Premier warns of public service sacrifices
 
No 'magic' cure for budget woes
 
By Chris Thompson, The Windsor Star
 

WINDSOR, Ont. -- Premier Dalton McGuinty sounded a warning Thursday that everyone who is paid with taxpayers' dollars can expect to have to make some sacrifices to balance the province's books.

That means teachers, doctors, nurses, provincial employees and, by extension, parents of school-aged children can expect to have to make concessions to help tackle Ontario's $16-billion deficit.

Retired TD Bank economist Don Drummond has been hired by the province at $1,500 a day to find areas where government services can be streamlined. His report is to be released later this month.

Speaking at an event to announce tuition rebates at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo Thursday morning, McGuinty said the time for cost-cutting has come.

"These are serious times," McGuinty said. "Something that we anticipated ... that's why we commissioned Don Drummond at the time of the last budget to provide us with his very best advice. Our platform was a reflection of the serious times; the lowest cost by far."

McGuinty said the Liberal party platform in the October election was less than the cost of those of the NDP and Progressive Conservatives.

"I think it was one-third the cost of the other platforms," McGuinty said.

"It had the fewest commitments. Mr. Drummond will provide us with some several hundred recommendations. We look forward to receiving those."

But in the end McGuinty said the decision of where to cut will come down to the legislature.

"His (Drummond's) responsibility, of course, is to advise and ours is to decide," said McGuinty .

"So there's a distinction, first of all, to be drawn between his responsibility and our responsibility in government. After we have received those recommendations, we will ask the legislature to help us by giving us the best advice on those. We'd like to get that into a committee. We also want to give Ontarians an opportunity to comment on that as well."

Finance Minister and Windsor-Tecumseh MPP Dwight Duncan is unavailable for comment this week and next, his Queen's Park office said.

A spokesman for Windsor West MPP Teresa Piruzza said details of Drummond's plans had not been filtered out to caucus and declined to comment.

A request for comment from the Ontario Public Service Employees' Union was not returned.

Tory finance critic Peter Shurman, MPP for Thornhill, said the Liberals are now forced to clean up the fiscal mess they have made and some media characterizations of Duncan as a "fiscal hawk" are out of line.

"If Dwight Duncan is a fiscal hawk then I'm Smokey the Bear," said Shurman.

Shurman said what the McGuinty government is asking Drummond to do is what the Tories have been urging for years.

"We hope Mr. Drummond has better luck making this case to the government than we have," said Shurman.

But when asked if the cuts would be on the scale of those of the Mike Harris government in the 1990s, McGuinty said no.

"What I can assure Ontarians is that their values will be our government's values," said McGuinty .

"We will do everything we can to protect our health care, protect our education, and put in place the kinds of measures that continue to support a stronger and growing economy. Those are the kinds of things that remain our focus."

McGuinty said everyone in the province is going to have to accept a share of dealing with the deficit.

"We're all going to have a role to play," said McGuinty .

"If we're going to be as effective as we need to be in terms of strengthening this economy and ensuring that we're getting ever more value for the public dollars that are being invested in our public institutions - whether that's education at whatever level or in health care or other kinds of public services that we are delivering - then we're all going to bring something to the table. I think Ontarians understand that these are serious times. I think they understand that there is no magic. We can't wish our way out of this. We can't sit on our hands and hope that, you know, global economics turns around and somehow begins to act as some kind of an advantage for us."