"With this budget, the Liberals have thrown away all pretence of fiscal responsibility" said McKeever.  "In fact, the Liberals have thrown away all pretence of engaging in budgeting. 

 

"This document promises lakes of whisky and stew, and hens that lay soft-boiled eggs.  It is an electoral document, founded on deliberately false and unwarranted revenue expectations, erected by economic fallacies, and topped with nothing but scorn for the fiscal future of every man, woman, and child in the province; a roof that can only collapse on the heads of everyone who remains in the province.  It is a tax-borrow-and-spend free-for-all that replaces the dark clouds of budgets past with an all-out tornado winding a leftward path of economic destruction, joblessness, and personal ruin.

 

"The budget contains a host of NDP ideas - like an Ontario pension plan - in what clearly is an effort to discourage the NDP from voting against the 2014 budget and triggering an election.  Yet it is the Hudak PCs who are to blame for the taxing, borrowing, and spending set out in the 2014 budget.  Her Majesty's officially oppositionless opposition has for years made it clear that its one and only position, with respect to annual budgets, is that Ontario needs to "change the team that leads" the province.  That is a decidedly political aim to serve the PC party, not a fiscal or economic goal that serves the people of Ontario.

 

"Year after year, Mr. Hudak's PCs have decided against negotiating with the Liberal government for a better budget for Ontarians.  They have made no budgetary demands, instead promising only to vote against the budget no matter what it contains.  Had Mr. Hudak's PCs demanded tax reductions, spending reductions, and reductions in borrowing over the last few budget periods, Ms Horwath's self-styled "socialist" party would have had no bargaining power, and Ontario would be in a much better fiscal condition.  Mr. Hudak knows this.  Yet, year after year, in the vain hope of triggering an election and forming the next government, Mr. Hudak's PCs intentionally have given Ms Horwath's NDP the power to twist the arms of the governing Liberals at budget time.  The result: higher taxes, more spending, more debt, a decreasingly inviting business jurisdiction, joblessness, lowered wages in the private sector, and increased wages in the public sector.  None of this would have been so easy for the NDP had Tim Hudak's PCs not failed so badly in their role of official opposition.

 

"In an elusive attempt to gain political power, Mr. Hudak's PCs have sold out the people of Ontario, and - given his standing in the polls - he doesn't even have anything to show for it.  We don't elect MPPs so that they can sit on their duffs for four years, demanding nothing but evidence of scandal.  Ontario deserves MPPs who will demand fiscal responsibility.  Mr. Hudak's PCs have outright refused to do so.  It's time to show Mr. Hudak's PC party the door, and make way for MPPs who will demand fiscal responsibility."

 

Freedom Party of Ontario is the only registered political party in the province to publish - annually - a detailed Opposition Budget that shows how the Ontario budget can be balanced.  It also explains why the various approaches championed by the Liberals, PCs, NDP and others cannot work, even in theory.  Freedom Party's 2014 Opposition Budget was released to MPPs on February 4, 2014.  Freedom Party is one of only five political parties to have run a slate of candidates sufficiently large to contest a majority of the seats in Ontario's Legislature.