During the past four weeks, there has been a lot of debating over the Ontario Liberal 2012 Provincial budget. It is an Austerity budget that contained a lot of flaws that needed to be mended.  In order for the McGuinty Liberal Minority government not to fall, it took negotiating with Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath on issues about the budget that needed to be amended. It took real leadership on both sides in order to get the budget passed. Premier Dalton McGuinty agreed to raise the surtax on the wealthiest Ontarians earning $500,000.00 by 2%, raising ODSP (Disability rates) by 1%, and providing up to 4,000 childcare spaces. Rural Health care is also getting a boost. The Premier also included OW (Ontario Works) in the 1% rate increase. It took leadership for Horwath to gently present her budget proposals in small steps. It took leadership for McGuinty to listen to Horwath's proposals and then to work collaborately to amend the budget by accepting the proposals stated above. 

I was pleased with the passing of the budget today. I think we all learned something from it. It takes effective communication and working out things together and setting aside our differences in order to be successful in accomplishing something for the betterment of all.  It takes time, patience and commitment.  Yes, there is a lot of work ahead to make the budget even fairer, but the two parties coming together and working out a deal was a very big step in repairing a budget that was going to hurt big time.



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview.

    Archives

    April 2012

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed