Ontario Budget 2014 -- Election

[Mighty AC]

The idea is to have the remaining 1mil public sector workers be 10% more productive. Kind of how the private sector trims fat to increase productivity when there are budgetary issues. It might be a new concept to you if you work in the public sector though.

Statements like that make great sound bites for the conservative base but they are generally meaningless. Sure if we were talking about digging ditches it would seem acceptable to cut 10% of the workforce and then ask the remaining people to dig 10% more each day. However, when dealing with personal services like education and healthcare the limiting factor in most cases is time. There is currently more need than capacity and yet Hudak will be stripping away thousands, upon thousands of available man hours.

Hudak will cut 10 to 20 thousand educational support workers. These are the people who deal with the thousands of students with learning and physical disabilities along with personal and behavioural issues. Students with various conditions that hamper their learning can eventually thrive when they receive very personalized, education, care and treatment. They tend to spend some time in regular classrooms and some working with support workers when their conditions make it impossible for them to stay in a classroom. This typically means they are violent or disruptive to the point that the rest of the class cannot learn. Hudak's cuts will certainly mean that special needs students will suffer tremendously, but they will also drag down the performance of regular classes as well. Teacher time will be monopolized by the special needs of the few, leading to a deficit of instructional time and care for the rest of what Tim says will be even larger class sizes.

In short, Tim will be hindering the education of the majority of students in Ontario to fund a corporate tax cut that economists say will not even come close to providing the benefit he thinks will result.

[Mighty AC]

Despite working in both the public and private sectors I am very much in favour of reducing public sector costs. I agreed with the McGuinty regimes, removal of paid bankable sick days for teachers, lowering total available sick days and freezing or even reducing salaries. There are so many ways to trim public sector spending responsibly, yet Hudak isn't proposing sensible cuts. In fact, some of his ideas go beyond stupid to qualify as dangerous. What's worse is that he isn't hiding his irresponsible plans for health and education, he's flat out advertising them wrapped in pretty little soundbites like:

The idea is to have the remaining 1mil public sector workers be 10% more productive. Kind of how the private sector trims fat to increase productivity.

I have to wonder if Tim is even aware of how poorly targeted his cuts are. Is he ignorant or just confident in the ignorance of the general public on the realities of delivering personal services.

[CPCFTW]

Statements like that make great sound bites for the conservative base but they are generally meaningless. Sure if we were talking about digging ditches it would seem acceptable to cut 10% of the workforce and then ask the remaining people to dig 10% more each day. However, when dealing with personal services like education and healthcare the limiting factor in most cases is time. There is currently more need than capacity and yet Hudak will be stripping away thousands, upon thousands of available man hours.

Hudak will cut 10 to 20 thousand educational support workers. These are the people who deal with the thousands of students with learning and physical disabilities along with personal and behavioural issues. Students with various conditions that hamper their learning can eventually thrive when they receive very personalized, education, care and treatment. They tend to spend some time in regular classrooms and some working with support workers when their conditions make it impossible for them to stay in a classroom. This typically means they are violent or disruptive to the point that the rest of the class cannot learn. Hudak's cuts will certainly mean that special needs students will suffer tremendously, but they will also drag down the performance of regular classes as well. Teacher time will be monopolized by the special needs of the few, leading to a deficit of instructional time and care for the rest of what Tim says will be even larger class sizes.

In short, Tim will be hindering the education of the majority of students in Ontario to fund a corporate tax cut that economists say will not even come close to providing the benefit he thinks will result.

So there will be more students per teacher and there will be some disruptive students that don't get their own private taxpayer-funded teachers any more. So basically teachers have to work harder. Isn't that what I said?

[Mighty AC]

So there will be more students per teacher and there will be some disruptive students that don't get their own private taxpayer-funded teachers any more. So basically teachers have to work harder. Isn't that what I said?

I can't tell if you don't really understand what you're talking about or if you just feel it's your duty to support conservative ideas. From kindergarten up until about grade 10 the vast majority of classes will have one or more students with diagnosed neurological and social disorders. Conditions include the various stages of ASD, ODD, ADD, Tourette syndrome, etc.

These kids, at best, require an immense amount of dedicated support and can often also be extremely confrontational and even violent. Teacher's can and do deal with these situations every day; however, that time commitment comes at the expense of the rest of the class. Tim's plan is to eliminate the educational assistants who work with these students, leaving them in regular classrooms full time. There are still only X number of minutes in a period and children with special needs will monopolize that time. Everyone will suffer when teachers simply do not have the class time to deal with each student's needs.

Even without a team of advisers like Hudak has, I bet a few of us on this tiny discussion board can come up with a far more sensible ways to lower public sector spending.

[Mighty AC]

Unfortunately, she gives no information on just HOW she plans on balancing the books. There are a lot of unpriced goodies there, too, like hiring more teachers and nurses and opening more home care clinics and cutting the HST from electricity.

Hudak can't explain how his 400k jobs plan will actually create jobs, yet he is fully committed to decimating education in order to fund its corporate tax cut. So information doesn't seem to be a requirement for your support.

[Boges]

It's pretty impossible to discuss these issues if you think all public sector jobs are sacrosanct.

The public sector has ballooned under this government. At twice the rate of the population. Taking it back to 2009 levels doesn't sound to extreme to me.

Edited May 30, 2014 by Boges

[cybercoma]

The gov says it's laying off 100k people and some of you are cheering. If the auto industry laid off 100k people at once, you'd be calling for intervention.

[Boges]

Cuz those aren't 100% subsidized jobs.

But actually Judah did speak out against subsidizing Chrysler yet again.

They have since backed off.

[CPCFTW]

The gov says it's laying off 100k people and some of you are cheering. If the auto industry laid off 100k people at once, you'd be calling for intervention.

Here's the problem. So many people seem to think public sector jobs are equivalent to private sector jobs.

Here's a microcosm that might help you to better understand:

100 people in an economy. 80 of them work in the auto sector making 100k each. The government taxes them at a 20% flat tax rate, yielding $1.6M in tax revenue. Of the remaining 20 people, 10 remain unemployed and get 20k of welfare each ($200k), the other 10 are the administration of the government and get $140k each ($1.4M).

You could pretend that those 10 government officials are taxpayers and pay them $175k each then deduct 20% of that ($35k) to give them an after-tax income of $140k again. But really 100% of their income in either scenario is derived from the private sector.

What are the budget implications?

In scenario one you have $1.6M in revenue and $1.6M in expenditures.

In scenario two you have $1.95M in revenue ($1.6 from private + $0.35 from public) and $1.95M in expenditures ($200k welfare, $1.75M to government administration).

So whether or not government workers pay taxes, there is no effect to the government's budget balance (assuming same levels of after-tax income).

Now, under scenario 1, what happens if you cut 9 those government workers out of the equation? You're left with a $1.6M to distribute among 19 unemployed people and the 1 government worker. The 1 worker makes 140k, so you have 1.46M remaining for the 19 unemployed people. You can leave welfare at 20k and have a budget surplus of $1.08M (which can be used to pay off debt). Or if you want to reduce inequality you can raise welfare to 20k + 1.08M/19 = 76k. Or if you want to put more after-tax income into worker's pockets, you can cut taxes such that you only have 520K (20k x 19 + 140k) in revenue. That means cutting taxes on the private sector from 20% to 6.5% so each of the 80 workers will be taking home 93.5k instead of 80 (+13.5k) of after-tax income.

The point is that the government should not be holding onto jobs to support the economy. Public sector jobs should be minimized because it is the private sector that pays for them all.

The argument that government services may be reduced or lost is the only legitimate argument. The argument that we will create 100k unemployed people and thus weaken the economy is untrue.

[jacee]

Here's the problem. So many people seem to think public sector jobs are equivalent to private sector jobs.

Here's a microcosm that might help you to better understand:

100 people in an economy. 80 of them work in the auto sector making 100k each. The government taxes them at a 20% flat tax rate, yielding $1.6M in tax revenue. Of the remaining 20 people, 10 remain unemployed and get 20k of welfare each ($200k), the other 10 are the administration of the government and get $140k each ($1.4M).

You could pretend that those 10 government officials are taxpayers and pay them $175k each then deduct 20% of that ($35k) to give them an after-tax income of $140k again. But really 100% of their income in either scenario is derived from the private sector.

What are the budget implications?

In scenario one you have $1.6M in revenue and $1.6M in expenditures.

In scenario two you have $1.95M in revenue ($1.6 from private + $0.35 from public) and $1.95M in expenditures ($200k welfare, $1.75M to government administration).

So whether or not government workers pay taxes, there is no effect to the government's budget balance (assuming same levels of after-tax income).

Now, under scenario 1, what happens if you cut 9 those government workers out of the equation? You're left with a $1.6M to distribute among 19 unemployed people and the 1 government worker. The 1 worker makes 140k, so you have 1.46M remaining for the 19 unemployed people. You can leave welfare at 20k and have a budget surplus of $1.08M (which can be used to pay off debt). Or if you want to reduce inequality you can raise welfare to 20k + 1.08M/19 = 76k. Or if you want to put more after-tax income into worker's pockets, you can cut taxes such that you only have 520K (20k x 19 + 140k) in revenue. That means cutting taxes on the private sector from 20% to 6.5% so each of the 80 workers will be taking home 93.5k instead of 80 (+13.5k) of after-tax income.

The point is that the government should not be holding onto jobs to support the economy. Public sector jobs should be minimized because it is the private sector that pays for them all.

The argument that government services may be reduced or lost is the only legitimate argument. The argument that we will create 100k unemployed people and thus weaken the economy is untrue.

100k people are then spending $20k each per year instead of $140k, a loss of $12b to private sector businesses who then have to lay off staff ...

Btw, no Educational assistants are making that kind of money, but institutional or private care for each of the special needs students they currently support in the public system will likely cost that much ... much more than EA's cost.

The real math seems to escape you ... and Hudak.

.

Edited May 30, 2014 by jacee

[Boges]

More wasted money from the Liberals.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-votes-2014/pcs-say-wynne-hid-317m-bailout-of-mars-developer-1.2657949

The Liberals gave $71 million to build a second tower at the MaRS research complex near Queen's Park and provided a $234-million loan for the project, but the documents show the registered charity and the real estate developer behind it can't repay the money.

Former Tory MPP Frank Klees says a whistleblower turned over the cabinet documents. Klees and party leader Tim Hudak accused Wynne of approving the bailout behind closed doors to avoid embarrassment during the election campaign.

NDP campaign co-chair Gilles Bisson said in a statement that the NDP has written to the auditor general requesting he look into the incident.

Klees says the Liberals also failed to put the liability on the books in the May 1 budget. The opposition parties refused to support the budget, triggering Wynne to call the June 12 election.

The Tories say the government should take the hit on the books but let MaRS suffer the consequences of bankruptcy from a bad real estate deal.

308 also gives it back to the Tories. Ipsos kept the PCs ahead but a Forum poll had the race narrow. They were the poll company that had them way ahead earlier.

Apparently it's all about likely voters. PC supporters will be motivated. Liberals, not so much.

Edited May 30, 2014 by Boges

[PIK]

Statements like that make great sound bites for the conservative base but they are generally meaningless. Sure if we were talking about digging ditches it would seem acceptable to cut 10% of the workforce and then ask the remaining people to dig 10% more each day. However, when dealing with personal services like education and healthcare the limiting factor in most cases is time. There is currently more need than capacity and yet Hudak will be stripping away thousands, upon thousands of available man hours.

Hudak will cut 10 to 20 thousand educational support workers. These are the people who deal with the thousands of students with learning and physical disabilities along with personal and behavioural issues. Students with various conditions that hamper their learning can eventually thrive when they receive very personalized, education, care and treatment. They tend to spend some time in regular classrooms and some working with support workers when their conditions make it impossible for them to stay in a classroom. This typically means they are violent or disruptive to the point that the rest of the class cannot learn. Hudak's cuts will certainly mean that special needs students will suffer tremendously, but they will also drag down the performance of regular classes as well. Teacher time will be monopolized by the special needs of the few, leading to a deficit of instructional time and care for the rest of what Tim says will be even larger class sizes.

In short, Tim will be hindering the education of the majority of students in Ontario to fund a corporate tax cut that economists say will not even come close to providing the benefit he thinks will result.

BS from the unions is all this is. He is not cutting 10-20thousand teachers ,why can't the unions for once tell the truth. Why because they know the truth prove hudak is right. But he is going to clean up the school boards,which have become a bloated useless outfit.But again why do the union have to lie about everything, even the nurses are saying he will lay them all off when they even know that is not true.

[PIK]

More wasted money from the Liberals.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-votes-2014/pcs-say-wynne-hid-317m-bailout-of-mars-developer-1.2657949

308 also gives it back to the Tories. Ipsos kept the PCs ahead but a Forum poll had the race narrow. They were the poll company that had them way ahead earlier.

Apparently it's all about likely voters. PC supporters will be motivated. Liberals, not so much.

It just does not end, what other scandals that we don't know about yet?? Edited May 30, 2014 by PIK

[Scotty]

Hudak will cut 10 to 20 thousand educational support workers.

You really don't know where he would cut. You are simply speculating.

These are the people who deal with the thousands of students with learning and physical disabilities along with personal and behavioural issues. Students with various conditions that hamper their learning can eventually thrive when they receive very personalized, education, care and treatment.

Really? Do you have a cite for that? It seems to me that if you're screwed up enough that you have to have your own support worker in class you're not very likely to be an architect or engineer some day.

They tend to spend some time in regular classrooms and some working with support workers when their conditions make it impossible for them to stay in a classroom. This typically means they are violent or disruptive to the point that the rest of the class cannot learn.

Then these people should not be in regular classrooms in regular schools. They should, and I am not trying to be cruel here, ride the special bus to the special school, so they do not impede the learning of others.

[Scotty]

Hudak can't explain how his 400k jobs plan will actually create jobs, yet he is fully committed to decimating education in order to fund its corporate tax cut. So information doesn't seem to be a requirement for your support.

None of the parties have presented an economic plan with any real rationale behind it. But as Andrew Coyne said the other day, at least the Tories will spend less, tax less, and reduce the debt faster.

[Scotty]

I can't tell if you don't really understand what you're talking about or if you just feel it's your duty to support conservative ideas. From kindergarten up until about grade 10 the vast majority of classes will have one or more students with diagnosed neurological and social disorders. Conditions include the various stages of ASD, ODD, ADD, Tourette syndrome, etc.

Remove them from those classes and put them into a special school.

[Scotty]

Hudak is firing 100k public workers to offset the loss of revenue due to a corporate tax cut.

He has stated there will be few layoffs, that most jobs will be lost through attrition. Further, the amount saved is far higher than the tax cut.

[Scotty]

The gov says it's laying off 100k people and some of you are cheering. If the auto industry laid off 100k people at once, you'd be calling for intervention.

It did not say it is laying off 100k people. It said it would reduce largely through attrition.

[Scotty]

Yes. 100,000 current jobs will be erased. Real, existing jobs. That provide real services.

The problem is the Liberals, like many on the Left, have never learned how to differentiate between a necessary service, and a service which, while not necessary, would be helpful, or at least 'nic' or 'good' or whatever term you wish to use. This explains how sevices have grown and grown over the years. Every time a new service is introduced and people use it there is an outrcry over reducing or eliminating this service. But every election, politicians make promises for new services, new 'nice things' but rarey, if every cancel the old ones. As services multiply, so do employees, and so does the budget. Eventually, someone like Harris or Hudak has to come along with an axe and hack away at these services or we will all be strangled by red tape and debt.

[Scotty]

No Wynne is bad news. Anyone who thinks the current level of the public service is reasonable is delusional. I don't notice a marked improvement in my government in the last 11 years, but the price of government has skyrocketed.

This is exactly the problem. I would be willing to pay more for better health care, for better education, for better roads. I am paying far more, and yet none of these have improved. There's actually reason to suggest they have all gotten worse.

Oh, the public servants, teachers, nurses, police, firefighters, ambulance technicians and paramedics are all paid far better, and have nicer pensions and bigger houses. Sure. Nice. They are now among the highest paid people in the province. But that has not resulted in better services, only in a higher debt and deficit.

[Bob Macadoo]

This is exactly the problem. I would be willing to pay more for better health care, for better education, for better roads. I am paying far more, and yet none of these have improved.

Do you think you've paid more than salary COL adjustment, population growth, and infrastructure status quo maintenance (ie. Failures accelerate faster each year) each year in tax increases? "Why am I not getting a Cadillac for the price of a Chevette?" The cost of a Chevette goes up every year too. I don't want to pay more taxes but I sure as hell don't have high expectations of the taxes I do pay.

[Big Guy]

We voted in the advance polls to-day. Have been doing that for years. Saves a lot of lineups and last minute inclement weather. I would recommend it to all.

[cybercoma]

Remove them from those classes and put them into a special school.

There's tons of research that shows this causes more trouble for those students. It's better to have them in the same classes with their peers than isolating them.

[cybercoma]

It did not say it is laying off 100k people. It said it would reduce largely through attrition.

Scratch laying off then and replace with "eliminating 100k jobs in spite of the number of people ready and willing to work who can't find jobs."

[jacee]

Remove them from those classes and put them into a special school.

That's much more expensive than supporting them with EA's in regular schools.

.