Liberals continue to spend our dough ray me

[ZR]

Ontario's provincial budget will include $200 million to create 24,000 child-care spaces, 16,000 of which will be subsidized.
The spaces were announced in the 2016 throne speech, but the subsidies are new — and the minister for that portfolio hinted that more parents may be able to tap into those resources.

[mavrrrick]

GOD>>> How do we stop the bleeding!!!

[ZR]

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to buy votes we go, with a million here n a billion there, hi ho, hi ho.

[RedSN]

^^^shit, now I'm going to have that song in my head all day.

[ZR]

Wynne has it on a continues loop.

[ZR]

...............as do all Liberals.

[1quikgt]

I agree that something has to be done about child care in this province, no way should it cost more than a mortgage payment. At the same time I'm not sure spending 200 million bucks is the way to go.

[ZR]

IMHO....................We can not sustain the govt feeding trough.

Having children and the costs associated should fall under living within your means. As a couple, if your left with little to nothing after paying a mortgage n car payments etc, no chance one having to stay home or having to pay child care is going to make things better. At that point, children for you are not a viable option.
Early years of having a child for us meant renting a shitty house, both driving beaters, taking zero holidays and living check to check. It got several times more complicated when I got hurt, could not work and got nothing from the disability policy I'd being paying way too much for year after year. Blew through our savings n held on until we could slowly make things better. Didn't expect anyone to feel sorry for me nor did I expect anyone to pay the load to look after a child that was our own decision.
Having a child was and continues to be the best part of my life, would not trade how things turned out for the world.

[StAnger]

It's pretty transparent that, they're pandering to the only people dumb enough to vote for them. Those under 25, and those who live/work in the GTA.

[ZR]

It's only another 465 million per year..........................


The marquee pledge in the Ontario government’s first balanced budget in nine years is a free prescription drug plan for anyone under the age of 25.
It will provide free medication with no co-pay or deductible to all children and young adults – regardless of their household income - at a cost of $465 million per year.

[ZR]

Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown called the budget a “Hail Mary pass by a government that has run the province into the ground for years.”
“Ontario will continue to be the most indebted province or state in the world.”
He contended that the Liberals have only achieved a balanced budget this year through the use of one-time windfalls such as the sale of cap-and-trade carbon credits, accounting for one-time federal transfers and the sale of crown assets such as shares in Hydro One or the Ontario Power Generation headquarters building in downtown Toronto.
Together, Brown says that without these one-time items the Liberals would still be in deficit.
“It is a shell game they are using to hide a $5 billion operational deficit.”
Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath, who if elected premier promised to implement a universal drug plan of her own – for people of all ages – last week, expressed surprise at the Liberals central pledge in the budget.
“All I can think of is that they made it up on the back of a napkin just before today,” Horwath said, remarking at the fact that the cost of the Liberals’ plan is not written anywhere in the 290+ page budget document.

[ZR]

Health Minister Eric Hoskins got rather miffed with me Tuesday when I suggested his government was simply reinventing the wheel by closing hospitals on the one hand and offering $9 billion in this year’s budget to construct new ones.
In their nice glossy 2017 budget book, the Liberals claim the $9 billion will be used over the next 10 years to support “major hospital projects” across the province — in other words mega-hospitals — as part of their investments in “service transformation.”
(That’s code blue for gutting health care, most specifically community care, in the province.)
The budget book says 18 new mega-hospitals are under construction; another 16 in the planning process.
“I think you are thinking of the Conservatives who closed more than two dozen hospitals,” Hoskins told me, denying the Liberals have closed any hospitals.
“Name one hospital I’ve closed,” he said, his normal smooth delivery seemingly ruffled.
Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition — who has been actively advocating against hospital closures for years — said the Liberals have closed the hospital in Shelburne, in Burk’s Falls and three hospitals (including the Finch campus at Jane and Finch) for the new Humber River Hospital.
She says the newly announced hospital in Niagara will replace five and in Windsor all existing community hospitals will be replaced with one hospital as well.
Perhaps Hoskins missed this, as well, but Branson Hospital (a campus of North York General hospital) is slated to close in June and a fight is on, led by Councillor James Pasternak, to keep it open.
“He’s absolutely wrong,” said Mehra.
Just a few minutes before he challenged me, Hoskins told a reporter from friendlier media that he’s working very hard to make sure services are maintained at community hospitals.
(See note about all the community hospitals being shut tight above.)
As for the hype around increasing operating budget funding to hospitals by 3% per year, Mehra said the reinvestment will only barely meet inflation (at 2%) after a “decade of hospital cuts” amounting to billions of dollars.
She says every advocate in the system feels at least 5% is needed just to try to keep pace.
“There is no money to restore services (from 10 years of cuts),” Mehra said. “What this means is that patients will remain lying on stretchers in hallways and frail seniors will continue to be kicked out of hospitals.
“All the suffering we’re seeing now will continue,” Mehra added.
And here I thought I heard Finance Minister Charles Sousa say — and more than once — that not only does the Liberal government have everyone covered, but the province has “strong universal health care.”
Mehra said the only bright spot in the budget is the new pharmacare program which will give free coverage for “all needed drugs” to everyone 24 and under — a costly manoeuvre (no doubt to win the 18+ vote) at up to $500 million a year.
The trouble is, the same extensive coverage is not being provided to “working people” from 25-65 years who are sick and require drugs — particularly cancer, Crohn’s disease and HIV drugs, she said.
Dr. Kulvinder Gill, a pediatrician and president of Concerned Ontario Doctors, agreed the 2017 budget will only create a “dent” in what’s required in health care.
“This is simply a drop in the bucket,” she said.
She said conspicuously absent was funding to front-line care, especially considering doctors are now in their fourth year without a contract and have been treated like dirt by the Kathleen Wynne Liberals.
Gill noted there are currently one million patients in the province without a family doctor.
“There were no details provided on how they intend to decrease the wait lists without funding doctors,” she added, noting several physicians have announced this week their intentions to leave the province.
“There was lots of smoke and mirrors, a lot of numbers thrown around,” she said. “Frankly after the gutting of the health-care system, cosmetic changes will not be enough.”

[RedSN]

Our original retirement plan included buying a nice house on a lake somewhere up north. But because we currently live walking distance to one of these new mega-hospital facilities we decided to keep put and get a summer retreat instead. Although I have nothing but praise for the M/S Hospital, it comes at the cost of closing smaller, older hospitals.

[ZR]

Never been in a hospital run like MSH.