Review of CBC Article: Ontario deficit could reach $24.7billion: Duncan

I was too young to vote during the previous Ontario provincial election in 2007. My 18th birthday was not until December and the election was a couple of months prior to it. So, I had to watch on the sidelines to see who my fellow Ontarians would elect to govern the province. Now that I can vote, I try to evaluate parties based on their campaign platforms before I decide who should be elected. I also prefer to examine how they stood on certain issues, such as abortion. However, clearly my own values and seeing whether the politicians being elected shared my values proved to be inconsequential because the liberal majority government elected did nothing but lead Ontario into becoming poorer than my home province, Prince Edward Island.

How ironic that everybody was pleased that Dalton McGuinty and his liberal party were elected in a second back-to-back majority. It caused the former Conservative leader to be kicked to the curb and gave more seats to the NDP. The majority of Ontarians all thought Ontario was in good hands. Half-way through the party’s leadership, people are now second guessing the choice they made on their ballots and wondering if they really want to wait two more years to get the chance to make him join the former Conservative leader in the graveyard of bad provincial party leaders who should never have been elected in the first place.

The CBC article I have chosen to analyze states that Ontario’s finance minister, Dwight Duncan announced a $24.7billion deficit for the end of this fiscal year. “Declining corporate tax revenues and increasing demand for public services have dragged down the government’s bottom line, Duncan said.” Although I was furious to read this, it came as no surprise. After all, I did just find out a couple of weeks prior to this that McGuinty’s government blew $1billion on useless things like muffins and vacations. So, that is $1billion that the province does not have spent on useless, irrelevant stuff because it was already on a deficit prior to this.

CBC news did well to remain neutral in this article and allowed all of the parties screen time to articulate their response. Naturally, the only ones optimistic about this are the Liberals and their supporters. Everyone else, including people who voted Liberal in 2007, are as furious as me and want them ousted. Progressive Conservative leader, Tim Hudak gave his opinion that “Canada’s worst government is now running Canada’s worst deficit.” Well, it must be the worst because most governments would wait until the last two years of their term before going on spending sprees. This government still has two years to go. Two years!!!!! Can I vote him out of office now?

Unfortunately a full term for a majority government is 4 years. Therefore, McGuinty has two years to clean up his act or send Ontario further into debt and spend billions of more dollars on useless, irrelevant stuff. The only way Ontarians can vote him out of office earlier is if he were to call an election now or resign his post. I doubt the former will happen because he would be voted out of office with his party tagging along for sure. The only way I could see this guy stepping down is if a third scandal is just getting ready to be unwrapped. Then the opposition parties, everybody else in Ontario and the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario would frown upon him and give so many evil eyes that he would just resign and walk away from the provincial legislature and never look at politics again. So, the Christians attending Emmanuel Bible College will just have to wait and see what our “glorious” provincial government will do next.

Action Points:
1.Perhaps governments are behaving so badly because Christians don’t care about politics and then don’t pray for their leaders? Pray that Dalton McGuinty and the liberals make wiser financial choices in the future so that Ontario can have brighter years financially.
2.Start watching the news. CBC has a new political show called Power and Politics which is on CBC News Net (formerly CBC News world)
3.Visit http://4mycanada.ca and see what other what other areas of politics need prayer
4.Watch the At Issue Panel and the Rex Murphy report every Thursday night on The National on CBC. It is the political views panellist and offers impressive insight on what is happening in federal politics.
5.Go to http://www.cbc.ca/politics/ for national and international political information.
6.Pray, pray, pray!!!!!! Prayer is powerful. God can change the way politics is done in Canada and could make our political parties more reliable. So pray for our municipal, provincial, and federal governments so that we can live peaceful and godly lives (Romans).

References
CBC News. (2009, October 22). Ontario deficit $24.7B: Duncan. CBC News-Toronto. Retrieved October 22, 2009, http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/10/22/toronto-fiscal-report-091022.html