The best vote for an Ontario student to make on October 6 is a vote for the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party.
Dalton McGuinty’s constant mismanagement of important files indicates that he is no longer fit to govern the province of Ontario. The eHealth Ontario scandal, for example, was characterized by the blatant excesses typical of the Liberal government. According to the Ontario Auditor General’s report, eHealth had “fewer than 30 full-time employees” while “engaging more than 300 consultants.” Accompanied by an extreme lack of oversight and the absence of a coherent plan, this produced virtually nothing of value, and wasted $1 billion in taxpayers’ money. This costly failure by McGuinty’s cabinet would be grounds for dismissal in any accountable organization.
Furthermore, in spite of explicit promises not to raise taxes, the Liberals slyly introduced a new eco-tax and health premiums, cut funding to pharmacies, and stood by while hydro bills and tuition fees skyrocketed; yet, they have still managed to run the largest deficit in Ontario’s history. Ontario went from being the only province which had never received equalization payments to taking $347 million from the program in a single fiscal year. McGuinty’s government cannot be trusted and does not offer a positive or affordable vision for the future of the citizens of Ontario.
Andrea Horwath is seen by some to be a credible alternative. The NDP has promised to freeze tuition fees and remove interest from student loans. However, Horwath is weak on a very important issue — the economy. If elected she would drive Ontario closer to the dangerous realm of protectionism, requiring public organizations to buy Ontario products even if the product is up to ten per cent more expensive than the alternatives, therefore exacerbating the fiscal dilemma caused by the Liberals by further increasing government expenditure. Additionally, any mined resources which could be processed in Ontario would not be legally exportable in their raw state. This would raise consumer costs and encourage businesses to purchase raw materials elsewhere, killing the very jobs the measure is designed to protect. Her interference in the market by capping certain salaries and raising corporate taxes would hurt Ontario’s ability to attract talent, damage economic competitiveness, and ensure that there would not be money to pay for her own extravagant promises, such as transit fee freezes on already money-losing systems.
When students consider the platform of a political leader, we tend to focus on immediately apparent student-friendly promises like tuition freezes. Tim Hudak’s platform does include these: the Ontario Dollars for Ontario Students campaign, which would transfer a planned thirty million dollars in scholarships to Ontario students; an initiative to improve credit transfer programs; and a plan to make OSAP more accessible for the middle-class families who cannot afford to pay for higher education and don’t currently qualify for the program. Ontario PC policies have garnered praise from the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance and will help students without destroying the government’s chequebook.
However, one issue in particular is even more important to students than the policies directly affecting post-secondary education, and that is the economy. Freezing tuition fees may be well and good, but if students do not have paying jobs in the summer, or upon graduation, it doesn’t matter if we owe ten thousand or fifty thousand dollars in student loans, because either way we will never be able to pay it back. If the government is hemorrhaging money, wrapping businesses in red tape, and increasing corporate tax rates while remaining in the grip of a deficit, we will not be able to increase the number of sustainable, well-paying jobs in Ontario. If we cannot get jobs, there is a smaller tax base to reinvest in education.
It is a vicious circle, and can only be broken with the type of economic approach Tim Hudak offers: a combination of tax cuts, reduced hydro costs, cutting waste in the public sector, reinvestments in businesses, and a deficit reduction program funded from savings totalling two per cent of the government’s budget every year. Tim Hudak’s realistic approach is a recipe for a healthy economy and for making Ontario a business-friendly place once again. Although Liberal candidate Sarah Thomson believes Ontario has the best economy in Canada, we can clearly see that it does not. The Progressive Conservatives will help allay the current economic damage, which is absolutely essential to providing good jobs and affordable, quality education to Ontario students. That is why you should vote for them on October 6.
