Posted on 04/28/2005 10:07:04 AM PDT by Heartofsong83
TORONTO (CP) - Ontario is playing a "dangerous" game and adding fuel to separatist fires by claiming it is treated unfairly by the minority federal government, National Revenue Minister John McCallum said Thursday.
McCallum didn't pull any punches in a breakfast speech to the Toronto Board of Trade, calling Premier Dalton McGuinty's claims of a $23-billion fiscal gap "analytically wrong" and nothing more than a public relations campaign.
"Let's not talk about the $23 billion gap because it's nationally dangerous, and it's incorrect and not meaningful as an indicator of fairness or unfairness," he said.
"It is a communications strategy that should be abandoned."
McGuinty has repeatedly called for the federal Liberals to address what he calls a $23-billion funding gap between what the provice pays the federal government in taxes each year and what it receives in programs and transfers.
McCallum warned the business audience that the traditional Canada-first attitude of Ontarians was being put to the test by McGuinty's "hard sell" of the gap issue at a risky time for the country.
"This is dangerous for Canada ... at precisely the moment when the federal government, weakened by sponsorship, faces an opposition made up mainly of separatists and extreme provincialists."
Ontario has a "legitimate grievance" on immigration, McCallum conceeded, adding Prime Minister Paul Martin is prepared to give the province more money for that and other specific issues such as an East-West power grid.
"He (Martin) doesn't want to debate the $23 billion, which is totally misleading analytically and dangerous in terms of putting at risk Ontarians positive attitude to confederation."
McCallum also questioned McGuinty's demand of a $5 billion "down payment," saying the number was apparently pulled out of thin air.
Still, even some of his family agree that Ontario is being shortchanged, he admitted.
"My mother told me it was high time the federal government came to the aid of 'poor, abused' Ontario," he said.
"Well, my mother's wrong. Ontario is neither poor nor abused."
McGuinty dismissed McCallum's claims Thursday that Ontario's demands for more money were helping separatists and hurting the minority Liberal government.
"I reject that description of our campaign for fairness entirely," McGuinty told reporters in Mississauga, Ont.
The premier said Wednesday that Martin can afford to address the funding gap, given his recent $4.6-billion budget deal with the federal New Democrats to prop up his minority government.
The Liberal-NDP deal would see $4.6 billion more being spent social housing, foreign aid, the environment and post-secondary education, in exchange for a promise of NDP support on all non-confidence motions before the federal budget receives royal assent.
"We've always felt that there was money, and we think that money should be made available to address the issue of the $23-billion gap," McGuinty said Wednesday. "They're running surpluses and are projected to run surpluses indefinitely."
Still, to many voters, especially in Toronto (the main Liberal stronghold), they may mistakenly think that voting Liberal will solve the problem.
Translation: "It is unfair to tell the truth."
It is all about the thought that the federal Fiberals believe Ontario can be taken for granted...hopefully that will not be the case!
If this was Quebec, they'd be opening the treasury so fast they would be right back into a surplus.
Memo to Liberals:
Cannibalism is not a workable long-term strategy.
Memo to the attacking federal Liberals or the defending provincial Liberals (with the NDP and Conservatives, and business groups, in tow)
Memo to them all, I suppose, to the degree that they support 'revenue-sharing', 'equalization payments', and other redistributive measures which are morally indistinguishable from cannibalism.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
This sounds just like the Alberta campaign, as they lose about $10 billion each year...what's the worst part? This is funding Adscams, gun registries, boondoggles and personal waste more than anything!
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