Member of Provincial Parliament
Mississauga-Streetsville Provincial Liberal Association
Riding Association Web Site
Strong Ontario has meant a strong Mississauga
Liberals: turned the corner and back on track!
Eight years ago, your government inherited an economy teetering from Conservative mismanagement. Despite a low dollar, cheap gas and a strong economy, Ontario PCs had run Ontario's economy into a $5.6 billion deficit. Worse, they lied about and hid it from Ontarians.
Ahead of schedule, your Liberal government balanced the budget while investing in the programs and services and build Ontario: our cities; our schools, colleges and universities; our hospitals and health care workers; our roads, water and electricity infrastructure. Once balanced in 2006, Ontario's budget stayed in surplus for three straight years, until the onset of the recession. Your Liberal government has managed the Province out of the recession, beating every deficit forecast.
Since 2003, when your Liberal government was first elected, Ontario has become — and stayed — the number one auto-making jurisdiction in North America. No state or province makes more motor vehicles than does Ontario. The Province was the only sub-national (i.e. not a country) jurisdiction to assist General Motors and Chrysler during the recession. Ford, Toyota and Honda neither requested nor received funds. Both Chrysler and GM have repaid their loans, in full with interest, and have cancelled their loan guarantees. The result: their cutting-edge, next-generation cars will be manufactured in Ontario. More than 400,000 direct and indirect jobs, and the families and careers they support, stayed in Ontario.
- Ontario's Second Career program has helped train some 46,000 Ontarians of all ages and walks of life for new work and new careers;
- Employment in Ontario is now greater than it was before the onset of the recession. More new jobs have been created than were lost.
- Ontario's tax reform has made Ontario businesses more competitive, enabling the Province to attract new businesses from all over the world to start up, relocate and expand in Ontario;
- Ontario small businesses now have lower taxes, and one single web site where they can get help from any branch of government.
For Ontario families
Your government is focused on where businesses and jobs will be in the future, as well as the present. Western Mississauga families want the world-class jobs and companies of the future to choose Ontario, and now Ontario (along with California) is North America's leading place to attract foreign investment that brings with it the jobs our families, and our students want. That's why Ontario is building a clean energy economy in this Province, because thoe are the products and services the rest of the world wants to buy for at least the first half of the 21st century.
Keeping Ontario families prosperous is why Ontario cut income taxes for 93 percent of wage earners, saving the average family about $355 each year. Ontario's Clean Energy Benefit is taking ten percent per month off your hydro bills. That began this past January. It is fully implemented.
Property and energy tax credits went out to seniors and Ontario families in July. Homeowners would have seen up to $225 in this installment, up to $260 for seniors.
Tories: don't trust them with money!
These are the charlatans who said the Ontario budget was balanced in 2003 before they were booted out of office, and the truth was a hidden $5.6 billion deficit.
- The PC platform has a $14 billion hole in it. That means deep, deep cuts to health care and education, putting Ontario's progress at risk, and throwing the economy into the same type of financial anorexia that has the USA teetering on the brink of re-entering the recession;
- The Conservatives have pledged to kill thousands of good, leading-edge Ontario jobs, and send them overseas. They will kill Ontario's credibility with businesses that want to invest in our Province;
- The Conservatives flip-flopped shamelessly on tax reform. First they were all for getting rid of the cold-war relic PST, and harmonizing it with the federal HST. Then they opposed it, vowing to fight it all the way, and thus kill the projected 591,000 net new jobs stemming from Ontario's comprehensive tax reform package. Now their platform says they will support and keep the HST.
- The Ontario PCs opposed the Province's support for Ontario's auto industry during the recession, deriding it as "corporate welfare." For some 400,000 Ontarians, it meant a job and career saved. And the loans to GM and Chrysler have been repaid in full, with interest, years ahead of schedule.
NDP: think high taxes are the answer.
The NDP has pledged to raise taxes by $9 billion on Ontario's job creators. The NDP voted against every single one of Ontario's job creation measures, programs that by now have been visibly successful.
The NDP stamped their feet and held their breath and campaigned against the HST, but in their platform now say they will support and keep it.
The NDP's sad, sorry record in their brief and unfortunate term governing Ontario: 74,700 jobs lost, an average of 1,300 people each month losing their job. Under the NDP, Ontario's unemployment rate averaged ten percent!