By Doug Draper
Ontario’s economic D-Day’ reads the front-page headline in The Globe and Mail above a story warning that the province’s “day of reckoning is upon it.”
The day in question – this February 15 at roughly two o’clock in the afternoon – is when Don Drummond, a former TD Bank chief economist appointed by Ontario’s Liberal government, is releasing a report detailing more than 400 recommendations for driving down a deficit totaling $16 billion.
The province’s finance minister Dwight Duncan has been working for weeks to prepare us for what are expected to be some painful recommendations with a warning that the province faces some “difficult choices” – a code phrase, of course, for deep cuts to health care, education and other social programs.
Already word is out that one of the recommendations calls for scrapping government’s recently introduced 30-per-cent-off tuition grants for college and university students whose parents have a combined income of less than $160,000 a year. At the same time, there is word that Drummond may not be recommending a wage freeze for public servants, including post-secondary teachers, that have been enjoying raises totaling more than two per cent per year during a period of crippling recession, wage cuts and job losses for many others.
It makes one wonder to what extent the recommendations will be targeting the those who are least able to fight back and leave those at the top of the salary and benefits foodchain relatively unscathed.
You can count on Niagara At Large to be offering news and commentary on the Drummond recommendatons and the reaction of the government and others to them in the days and weeks ahead. If you wish to provide Niagara At Large with news tips or a commentary of your own on the Drummond report and its potential impact on our social services, email NAL publisher Doug Draper at drapers@vaxxine.com.
Niagara At Large 
Let me guess. The 99 will take big hits, and the 1% will remain relatively unscathed.
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I fully expect the cuts to be borne by those least responsible for, and for those of whom least drew any benefit from this deficit. The poor and disadvantaged will be paying for those corporate tax cuts … pronto!
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Remember what the New-York socialite once said: ‘Only little people pay taxes.’
She was right the small guy will be once again asked to tighten his belt and to pay more taxes
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I understand that Fort Erie Race track will lose all of it’s funding, the Province will not underwrite their losses anymore.also one of the Niagara Casinos will be on the chopping block as well,which will send a lot more Canadians to the Seneca Casino across the river,.many people think the Fallsview, a little too upscale for their taste.
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It’s amazing that it took an Independent reviewer to tell us Ontario has a financial crisis and that over 300 changes need to be made. Doesn’t the McGuinty cabinet have a finance minister who takes care of these things?
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How “independent” is the reviewer when he’s a banker?
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Don Drummond was interviewed by the Toronto Star. He currently receives two rich pensions: one from the federal government when he worked for them in the Finance Ministry, and another one from TD Canada Trust where he served as a Vice President of Economics. He was paid $1500 a day to work on this report (which took almost a year to write). The rest of us can only dream of having it even half as good. Drummond can certainly afford to pay out of pocket for health care, pay fees for his kids to use the school bus, pay for a substantial hydro hike, etc., while the rest of us pay for all the tax cuts and corporate elitist privileges he enjoyed while with the bank, and now as a private “consultant”. Maybe he, among his cohorts, should begin by repaying the part of the national and provincial debt they were directly benefiting from at the expense of the rest of us.
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