The Drummond Report - The Liberal Gravy Train Exposed As An Economic Train Wreck

Don Drummond author of
The Drummond Report

Well isn’t this just peachy!      

The Drummond Report has been released by Don Drummond, the former Chief Economist at TD Bank Financial Group who was commissioned by the Ontario Government to study and report on the state of the province's finances with recommendations on how to reduce the deficit.

It ain’t pretty but that doesn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone except all of those people who kept voting for Dalton McGuinty and his Liberals despite his dismal economic performance, his proven track record of breaking election promises or because they belonged to one of the special interests that got bought with taxpayer money so that he could protect his electoral votes.


Just five months ago, Mr. McGuinty won his third term in office by telling the people of Ontario that the other parties were over-reacting and that the province was in sound ecncomic shape. He went so far as to compare Ontario's economic leadership and job creation to California. He would have been better to compare it to Greece, Ireland or Italy.

Front page of today's Globe and Mail
Canada\s National newspaper

Reality bit hard today and the Liberal entitlement gravy train has come to a screeching halt or more accurately, has been exposed for the train wreck it actually is.

People are in paranoid hysteria on the Internet about some regulations being introduced to protect copyright. They scream about the threat to democracy but the Drummond Report underlines the real threat. When political parties are so careless with our tax money and lie to us in order to get elected, that takes away our right to make informed decisions and that is the real threat to democracy.

This report is so damning, the Premier should be horse-whipped in the public square for his duplicity and his incompetence. At the very least he should resign but don't hold your breath. There is a raft of political spin, finger pointing and excuse making coming. Those tend to be the only things at which Mr. McGuinty is really accomplished.

The Report is calling for draconian cuts to the provincial budget but the premier announced even before the report was released that he wouldn’t consider eliminating all-day kindergarten which is costing the province money if can't afford for no discernable benefit. Apparently saving face is more important than saving a province that was the economic engine of Canada before he took office and is now a have-not province actually receiving equalization payments from the federal government for the first time in the province’s history.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty

Liberal supporters castigated Mike Harris, the former Conservative Premier who ran on what he called the Common Sense Revolution and who brought Ontario’s finances under control with an overall 3.9% cut in provincial spending. Thanks to an orgy of mismanagement and spending irresponsibility, Dalton McGuinty’s “prudent” approach will require 17% in cuts. Read that as slashes in government spending which means public sector wage freezes and job cuts, closing hospital and increased service and user fees for reduced services.

Greece is starting to look pretty good by comparison.

There is no question that there will be countless media and blog reviews of the specifics of the Drummond Report online and I have provided a link to the full report at the bottom of this post so I won’t go through the details here.

My issue is with integrity in politics and an electorate so blinded by ideology (yes, it isn’t merely the right that has an ideology) that they willfully have allowed an incompetent politician to lead them to near bankruptcy.

During his first two terms, Mr. McGuinty handed out money to special interest like a drunken sailor handing out five dollar bills to waitresses in a strip club (although comparing drunken sailors to Mr. McGuinty does drunken sailors a disservice.)

Just about everyone in the public sector got significant raises during a time of fiscal restraint. Teachers, the provincial police and public servants, as well as, others received increases far in excess of inflation. Mr. McGuinty then announced he was freezing public sector salaries which is nothing more than cynical and dishonest grandstanding. Now many of them are going to lose their jobs. Those raises, which were used by Mr. McGuinty to buy support for his elections will look pretty feeble to those who traded their votes for a raise once the unemployment notices start rolling out and they are going to be rolling out.

Money was squandered, lost or misappropriated in the billions in places like the Ontario Lottery Corporation, eHealth and Ornge (the medical helicopter service). Full-day junior kindergarten was introduced at a cost of $1.5 billion and additional subsidies were handed over to post-secondary education even as the province was sinking further into debt.

Mr. McGuinty introduced his Green Energy act which now sees Ontario paying wind and solar providers seven to eight times what they pay for hydro-electric power at time when the province has a surplus of energy and is selling it to other jurisdictions at a loss. That's right! Under Mr. McGuinty's leadership, Ontario actually produces power which it then pays others to buy.

There was nowhere that Mr. McGuinty didn't seize the opportunity to buy votes with money the province didn't have.

Mr. McGuinty called this prudent leadership and sound fiscal management in the last election but it is clear that the Drummond Report is revealing anything but prudence or even a casual sense of responsibility to sound fiscal management of the province's economy.

The Liberals will blame it on the global economy but that will be just one more face-saving, self-serving untruth. The simple fact is that this is the most incompetent, cynical and dishonest government ever produced in Canada and it is the people who once again will pay for it.

Undeniably, Mr. McGuinty owes the people of the province an apology but they won't get it. A politician without the character to tell the truth during an election certainly doesn't have the character to admit his duplicity and apologize for what it has caused or the devastation and hardship it will bring to those he was elected to serve. For people like Mr. McGuinty, there is no such thing as feeling shame for having failed the people who bought into the lies and gave him their trust.

The only potential positive in this is that perhaps all those people who ranted in fear about the Conservatives while turning a blind eye to Mr. McGuinty’s record, will drop lemming-like party allegiances and vote based on values and common sense next time around. It would be nice but I doubt it will happen. People become so blinded by ideology that they will rave hysterically about the other guy while following an idiot down the road to perdition.

The people get the government they deserve and in Ontario, they’re about to pay very dearly for a government nobody should have even considered but they elected anyway.

Ontario isn't the only victim of cynical and dishonest politics. People are angry all over the world and they're angry precisely because of the kind of thing that is happening to what was once the richest province in the country. It isn't the global economy that is destroying our way of life, it is politicians and their backroom strategists from all parties who put winning power ahead of serving the public.

It is long past time that we stop clustering in self-defeating ideological chattering gangs, screaming about trivia like the threat to democracy of Internet regulation and got our collective act together by demanding integrity, leadership and sound economic management from politicians. A little vision wouldn't hurt either but that may be asking for too much.

It's what Mr. McGuinty promised in three successive elections. It is what the Drummond Report has proven to have been just one more in a series of cynical political lies.

The Full Drummond Report. If you live in Ontario and voted for Dalton McGuinty, read it and weep

http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/reformcommission/

Drummond Report Catalogues McGuinty Mess In Ontario
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/02/16/don-drummond-catalogues-the-mcguinty-mess-in-meticulous-detail/

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