Ontario budget prompts more questions than answers

by Christina Blizzard

Like so much of what the Liberal government of Premier Dalton McGuinty does, Tuesday’s budget was crafty.

It’s tough for the two opposition parties to vote for it – and even tougher for them to vote it down.

The key question is WWMD – What Will Moody’s Do?

The New York-based credit rating giant put this province on a “negative outlook,” last December, telling the government it must demonstrate how it plans to get its debt and deficit under control.

Moody’s lead analyst for Ontario, Jennifer Wong, would not say Wednesday how this budget would impact that credit watch. Read more…

by Warren Kinsella

In democratic politics, every leader is a direct response to the leader who immediately preceded them.

Thus, Brian Mulroney’s folksy Irish blarney was a reaction to Pierre Trudeau’s aloof asceticism. Jean Chretien’s populist federalism was an answer to the Mulroney regime’s flirtations with Quebec separatists and corporate elites.

Paul Martin’s government tilted anti-federalist and to the right, in the way that his predecessor Chretien had been an unapologetic federalist and progressive. Stephen Harper’s small-town Canada, hockey-loving, Tim Hortons affectation was deployed effectively, and brilliantly, against Martin’s millions, as well as the two ivory-tower types who followed, Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff. Read more…