Poor judgement has run the province into debt

Editor:

I was perplexed by the editorial which seemed to give tacit support by The Echo to Kathleen Wynne. I wondered why the paper would present such a shallow review of nine years of Liberal rule even though the formal election process has not yet started. Indeed, I always thought the paper tried to be apolitical but I guess I was wrong.

I take issue with your notion that a governing party with a majority of the seats does not give a lot of power to one person. Actually, the Premier of Ontario with a majority can and usually does exercise power over all aspects of governing the Province and no major policy decision is made without the imprimatur of the Premier.

Your editorial touches on some of the ‘nice’ things the current government has done for the electorate. Some might argue the merits of some of the initiatives you highlighted and might disagree with your notion that the Wynne government is “not all bad”. That may be the case from the very narrow perspective you took to boost Kathleen Wynne. However, you did not highlight the huge cost of all the initiatives sponsored by the Wynne government and the billions wasted on the gas plant fiasco, the Green Energy Act or on many other failed investments over the past nine years.

The fact is that under her leadership, and that of her predecessor for whom she worked, provincial debt has mushroomed to an all time high of $312 billion and nearly tripled since the Liberals came to power. Interest costs alone are $11.6 billion and projected to be more than we spend on health care and significantly more than we spend on education; more than we spend on children and youth services and more than what is spent on care for seniors. Between now and election time in June, I expect that Wynne will commit to spend even more on goodies just to try helping with her re-election.

There is no plan to reduce the debt and Ontario’s credit rating has been downgraded as a result of the profligate spending.

So, yes it is nice to have the government give us everything we might like to have but, unfortunately, it all costs money the province cannot afford. Somehow, spending has to be reduced to reflect reality and not some nirvana where the answer to every need is to borrow more money.

And as for personalities being liked or disliked, I personally think that Wynne has shown incredibly bad political judgement and has run the province into a rabbit hole of debt. For that reason alone, I do not like her as my Premier.

Rowland Fleming,

Creemore.