Ontario’s Recent Election Confirms Low Expectations From Politicians
Recently, I watched in shock as Ontario’s premier Dalton McGuinty was reelected for his third term. Here is a man who in 2003, signed a pledged not to raise taxes, and one of his first acts was to "just do it." 
Essentially, he said, oops; sorry, I found out the books were really bad. So, I have to tax you. Those previous guys, they did it...its their fault!
That was the start of his tax grab.
In the recent election campaign, McGuinty promised that his government would refund fares when, for specific reasons, its trains are more than 15 minutes late. That people would even discuss this, surprised me. First, McGuinty has shown that his word is meaningless. Second, who will bear the cost of this silly proposal? Taxpayers!
It gets worse; his government plans to set up a system to process refunds. We can be sure this system will be inefficient, ineffective, and wasteful. So, taxpayers will pay even more! How about turning the transport service over to competent private sector firms, and reduce the cost to taxpayers? Probably, that's too much to ask of tax and spend liberals.
Since 2003, McGuinty’s government pilled up over $100 billion of debt. With his tax hikes, increased deficit, and growing debt, still, he was reelected. Life continues as usual...maybe better, as he and his colleagues have four more years of unrestricted access to taxpayers’ funds.
As I reflected on governments’ bureaucratic bundling and waste, I tried to think of one project, one department, where national or provincial Canadian governments spent responsibly, and delivered an efficient, effective, needed service. None came to mind. However, so many examples of waste popped up. I can’t imagine why we, taxpayers, won’t accept the reality that to lower taxes and debt, and stop waste, we must push governments to get small, focus on the essentials, and get out of the way.
Today, health care is a major wastage area. Embedded skills’ shortages and long wait times, propel incompetent politicians to spend more. For governments, more money always is a solution to any problem. McGuinty’s government is no exception; it finds several ways to throw away taxes. Just look at the wasted one billion dollars in their unsuccessful attempt to computerize medical records.
The recent incident at Greater Niagara General Hospital” is another glaring case of incompetence, and stupidity. An 82-year-old woman went to visit her husband at the hospital. She slipped, fell, broke her hip inside the hospital, about 50 meters from the emergency section. In pain and needing help, the hospital staff told her she had to call an ambulance to take her to the emergency. This incident is true...it is absurd, but true. After waiting for an ambulance for about 30-minutes, a doctor was passing by, and did what normal, sensible people would do; he and others helped her.
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