IMO Ontario just re-elected a party that wasted billions of tax payers dollars through their own corruption, put Ontario further in debt (which will reach close to 300 billion soon). Wynne put forth no economic policy on job creation (roughly 500,000+ are unemployed in Ontario). Their platform put forth no plan on reducing government spending. In fact you will see a push on spending on transit and other infrastructure. Non of which the province can afford.

Having seen the bureaucracy first hand I think Hudak is correct that the public sector is out of hand. People in our government making too much money for doing little. The increase in public sector jobs has not lead to better service (education, healthcare etc). In fact unemployment has risen during this period.

The private sector are the ones that can't find jobs yet its the public sector and their unions which continue to get catered to.

The same people that voted for the Liberals will be the same ones bitching in the coming years about their hydro bills.

Companies like Axiom will face a tax hike in the coming years meaning you will be paying more your speakers.

Canada is very similar to the US in terms of its politics but opposite in terms of parties. Canadians fear monger over conservative politics and Americans fear monger over liberal politics but neither are as far left or far right as the "fear" is made to be.

I've watched the Ontario election with interest from the west coast.

Incredible results given the track record of this bunch. Ontario is a fiscal basket-case that is in worse shape per-capita than California. Its debt is now ~$269 Billion & growing out of control & forecast to continue unabated; however, sadly this critical situation wasn't even mentioned in the campaign. We in North America & Europe are living in a financial dream world that is rapidly turning into a nightmare.

Makes me feel really good when we in British Columbia & Alberta next door send our Equalization Payments down there to be spent so wisely. Grrrr...

TAM

I avoid political discussions and this will be my only post here, but these comments read so exactly like a conservative ad, except slightly less mud tossing, that i couldn't help but think about how many people are so one track in mindset like a brainwash effect, sold onto them by people in tight suits and often bad hair styles.

"Having seen the bureaucracy first hand"
In what regard? (just curious)
I have seen financial things that could change to save cash in all industries. I used to work for the feds on contract in a federal building for years. During the federal job cuts i saw good workers (several scientists and then all of their associated staff who tell us things about oh, the quality of water we drink and fish we eat) lose their positions and why? Because of someone's ideological concept of government bloat. Some still don't have new jobs. That's more workers NOT paying taxes. I know of ten better ways to have saved on costs at this lowest level of a workplace which would have been far more meaningful than people losing their careers of 10+ years. Employees at this base level all know about such possibilities, but it has long been ignored by higher echelons and certainly never considered by any minister in charge of that federal department.

How about this for an idea of cutting the fat....why have MPs (federal or MPPs provincially) not taken a single pay cut or pension cut during these times of austerity?
Why not offer up even a 10% reduction in MP salaries (for which they start at $150k annually) since so many others in Canada have lost their employment income by 100%?
After only six years as a federal MP they get a pension starting at $40k annually (approx.). That's just outright stupid.
If i had the patience i'd sign up to be a politician as soon as possible so i could retire after 6 years with a pension better than someone who worked in a unionized coal mine for 40 years.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/07/05/...-year-for-life/
(Please spare any comments about the Reform_PC pension changes lately as well since it amounts to a drop in the bucket compared to Joe Blow's average Canadian pension who works just as damn hard as any politician).

I also worked for private industry (an oil company), consulting firms and even an NGO (non-government, non-profit organization).
Of any of those sectors, only the NGO was truly lean in its use of resources but one thing i have learned, when any of these places cut people, they also cut the ability to actually do work or take on larger work sometimes to the point where the group dissolves entirely. It is a downward spiral.

The simplest fact is, whether it be a household or a government, if you spend more than you take in, you have debt. When you cut what you take in, you have debt.
Guess which line applies to Liberals/NDP (spending) and which line applies to PC (tax cutting) and both have the same end result?

Sorry BJ, but the broad net you cast on government bloat and how some single party has the solution that will work or how one other party is the sole reason to blame for a situation, has alot to do with what people are sold to them by people with hypotheses about how economics should work, compared to the reality of how this world turns. Let's "blame the man" because its the easiest swing to take. Kinda hard to blame my neighbor because he's never been unemployed so he loves things like personal tax breaks but it does demonstrate the narrow mindset.
Had he been fired from a job and got a union job giving him some job security instead, perhaps he would have voted NDP instead of PC.

I don't think any of these parties have a great all around solution, and EVERY party/person can make errors in deciding on gas plants or boat and plane contracts, but one thing i can say is i'm very tired of hearing the negative mud slinging in Canadian politics about it all.
Corruption?
Bah. People using this word in this context don't know the meaning of real corruption.

/end rant (i won't be back to this thread)

Seems to me that political parties of all stripes are quite different from each other during campaigns but are virtually the same once they are in power.

Virtually every government in the past 50 years in North America & Europe whether left, right, center or whatever, has irresponsibly over spent, over borrowed with the result that we are all saddled with crushing debt plus interest & massive unfunded liabilities that we cannot ever pay back - there isn't enough wealth in the whole world to cover it all.

Given the laws of economics, all things eventually come to a end & it ain't gonna be pretty...

TAM

"...and I feel like a bullet in the gun of Robert Ford..."
Elton & Bernie

the problem isn't that government is too bloated, it's that you cannot trim out the people that don't do anything from the system. It's the union protection that makes it impossible to do so. There are some very senior people in positions that do squat all, but you simply can't get rid of them. Not to say that all people in government don't work, there are the vast majority that do. There is also the cultural red tape in this is the way that it is done and no means come hell or high water that will change that way. So very capable people who would simply love to do what is right are stifled by the system that will not let them. Sadly there is ZERO way to change this and no political party has the ability to make the changed that are necessary to fix it.

Running a country, province, or town is a tough thing. But sadly there are systems in place that make virtually impossible to fix. Think about it.. every 4 or so years you elect a new government, but you do don't get to do anything about the civil service that are the actual ones that run everything. Until we change that system we are doomed to have an inefficient system.

I think Chess nailed it.

FWIW, becoming efficient isn't a 5 minute exercise in playing Donald Trump and yelling "your fired" at a bunch of people.

I work in an industry that excels a efficiency. In our plant, we have a small team of people who's only job is to drive both efficiency improvements and ergonomic improvements.

Getting efficient is a difficult 24/7/365 slog. Sometimes you take steps backwards and have to undo what you just 'fixed'. You get there in tiny steps, with each requiring a lot of effort.

Governments don't create jobs, despite what every politician tells you. They create and manage the underpinnings of an economy: infrastructure, healthcare, acceptable and reasonable working conditions.

We can't afford infrastructure investments? That's insane!!! This is at the core of what a government does and North America in general has been falling behind here.

Elections are not won on platforms, they are won on rhetoric, so it is always hard to know what a politician is actually going to do, but Mr. Hudak came off as the one who most believed his own BS and that concerned me. The man showed a lot of potential as a wrecking ball. That's not how you build things up.

The most interesting idea in this election was one line from Andrea Horvath about creating a ministry of savings. It never even registered with anyone. Not the electorate, not the political analysts, nobody. Think Demming, kaizen.

In a way I'm glad the Libs got back in...they've run up a deficit of nearing $300 billion, let them fix it.

What an honourable & novel idea - fixing the debt; however, there is a fat chance of that ever happening anywhere (everywhere?) it is out of control...

TAM

and when they can't and another party gets in, they can go for 2-3 terms and keep using the line.. Well, we got stuck with all that Wynn debt.

Like Dalton did with Mike Harris.

Dalton should be behind bars.

Correction...he probably is...just not the ones he should be.