They say budgets are a roadmap to the future. But the budget tabled a couple weeks ago by Vic Fedeli and Doug Ford isn’t a roadmap, it’s a getaway plan.
This government is running a heist on OUR hard earned money, stealing it away from us and giving it to their rich backers.
The question is: are we going to let them get away with it?
Are we going to let them get away with stealing a billion of our dollars out of the social services that support kids with developmental disabilities and autism?
Are we going to let them get away with stealing another billion of our dollars out of the classrooms where our kids learn for the future?
Are we going to let them get away with stealing yet another billion of our dollars that it’s going to cost to put booze into convenience stores?
Are we going to let them get away with stealing yet another 600 million of our dollars out of student loans that help those kids go to college and university?
Are we going to let them get away with stealing yet another 300 million of our dollars out of the ministry that keeps our workplaces safe?
Are we going to let them get away with stealing yet another 400 million of our dollars out of the ministries that protect our environment and natural resources from things like forest fires and floods?
Are we going to let them get away with stealing yet another hundred million of our dollars out of the Legal Aid clinics that ensure justice isn’t just for the rich?
Are we really going to let them get away with all this?
Because we’re sure not getting anything in return. For all their fearmongering about the deficit – which isn’t actually the monster they portray it as – they’re not actually reducing it very much.
So if they’re not spending our money on us, who are they lavishing it on? People rich enough to own big businesses and corporate shares.
By cutting carbon and corporate taxes, the budget funnels more than three billion of our dollars to a few people who already have more than enough.
And don’t believe for a second any of that money is going to trickle back down to us – it’ll be in Panama or some other tax haven faster than you could fly there on Galen Weston’s private jet.
This is exactly what we mean when we say that the government doesn’t have a spending problem, it has a revenue problem.
There’s two sides to any budget. There’s the money that comes in: revenue. And money that goes back out: spending.
Government spending isn’t the problem: that’s just our money being invested in public services that help us all.
The real problem is that decades of tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy are catching up to us. We just don’t have enough money coming in.
So when Fedeli and Ford sat down to figure out the budget, they had a choice. Demand a little more from the rich. Or steal even more from us.
They came to power promising that “the party with your money is over.”
But make no mistake: there’s still a party at Queen’s Park. It’s a guilty party.
In Solidarity, Eddy
Eduardo (Eddy) Almeida
First Vice-President/Treasurer
Ontario Public Service Employees Union
@OPSEUEddy