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THE ONTARIO WE WANT ONTARIO BUDGET THROWS PUBLIC SERVICES UNDER THE INFRASTRUCTURE BUS MODEST PROGRAM IMPROVEMENTS CLAWED BACK BY CUTS AND PRIVATIZATION After the public relations lighting storm generated in 2015 over the sale of Hydro One, the 2016 Ontario Budget sought, unsuccessfully, to reverse the current of public outrage by changing the channel. Up front in Finance Minister Charles Sousa’s budget speech this year were showpiece announcements about “free tuition” for post-secondary students and limited new funding for hospitals. However, the Minister failed to mention the previous nine consecutive years of hospital budget cuts and a restructuring of student financial assistance that meant the new grants for students would be offset by cuts to existing aid programs. Meanwhile, tuition fees will continue to increase. Despite these modest investments, the budget held the line on austerity cuts and hydro privatization in order to fund its infrastructure plans. Behind the budget numbers was a net transfer of wealth and good jobs from a public sector where the workforce is 60 percent female to a construction sector that is 88 percent male. It is a fiscal strategy that will inadvertently widen the gender wage gap, precisely at a time that the government has promised to reduce it. “The 2016 Ontario Budget throws public services under the infrastructure bus when it should be presenting Ontarians with a roadmap for growing the economy and reversing the backslide to inequality,” said Buckley. “Piecemeal improvements to student financial assistance, disability support and other positive measures won’t help reduce inequality in Ontario if families are 8 squeezed by precarious work, shrinking public services and increasing user fees.” In its pre-budget submission, the OFL called on the Wynne Government to abandon its balanced budget fixation in favour of new investments in job creation, restoring public services and making sure that banks and corporations pay their fair share. The OFL cited a report released by the Ontario Common Front in November 2015, demonstrating that, by nearly every measure, Ontario is trailing every other province in income equality and poverty reduction. Among the most alarming findings are: • Ontario has experienced a 50% increase in the duration of unemployment, making its long-term unemployment the second worst in Canada; • 1.7 million people are now earning within $4 of the minimum wage; • There has been a 38% increase in poverty in Ontario over the past 20 years and nearly one in five Ontario children live in poverty; • Young Ontario families pay up to $19,000 a year for child care, the highest costs in Canada; • University tuition fees have outpaced inflation by 601% while per student funding is dead last; and • Ontario funds all of its social programs at the lowest rate in Canada. “Wynne has given us one step forward, two steps back. Without increasing social program funding above inflation, this budget will further cement Ontario’s last place status for social program funding, income equality and poverty reduction,” said Buckley. “The shortcomings of the 2016 budget make it all the more essential for this government to move forward with bold plans to close Ontario’s gender wage gap and reform Ontario’s outdated labour laws so that every worker is lifted out of poverty and fairness becomes the law of the land.” Behind the budget numbers was a net transfer of wealth and good jobs from a public sector where the workforce is 60% female to a construction sector that is 88% male. It is a fiscal strategy that will inadvertently widen the gender wage gap, precisely at a time that the government has promised to reduce it. SPRING 2016 • VOLUME 6, ISSUE 2