goal only to get people off assistance and into low-paid, precarious work?  That is NOT going to keep them off the rolls ... they will be right back on assistance within a month.  Count on it!  This is what happened in Australia.

"Pay for success" has been tried here even in Ontario under ODSP employment supports and has been discontinued because it was not working: not working for the recipient, not working for the provider, not working for ODSP.  Why is that?  Did you bother to ask?  It is because the only incentive that providers have so they can keep their lights on is to push people into the first available jobs out there, whether that job is only for a day, a week, a month, part-time or full-time or contract or temporary?  This certainly will not result in matching the needs of employers for qualified workers with the needs of job seekers with qualifications.

Should the system change?  Of course, it should!  But it should be changed to the better, so that people are not just continuing to scramble to survive, as opposed to bettering themselves.  You tossed THAT pilot project aside, which was working for nominal period it was allowed to run for.  People involved with the basic income were attending school, getting better jobs, starting businesses, etc.  Is this not what you want people to do?  However, that all stopped with the cessation of that pilot project and people were thrown back to the 800 rules.  Your proposal is only going to push more people into the scramble for survival, for which many unfortunately will fail (e.g. die).  Further, in order for a system like you are proposing to work, there has to be an abundance of well-paid jobs for every level of ability and qualification.  People will get off and stay off assistance if they got one of those jobs, but even you (and all of your Ministers that have worked on this file) cannot even tell us where these jobs are going to come from!  Further, many people are on ODSP because they cannot work.  Most of the others have significant limits on what they can do.   

Are employers going to magically overnight develop an enlightened attitude and want to hire persons with a range of disabilities, accommodate them and pay them well?  If that is the case, then I want you to give ME and anybody else who wants one a job that pays at least $80,000 a year and does not discriminate against us.  You may say you can't do that, so how do you expect your friends with literally no ties to the selected communities and an interest only in profit (through the private pilots) to do the same?  My experience is that employers will not hire anybody they have to accommodate in any way.  Are you going to ask people already on ODSP to participate in this circus, which I can tell you right now will give you the same results (with less than 1% leaving the rolls).  Remember what they say about the definition of insanity.  You can try the same concept over and over again and expect different results.  How much money do you expect to waste on this project before your government would have to call it quits, like you did with the license plates, the education cuts, etc.?

I can already tell you people in my part of Ontario are not getting any more money in their pockets than they had before you got elected, yet they are spending more and more out of their pockets on everything, ranging from government services, to health care (due to cuts) and auto insurance (another behemoth you promised to reduce, but is actually going up 10%).  I know I can't afford you.  Neither can the man I spoke to on the bus on the way home tonight.  This man is a trained auto mechanic, but he can't find a job anywhere.  After being forced to live on Ontario Works for many years with many spells of homelessness in between, he was finally put onto ODSP, where he is just a tad better off, but not by much.  Most of my friends can't afford you either.  I have a friend who just got her PHd and she is not working either.

I am asking you to wake up to the reality of the province you want to lead.  That means talking to "the people", not just those who are bamboozled by your bullshit.  Talk to people who are experts in policy, program design, economics, health care and other things, as well as people with lived experience being kicked around and attacked by governments over the generations.  If you want to find out what you need to do to help people get off social assistance, talk to somebody on social assistance.  If you want to find out what is wrong with health care, talk to people who use the health care system on a regular basis.  If you want to find out what children with autism need, talk to their families, as well as adults living on the spectrum.  When consultation and inclusion is lost on our government, our very essence of democracy is thrown out the window.

** For my readers, please copy this and send to as many of your friends, media sources, social media sites, MPPs and others, over the next few weeks of budget talk and follow-up **

OPEN LETTER TO THE ONTARIO PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE LEADERSHIP ...

The provincial election has come and gone.

The provincial PC Party lost an election it could have won handily, especially if it proposed to push for good stable government and compassionate programs for those in need.  Ontario's population was ready to try something new, especially with the debacle of the gas plants, deleted emails, rising costs of public sector arbitrations, etc.  But instead of promising to go slow and steady, you started out by promising to create a million jobs by first cutting one hundred thousand public sector jobs.  That didn't go very well with people, as you know that would get the unions against you.

Further, as long as the PC Party of Ontario remains committed to implement many of the policies it has on its website, I will personally continue to engage in ABC (Anybody But Conservative) Campaigns every time there is an election until I see *true* changes in your direction where the results of your policies would not make a significant part of Ontario citizenry feel it doesn't belong and can no longer participate in the community and where people of low incomes would feel they are being punished for a crime they did not commit.  This election, many more low income people than before took part in the election.  We made sure they all had a way to get to the polls. Almost all of them voted for somebody other than the PC Party.  This does not mean I am happy with a Liberal majority either that resulted, but most of the people around me, including many people who would have otherwise considered voting PC did breathe a sigh of relief.

Part of our ABC Campaign was to reach out to various demographics to advise them what life would be like if your policies were put into place.  For social assistance and ODSP recipients, I advised them to envision a merged system where people with disabilities would be thought of and seen by the general public to be just as undeserving as those on Ontario Works.  I know your government would make no effort to ensure there was seen to be a difference between those in short-term and those in long-term need ... they will all be undeserving in your eyes, as your cohort Tory Coalition PM Cameron has done in the UK.  They must have made you proud, as they cut $29 billion from the budgets supporting the poor, disabled and elderly and killed off many of them in the process.  That would certainly be your pathway ... you would have everybody on ODSP tested just to see if they can even work a little bit and if so, you would cut their income down and force them to work a lot ... jobs or no jobs.  That's why people died in the UK.  I will not stand by and allow this to happen in Ontario.

The consequences of a merger of the two programs would also make people on ODSP get treated the same way as people do on Ontario Works, which is a bloody nightmare ... Throughout the election, I've received hundreds of emails and phone calls from people on ODSP, who were worried about being forced to get their income from the municipality, where they recall being on OW years ago and every three months, cut off or suspended ... often leaving them homeless because they had no money to pay the rent. Yes, this happens.  I've witnessed this when I watch proceedings at the Landlord and Tenant Board, almost every week there is somebody that had their SA cheque put on hold by the region and in turn, had no money to pay rent and their landlord is trying to evict them for non-payment. I help people get onto ODSP as part of my practice, and most of my appellants are forced to move three, four or even five times before they get to a hearing one year after applying. Why? The municipality has a tendency to put people's cheques on hold or suspension status for miniscule things ... if we allowed employers to put the paycheques of employees on hold because the employer may have questions about that person's performance, they could be facing the wrath of the Labour Board (as they should).  So why do low income people's rights get shoved aside for bureaucratic convenience?   Further they feared the debit card debacle.

Unless one is living in subsidized housing which is still a minority of recipients, their housing costs likely exceed if not run double at least to what they are allotted for "shelter" costs.  Your debit card plan wanted to force people to use the card only at stores to buy food, etc. and presumably if one is entitled to $479 a month for shelter, they would get this paid directly to one's landlord.  (If employers were to do this with employees -- pay the employee's rent directly to their landlords --- there would be hell to pay).  What if that person actually pays $700 or $800 for rent and has to pay utilities too?  This of course is being passed off as a bright idea as usual with no thought to it, unless your proposed government had plans in the works to force landlords only to charge the shelter allotment maximum for rents and not force tenants to pay for utilities. That is so outrageous because your government certainly does not want to interfere in the business of private businesses, including landlords (despite the fact you want to continue to place all kinds of extra layers of bureaucracy on social assistance and ODSP recipients that want to start or continue to run their own businesses ...).

It comes down to one thing.  You are ignoring the Human Rights Code and Charter of Rights with most of your propositions for low income, including disabled and elderly.  But then again, people of the 'Tea Party' ilk believe the Charter only applies to them and to corporate interests, not to people who can't afford to speak out for themselves.  I speak out because many people who cannot or are afraid to speak to me.  I will continue to do so, as long as I am on this planet.  The use of debit cards for the purpose you intended is a complete violation of any laws that I am aware of ... there is a presumption of incapacity of those in receipt of benefits, a presumption that people that receive the money will use it improperly ... and then when it comes to businesses and the trades, your party then protests against the nanny state, the College of Trades and other so-called "red tape" your party has deemed to be unnecessarily intrusive, but it is okay to intrude on the rights of those that cannot speak out, who are afraid to speak out ... Again, if it is a nanny state that is unacceptable to businesses, landlords, tradespeople, etc., then a nanny state is unacceptable to the poor - period, no ands, ifs or buts about it.  I hope you have this clear.

The cuts you proposed to slay the deficit in a shorter period of time ... you were not clear to us what you will cut or to whom.  I do sincerely believe any and all cuts will be against the vulnerable that cannot afford to withstand these cuts, and for those that can?  Na da.  Your wealthy benefactors cannot pay another penny of taxes?  Bullocks!  In case you haven't been reading my blogs until now, you know I don't care about the deficit and debt and so forth, as long as these measures are being used as an excuse to attack vulnerable populations.  If you want to pay off the debt, get your millionaire and billionaire friends together and get them to pay it off ... leave the rest of us alone!  Most of us cannot afford privatized health care.  Most of us cannot afford privatized education.  Most of us cannot afford hikes in tuition fees.  Most of us cannot afford to pay more and more in property taxes, which is the natural consequence of what would happen with your party's habitual concept of downloading everything from housing to social services.  This was done under Mike Harris to make your provincial books look better to the bond raters.

Do you really think people who are one or two paycheques away give a damn about what the bond raters think?  Do you think anybody who is homeless cares what the bond raters think?  Do you think anybody who has a family member, particularly a child, with a health condition that has a treatment that is not covered by health care in Ontario, cares what the bond raters think?  If you all care about what they think, then get those that can afford to pay the bill to pay it and stop giving away tax cuts in exchange for nothing but the finger for those of us not in your corporate old boys' club.  When I earned good money -- prior to losing my driver's license due to medical conditions -- I didn't care that I had to pay higher taxes than what I did when I earned less.  I had more cash flow ... and to me, cash flow is king.  I was able to put money down into my RRSP, but a serious trauma/illness happened when I lost my driver's license and therefore, all my post-secondary education, all my advanced skills, all my senior work experience didn't matter anymore ... Employers where I live will not even consider you if you do not drive, even if the job did not involve driving ... this is against the Human Rights Code, but then again, you never liked the Human Rights Code anyways.

In part of your election platform you promised more jobs for people with disabilities.  There was never any structure to this plan, just an empty promise.  In my case, are you going to bar all employers from discriminating against people that don't drive?  Are you going to force employers to hire people off the SA or ODSP rolls?  Somehow, I doubt it.  Like your predecessor Mike Harris, the empty contract of forcing one to look for and get a job somehow does not include any responsibility or obligation on the employers to hire anybody for such a job.  You want people to be responsible?  Then make both sides of the contract responsible!  Make it meaningful for employers that decide to trump the hiring of people with disabilities and on social services with able-bodied white males ... make it cost them money then.  But then again, you don't want to interfere with the rights of private businesses.  If so, then stop punishing those that cannot find an employer that is willing to hire them!  I personally searched for work for SIX YEARS after I lost my driver's license with not a single offer, when before I lost the license I was always working, always had a job ... that is why I am self-employed because nobody else will give me a job.  In other words, a job that will allow me to support my family, not be forced to choose between eating and paying for a roof over my head each month.  Before determining what people can live on, make sure you check out the market rents in each community, as well as the price of a healthy diet ...

You made an attack on public pensions.  I agree that taxpayers should not be contributing to high priced pensions.  However, there needs to be retirement reform in this province and preferably in Canada that would allow everybody to retire in dignity.  Because I was forced to spend down all my RRSPs so that my husband can qualify for ODSP during the time I was out of work and still looking, I will never be able to retire ... I can't afford to, nor do I have the means to rebuild my retirement account.  I intend to hold the Ontario government accountable for that one day.  Your party and likely the current party in government does not want to spend excessively on social programs to keep people alive, but unfortunately these kinds of policies which your government under Harris/Eves and the current one in power continues to endorse leads to continued reliance on public pensions when one retires, rather than allowing one to live more on their own funds and continuing to work as needed to supplement a decent retirement.  I simply do not want to compete with my cats for the cat food when I am of age to hang up my shingle.  I want to stay in my own home and be able to have the resources to purchase additional services or home renovations to allow me to continue to live in my own home ... because if I cannot, guess what that means?  More public money spent on nursing homes, etc.  I don't get any of your policies and how cuts would enrich or even give people in dire or straitened circumstances any kind of hope.

Before you try to believe I am a "left winger", I am not partisan at all.  I held a great deal of respect for many of your party's elders before your provincial party changed to accommodate the Tea Party down south.  I am fabulous at social media and I know tons and tons of people.  I know how to express things to get people to support or oppose something.  I am not crazy about unions, my position on them however is neutral.  If workers want a union, then they should have a right to have one.  If they don't, then they should not have one.  I've never been in unionized employment, basically because everytime I got out of school looking for a job, they always seemed to be more concerned about hiring those they laid off back when the economy bounced back and not really bring on new people.  That is the story of my life, so this doesn't give me a positive connection to unions, but I can't support a government that attacks them either ... If our workers wanted to have the same policies they have in Alabama, I am sure they would be happy to emigrate to the US and move to Alabama.  Just don't turn Ontario into another Alabama.

So, when your party goes back to the drawing board, it needs to do a few things to turn its fortunes in Ontario around:
1.  Respect the Human Rights Code and Charter of Rights and strengthen the protections people have    under these constitutional laws;

2.  Stop poor bashing.  Stop union bashing.  Stop immigration bashing.  Stop bashing any minority.

3.  Take the time to work with intelligent people to design effective policies and legislation that will work for them.  I adhere strongly to the principle "nothing about us, without us". I would be eager to work in your policy development process (paid of course) to ensure that policies are fair to those they affect, as well as supports the goals of self-sufficiency for those that can achieve it.

4.  Take the time to develop a democratic process within your party and to potential party participants, so that everybody can feel included in the development of policies and strategies.

5.  Retain the word "Progressive" in your party name and make it mean more than just a word.  Make your policies progressive and inclusive and ensure that there is no more fear created among people by proposing ill thought out and damaging proposals that impact on the most vulnerable among us.

6.  Develop a tax policy that is fair.  People who earn more should pay more.  There should also be an   inheritance tax for estates more than a particular value and monies earned primarily from investments should be taxed at a higher rate than monies earned primarily by salaried or waged income (or in the case of self-employed, income derived directly by goods and services).

I don't want an Ontario that will liken its goals to those of Alabama or in the poorer US states where having no health insurance means a certain demise.  I want an Ontario that has a strong system of medicare, a strong social safety net and a strong, robust economy where people can easily move from the lower strata to the higher strata of society, unlike today where most of us who are at the bottom today will likely stay there.  I want to see a government that emanates hope, inspiration, as well as compassion.  I want to live in a province that works on the world stage, is a strong promoter of local businesses and promoting opportunities for others that want to get into business.  I want to live in a province with strong post-secondary institutions that better prepare people for jobs or vocations that are marketable and needed.

To do that, that means people who are of the lowest income strata have to be able to participate in the economy, as consumers ... as well as be able to afford things to help them get ahead, such as good housing, good clothing, a healthy diet, transportation and a phone/internet.  I've seen so many people who have been destroyed by poverty.  They have lost all hope.  The more people we have like this in our community, the more it costs us as taxpayers to keep them alive.  If we can prevent people from getting to that state, that is how we will be saving the monies and finding the most efficiencies, as well as getting a greater return,

Contact me through this blog if you have any thoughts.

BEWARE THE MAN THAT WANTS TO SELL YOU A MILLION JOBS

Earlier this week, Hudak and his Ontario PC Party released its "million jobs" platform and details as to how they believe they are going to achieve this.  Any Ontario voter can go to their website and ask for them to send you emails on their election campaign and they will.  I did and I downloaded their campaign policy, which Hudak says focuses solely on job creation and the policy package around it.

The policy document is of course printed in bright blue colours and printed with full page colour images of Tim Hudak - the first one showing a serious pose and the ones toward the end of the document, where he is using construction sites and other businesses as a backdrop for his announcements, he is smiling.  Up close you can see his nice pearly whites, which would indicate he has neither missed many meals or neglected to receive top quality dental treatment that many Ontarians cannot afford.

He starts off by saying, "Where we are now ..."  It states To solve Ontario's problems, we must begin by analyzing the scale of Ontario's jobs and debt crisis.  Ontario didn't become a province known for high unemployment, reckless overspending and ballooning debt overnight, nor did it achieve that status by accident.  We can't explain it all away by talking about the recession - that ended five years ago - or the troubles of the world economy.

Ontario was put in this situation largely due to a series of deliberate decisions by the current government, decisions that have cost our economy and Ontario families dearly.  Here are some of the key figures ...

300,000 manufacturing jobs lost since 2003 (Only manufacturing?  There were hundreds of thousands of other jobs lost too as well)

150,000 people who left Ontario for Western Canadian provinces (yeah, that might be right, but I can't see that as indicative of anything, because people do move between provinces all the time)

7 - the number of years Ontario has had a jobless rate higher than the national economy (thanks to free trade, perhaps and globalization of our economy in general?)

800,000 - the number of men and women in Ontario today without a job

$46 billion - the total cost of Ontario's subsidies for wind and solar power that could have been spent to build all of the new subways and other public transit in Toronto and the GTA to break gridlock ... (What about transit in your own backyard, Mr. Hudak?  Not everybody in Niagara drives or could afford to ...)

$289 billion - the total amount of debt accumulated by the Government of Ontario, double the level when McGuinty-Wynne government was first elected (Let me ask you, Mr. Hudak, if you didn't have this great publicly funded job that you have right now, and were instead on Ontario Works, forced to fend for yourself at food banks and surf other people's couches, would you give a damn about the debt?  ... I thought so).

$1 billion - the amount of new debt the Ontario government adds every month (Ibid, above)

80 - The average travel time in minutes, to and from work, in the GTA - the longest commute in North America (wrong, ask people who are forced to use buses and have to transfer multiple time to get to places that a car might take thirty minutes to get to, aka in Niagara region).

0 - the number of Premiers excluding Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne, who were in power when Ontario collected equalization payments as a have-not province (Interesting analysis, particularly as we were not a have-not province under Bob Rae, and the Atlantic provinces under a series of Conservative Premiers, were have-not provinces over the years ... so, what's your point?)

So, Hudak's solutions?

Replace corporate welfare with lower taxes. Ontario's taxes are already among the lowest in the free world.  Yet this fact did not generate more jobs, just more money for corporations to hoard and store in overseas accounts.

Increase opportunities in skilled trades.  Hudak will wave a magic wand and suddenly, 200,000 new jobs in the skilled trades will appear as a result of dissolving the much hated College of Trades and to allow more apprentices to one journeyman.  I don't think so.  While I agree, the skilled trades needs to be promoted as an option for young people, it is not for everybody.  This man is a magician, if you believe he can pull 200,000 jobs out of a hat all of a sudden.  If this were true, then provinces that don't have the same ratios and do not curry to a College of Trades ought to be swimming in these jobs, right?  Not so.

Make energy affordable.  Hudak might have a point here.  High energy costs do drive some companies away, but I am not sure this is why we lost so many jobs ... I think lower wages in Mexico, southern US states and places like India and Malaysia are more the reason, if you ask me.  But, would Hudak do anything to lower our household energy bill?  Probably not.

Save small businesses time and money.  Hudak would do this by cutting what he refers to as "red tape" or regulations, etc.  Regulations like what?  Water treatment protocols?  Meat inspection?  Propane storage regulations?  Health and safety regulations?  Yes, small business can use a 'one door approach" to deal with systems, etc., but the interesting part is that Hudak also included as # 9 Eliminate hundreds of unnecessary rules that bog down the social assistance system so that it is easy to understand and focuses on helping people find work.  (More on that later, folks)

Compete for skilled immigrants.  This will be done by linking skilled immigrants that come to Ontario with jobs that cannot be filled by Canadians, suggesting that other provinces are doing great using federal levers in this strategy.  Another name for this is the Temporary Foreign Workers program.  Does this sound familiar?  Bring in new immigrants to work in hospitality, call centers, hospitals, clinics, offices, factories, etc. because "no local workers can be found".  Yeah, right.

Reduce the tax burden on Ontario families.  After the budget is balanced, families and individuals will get tax cuts.  Where have we heard that before?  Tax cuts mean there is less money for government to spend.  For every tax cut, Hudak should tell voters what health care service, what hospital, which schools, what social programs, etc. will be cut to make up for the revenues lost this way.  To me, these kinds of tax cuts don't mean overall savings for people, as they will find themselves having to pay for more and more out of pocket for things that used to be covered by general tax revenues.

Generate Dollars for the Public Good.  While the silence is deafening on Hudak's prior announcements about privatizing the LCBO, Hydro One, Ontario Power Generation, etc., there are still plans here to privatize others things like gambling operations, infrastructure (more 407s, anybody?), public transit, and some selective government services.  The problem with this is the bidders will be people in the private sector that have money to spend and the priority of the service will no longer be public service, but shareholder profits.  I am sure Hudak and Co. has a number of friends they want to reward with these opportunities.

Get GTA Traffic Moving Again.  Somehow, a Hudak government will take over all major highways, roads, public transit and railways in the GTA and connectivity to the "905" area (which we know will exclude Niagara) and have it run all under one umbrella without raising taxes.  Another miracle pulled out of a hat.  I wonder how these magical subways will be funded.

Create Jobs and Growth in Northern and Rural Ontario.  More regulation cutting, pro-rated funding for northern development projects, more gas tax to build more roads ... oh yes, we must not forget that everybody up north drives, even their pet gerbils.  Local control over more initiatives sounds great, but guess what local control means under Tory-talk?  Local costs, downloading ... you betcha.

Help People with Disabilities Succeed.  Another magician's act where attitudes of employers are suddenly going to become more enlightened and they will be hiring people with disabilities?  Yeah, right.  The current government passed the AODA and it has done squat about getting more people with disabilities into jobs.  Proposals such as post-secondary education to gain job related skills is great, but how is it going to be funded?  Will we be saddling people on public assistance with excess student debt?  The other suggestion is blandly saying we need to recognize the abilities in people with disabilities and not just the barriers ... like, where did we hear that before?

Re-Balance Labour Laws.  This is the same blather the federal government wants to pass about union finance transparency and giving members the right to opt out of causes not related to the collective bargaining, etc.  Well, does this apply to corporations as well?  Say, if I plan to go to eat at Swiss Chalet, would I as a consumer have the right to know if their head office contributes to political parties like Hudak's or others that I don't like?  Then, perhaps give me a choice as a consumer and boycott it?  I also think as a consumer, or even a potential employee, I would like to know how much their CEO earns, how much the regional directors earn, etc. so I can decide if the company is fair or unfair to front line staff.  What's good for the goose is good for the ganders.  While the term "right to work" has not been explicitly mentioned in here and Hudak (sort of) backed off on this after a near intra party mutiny over the term, I suspect this might come up again if they do make it to government.  We have not heard the last of it.

Give Our Colleges Bigger Roles.  Again, arguing the skills shortage that even Don Drummond disputes that exists ... with the theoretical nod to creating programs to give these skills to workers to fill unfilled jobs. In my learnings, colleges like anything else is a business.  They don't care if the students taking their programs end up in jobs in their field.  They just want to put more bums in seats.  This is one reason why we are seeing such a surplus in many professions, such as legal, social services, personal support workers, etc.  The colleges seem to just keep pumping them out, not caring whether their students that seem to accumulate huge amounts of debt actually get a job after.  That's not their problem.

Strengthening the Link Between Universities and Jobs.  Ibid, same as above.  We keeping pumping more teachers out of teachers colleges that the majority of those graduating will never get to teach or step foot in a classroom.  Shocking, eh?

Expand Free Trade.  This is trade between the provinces, something that should have been done ages ago.

Now it gets into the controversial stuff ... "A Government We Can Afford"  My question is:  A Government WHO can afford, or a Government that WHO wants to pay for ... This is not taking into account the theory of public service administration, but government as business, which has never worked. This section is all about the theory that there is a ton of gravy in government and lots that can be cut without affecting services. Where did we hear that before?  That's right!  Mike Harris promised a 30% tax cuts to everybody and deep cuts to government which won't affect services.  We all know how well that worked.  Think Walkerton. Dudley George. Kimberly Rogers.  Creeping privatization of health care.  Labour unrest.  Nope, it did not affect services whatsoever, even though people in the field can all reminisce about the increased rate of suicides, property crimes, homelessness and so forth.

Some of the plans show promise in my view, such as increased competition between providers of service, reducing huge pension outlays, increasing efficiencies, etc., but we know this is not what this is about ... Hudak said and told us all last week that he will start the track of creating a million jobs by outright firing, terminating, laying off, not replacing, whatever ... 100,000 well paid civil service jobs and replace them with ... low wage, part-time, precarious jobs with no benefits.  Another magician's sleight of hand.  Hudak will make 100,000 jobs disappear and somehow in the other hand, another million will re-appear.  How come I have my niggling doubts?

Health Care Pay attention to this one.  They want to reduce layers of bureaucracy and so forth and take the power away from planners and put it into the hands of people that directly provide the care.  This sounds great in theory, but who plans the care over the regions, how much money to allocate to regions, studies the demographic needs of regions and then implements timely strategies for the same?  Direct service providers don't have that kind of time.  However, there is a proposal to create Health Care Hubs, which means basically hospitals planning health services for the area?  Pots calling kettles black?  This is sort of like the police force determining what its own budgetary needs are and dictating to governments what we must pay.

The rest of this sounds so lofty I don't even want to bother with this, because our health care system is designed so much around the issues, but does not tackle the issues.  For example, I gave scenarios of two elderly residents:  Rick, who is 73 years old, requires dialysis and takes medications for high blood pressure and diabetes, lives in a retirement residence where he pays $5,000 a month for apartment style living, where he has access to communal dining, scheduled activities, in-house pedicures, nursing care, transportation to medical care, etc., while he can also purchase private duty care when needed.  Rick will likely do well for a long time because in these situations, the care is good, the food is high quality and the resident can acquire their own amenities should they choose, as well as come and go as they please.  Mabel is also 73 years old, on dialysis, and has suffered a stroke and complications of diabetes.  She has not retired well and lives only on OAS/GIS and has had a wait to be placed in her nursing home, where she shares a room with another resident that keeps her awake all night.  This home is often short-staffed, many times not getting to her when she needs to use the washroom, so Mabel is forced to wear diapers even though she can eliminate independently, with some assistance getting her there.  Mabel is likely going to get her doctors to tell her family to reconsider her life span and to stop care, especially if her needs exceed the maximum allotted.  How does Hudak want to resolve this?

Mabel could have lived in her own home if she was able to purchase some accessibility modifications, such as a walk-in tub, daily assistance with bathing and some housekeeping, as well as a home dialysis program while she sleeps, which would allow her independence during the day.  But Mabel was living on a fixed income and was unable to afford this care and therefore, was forced into a nursing home.  I don't see how this saves the province any money.  Perhaps, the whole concept of home care needs to be included fully into the OHIP schedule and skilled providers give this care, depending on the level of care needed.  Rick chose to move to the retirement residence he is in, which still allows him to live independently and he gets night time dialysis in his own unit, monitored by staff in the home.  Rick still has health insurance from his job he had before he retired.

Mental health care has always been an interesting political football.  Unfortunately, mental health is the symptoms of a social safety net that has been shredded.  Instead of viewing homelessness as a failure on the part of the social safety net to assist with affordable housing, it views homelessness as a disease.  It perpetuates the myth that people are poor or homeless or whatever because ... of some brain disease.  Science has never established a direct connection between so-called 'mental illness' and a disease or disorder of the brain, although we are amok with a ton of disconnected theories and correlations.  Yes, mental health is a priority and should be, but I don't sense that Hudak will provide a government that will allow such persons to remain in dignity and have the same choices as others do with other health issues.  It is a sensitive portfolio that needs to be dealt with sensitively and without stigmatizing people or treating them in ways differently than other people, and to offer those that suffer a way out of their situation, whether that be treatment for addictions, help with life-induced trauma, help with dealing with job stress, etc.  These aids have to be tangible and measurable and results-based and not simply moved to pharmaceutical management.

On the topic of education, it is even more witty.  Today's teaching students are taught new skills such as how to teach math so that more students are able to grasp it.  Unfortunately, very few of these new teachers are ever going to see a classroom to provide these skills.  Match this up with Hudak's plans to cut almost 10% of workers in the education system, including teachers ... citing that larger classrooms and so forth might result.  I don't see that as a good thing.  However, something that no political party other than the Greens ever suggested that could save a lot of money from the education portfolio is to stop funding Catholic schools and create one public school board system.  That should remove many of the Sunshine Club mandarins that Hudak likes to hate and bash in public.  At the same time, one religion will not be given privileges over others, where parents of other faiths that want to educate their children in their own faith, such as Jewish, Muslim, etc. have to pay privately.  Maybe Hudak remembers John Tory's foibles at trying to suggest all faiths get public support in some way, but this is distinct and different, and represents a clear separation of church and state.  Follow the lead of the Greens and do this, and yes, some savings will be realized.

While Hudak did not go into significant details about his plans for social assistance and for persons with disabilities, my readers can find his plans for this based on one of their policy papers published last year at the same time he released his most controversial paper on 'right to work' (which is still on their website, despite their disavowing it recently when it came under attack).  This paper, Paths to Prosperity; Welfare to Work is offensive, if not more so, than the "right to work" ideas.  While decrying over-regulation and red tape for business, Hudak's plans for people on disability or Ontario Works effectively adds to the layers of bureaucracy and discrimination people already feel.  First, he wants to put people with disabilities back on welfare and have this new unified program delivered by the municipalities.  While we realize this was a proposal from the Social Assistance Review Commission, the Liberals outright rejected it because of major opposition from almost everybody ... we all know the problems with this approach.

People with disabilities who are likely to remain on assistance programs for a longer period of time and some of them possibly for life, need to have a different set of rules, such as collecting benefits as a single regardless of their relationship status with somebody else, the right to earn more money without it being clawed back, a higher level of assets (including ALL retirement savings) and other rules.  People on Ontario Works can conceivably be off the system within months and do not need the same set of rules.  By combining the two programs, each set of recipients will be treated the same by the municipalities.  When this idea was first put forth, virtually everybody I spoke to that received ODSP told me about horror stories of what it was like to deal with the municipality and Ontario Works, especially cheque holds, suspensions, being called into the office without transportation to get there, etc.  Some have lost their housing because of this.

Other plans such as the use of debit cards instead of cash that would be programmed only to allow food purchases would certainly be difficult, if not impossible to properly develop, especially given that 73% of those on assistance pay market rents which means they pay part or all of their "basic needs" budget on housing.  Unless Hudak has some magical plans to force all landlords across Ontario as well as all banks that hold mortgages of recipients where they do exist, to charge only what social assistance maximums are for shelter allowance, then I can't see it working.  In addition to that, this infantalizes people.  Unless politicians, who are also paid by the public purse, are willing to be paid in a debit card that cannot be spent on trips abroad, personal meals, alcohol, etc., then they cannot impose this thinking on others.  This creates an additional layer of bureaucracy and regulations that nobody else has to abide to and can also impede working.  The social assistance paper is a nightmare and I would suggest all people who have been on OW or ODSP or have loved ones on these benefits, to read that paper closely with the link provided above and try to envision oneself and how they would cope under these circumstances, especially in a world where there is nothing going to be done about jobs.  Hudak might be trying to sell us a million jobs, but I strongly suspect as many others that these jobs are not the kind of jobs that pay ... perhaps, they can be better be related as 'snow jobs', 'imaginary jobs', etc. because as I often stated before, and has been proven so far, tax cuts do nothing towards creating real jobs.  It takes consumers with money to create jobs.

In finality, I want you to watch this video and this tells you exactly how jobs are created:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKCvf8E7V1g
Rich People Don't Create Jobs

If Hudak wants to fire 100,000 real people with good paying jobs, and restrict unions and so forth, as well as cut or freeze social assistance benefits, then there will be less consumers that are able to buy goods and services the businesses, big or small, have to offer ... I know if I have a lot of people wanting my services, and I can't do it myself, I have to hire somebody else to help produce ... and once that person becomes over-busy, then we need another person.  But if consumers don't have money, it doesn't matter if businesses even pay zero taxes, they will not add people to their workforce.  What would these people do?  Just hang around and pick their nose?  Listen to that video and then ask your Conservative candidate how their proposals to cut, cut, cut will lead to all these jobs ...