Ontario's Budget Problem

Leftists who think money grows on trees? Climate nutters? Or both?

Every year, when the Ontario government brings down a budget, Steve Paikin hosts a budget discussion on his popular program on TVO “The Agenda”. The discussion is always fascinating.

First, the panelists typically comprise people who lean left and complain that a Conservative government won’t spend more on their favorite issue while complaining that the fiscal deficit is too high. Some things are simple - if you spend more and don’t increase revenue, deficits will grow. The solutions from the panelists is predictable - find ways to take more from wealthier Ontarians and give more to those less well off. Often the catchword is “fair share”. What is the fair amount to take from someone who has earned it to give to someone who has not?

The $215 odd billion budget is 40% health care ($85 billion), yet the panelists think health care is underfunded and call Ontario health care a crisis. Isn’t the crisis really people who think health care is the government’s problem and not their own, and who do little to look after their own health. Paying doctors and nurses more won’t reduce demand for health care, only healthier lifestyles will contribute to that. Diet and excercise and avoidance of tobacco, cannabis and opiods is a great place to start.

18% of the budget is for education ($37.6 billion), yet our kids and most of the panel and the Minister of Finance seem to have no understanding of the laws of physics, with the Minister claiming investments in electric vehicle (EV) battery plants are needed to “fight climate change” and the panelists complaining that the government has an inadequate plan to deal with “climate change”. But I am confident our kids get their pronouns right.

Reality is that CO2 does not and cannot cause climate change, easily demonstrated by anyone who successfully completed grade 11 physics. Here is the Coles’ notes version of the compelling arithmetic that debunks the “climate change” narrative that pretty well everyone who participated in this episode of The Agenda including Paikin himself is deluded enough to believe the man-made climate change rhetoric that comes from the Ottawa Liberals. Give this some thought and try to find any holes in the arithmetic or physics, set out below:

You won’t find any because there aren’t any. Minister Bethanfalvy is no more credible than the Liberal and NDP panelists regarding “climate change” - all of them are deluded on the subject.

The “underfunded” claims ignore the 6% of the Budget ($13.9 billion) needed to pay the interest on the Province’s debt, a figure that keeps growing. The Province needs to live within its means and the amounts spent on “transfers” to those incapable of paying their own way through life have to be balanced with what those who can are willing to pay and can afford to pay. User fees for health care would go a long way to reduce frivolous doctor visits and help pay for added resources. Ontarians visit doctors about 60 million times a year, often for nothing more troubling than a sniffle or a headache, or just to hear a sympathetic voice who well tell them they are just fine.

A $5 per visit fee wouldn’t do much to raise revenue, but the $300 million might be enough to fund three or four thousand more nurses which, in my opinion, would help ease the severe shortage of nurses I believe is a major health care delivery problem today with the province’s approximately 100,000 nurses badly over worked.

The housing crisis is a policy creation, not a result of any external forces. Ontario has about 1 million acres of vacant land which, at a density of 4 homes per acre and 3 people per home, could house 12 million people if developed. Elimination of the artificial barriers to residential construction inherent in municipal planning departments, zoning restrictions, building codes, etc. would free the construction industry to build plenty of homes and at today’s construction costs of about $200 a square foot, they could be affordable homes. My great grandparents built a log home in Moose Creek, Ontario in 1850 which still stands square and inhabitable today, and I have stayed there many times and found it comfortable. There were no zoning codes or building codes in 1850 but that didn’t prevent Canadians from building warm, comfortable and safe homes to bring up their families. Big government is the problem, not the solution.

It is time for Peter Bethanfalvy, Steve Paikin and the throng of panelists who Paikin attracts to his program to admit climate change is a shibboleth, not a crisis, and that the pretense that CO2 causes climate change is driving inane policies that squander the resources that would ease the problems Paikin’s guests went to lengths to bitch about. In particular, @stephaniebowman @CFifeKW and @MikeSchreiner and @PBethanfalvy would benefit from a physics refresher.