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Socialism in its various guises has never worked to the benefit of average, middle-class people. Take the Government of Kathleen Wynne as a real-time case in point. A number of recent developments in the province have focused the mind on how the current Ontario government’s policies are hurting, not helping, average Ontarians.
The Wynne government professes to be the savior of the lower- and middle-class. All factual evidence suggests otherwise. As last month’s report by Ontario’s Auditor General (AG), Bonnie Lysyk, pointed out in stark terms, all efforts of Ontarians to contain their rapidly increasing hydro bills by doing their laundry in the middle of the night are for naught. Anyone who was paying attention to their hydro bill would have already known this.
A recent bill showed that my household’s hydro consumption was precisely the same as the comparable period last year, with maximum “off-peak” usage, yet the bill increased by 8% – four times the rate of inflation. Informed analysts know that the main driver of hydro costs in Ontario is the “Green Energy” policy imposed by the government, an approach that is being abandoned elsewhere around the world as evidence showed it had negligible environmental benefit. The exodus of manufacturers from Ontario is in part driven by uncompetitively high hydro costs.
Another recent policy proposal that will do nothing but harm average Ontarians is the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan (ORPP). As designed, this plan will hurt lower income families the most. Taking an additional 1.9% from lower income people, when it has been shown many times that lower income groups are already well served by the current CPP system, is unconscionable.
For middle-income earners, it will just have the effect of forcing people to transfer what they are already putting into RRSPs, TFSAs and other vehicles into the ORPP. In other words, no net gain but considerably more cost to taxpayers as a new, sizeable bureaucracy will be set up to operate this plan.
By the government’s own admission, even if everything turns out perfectly, the ORPP will not fully pay out for 40 years. Anyone 45 or older who thinks there is some magical retirement bonanza for them in the ORPP should think again. For younger folks – watch out.
For the rest of this column, click here: http://business.financialpost.com/2015/01/07/ontarios-magical-economy-isnt-working/