I wrote the other day about how Ontario needs to get selfish within confederation. I've noted in the past how at some point my family sends around $8,000 a year into the budget for inter-provincial equalization transfers, a position which I am both grateful and a little frustrated with. But consider the sad news from yesterday about Oshawa:
When plant worker Nigel Drane heard the news Tuesday that General Motors planned to halt production of its pickup trucks in Oshawa, Ont., a decision that would leave about 2,600 people out of work, he phoned in sick. "I told them it was a day of mourning," he said. That was a common feeling here Tuesday, as the city of Oshawa responded to the latest blow to its auto industry, once the lifeblood of the community. "We've had a tremendous truck production since the early 1990s, and that's kept three shifts going, a lot of jobs, and a lot of prosperity, and that's disappearing as we speak," Oshawa Mayor John Gray said at a press conference at City Hall.It's not just those jobs but all the supply work that is gone. I know a person whose employer only supplies GM in Oshawa. It's a rural parts factory that now will go, too. Then there are the support contracts both to the factories as well as the community. All will go. But Ontario will still pay out for being the richest province according to a political mathematical formula that excludes the resources of the provinces whose votes are needed by the politicians in Ottawa.
What does Oshawa mean? Well, maybe it means 2,500 times $8,000 or $20,000,000 in now lost funds for transfers. Add to that the supply contracts and other jobs that will go and that figure may double or even triple. Maybe the people of communities on the receiving end should notice. Maybe booming Manitoba needs to have the $3,225 per person sent from Ottawa trimmed. Maybe communities should be twinned - so that the 130,000 residents of PEI loses 10% of the $517 million in Federal transfers the day the 140,000 citizens of Oshawa lose their GM plant? Why should they be buffered when Oshawa isn't?
God forbid that the people of Newfoundland or Alberta who are enjoying boom times should be asked to take up the slack as Oshawa falters.
Comments
sean liddle - June 4, 2008 10:02 am
Yes, Ontario needs to be a bit more selfish and demand a re-jigging of the equalization system. However, we also have to face the facts that tax dollars shouldn't be used to prop up dead and dying industries. I am more than sure we didn't prop up the wagon wheel and whale bone corset insert manufacturers when they went down the tubes. Unemployment is nasty but peopel cannot expect $30+ an hour to manufacturer something that is un-needed, unwanted or unreasonable.
David Janes - June 4, 2008 10:40 am
What sean said. However, don't think that this whole confederation / equalization thing was selfless funded by Ontario only for the benefit of everyone else. Ontario certainly was the principal beneficiary of the Auto Pact, political power and wealth in this country until Alberta start exploiting its oil wealth was concentrated all the Ottawa-Toronto-Montreal axis amongst the "right people".
However, given that outlier provinces like Newfoundland & Saskatchewan are now enjoying the party, perhaps it's time to start winding this down -- especially since non-Ontario/BC/Alberta places are using the equalization payments to fund tax breaks and/or lavish civil servant bureaucracies.
"legally all"
Renee - June 6, 2008 11:22 am
<br><br>Ontario who?