Ontario’s premier says she’s ready to go to an election on her government’s first provincial budget if the New Democrats don’t approve it.  Kathleen Wynne said this morning on CP24, “we’re expecting that we will have a vote, but it really does depend on what kind of arrangement we can make with the NDP and the Conservatives, if they choose to talk with us about it.”

PC leader Tim Hudak is adamant his party will not support the budget.   NDP leader Andrea Horvath is hedging on whether or not her party will vote in favour of the budget.  “There are a whole bunch of measures that would save the government money that we had put forward.  Not a single one of them was reflected in the budget.  That’s disconcerting for Ontarians, because more than anything else, they want their dollars to be respected.  They want their tax dollars invested in a respectful way and the government really hasn’t learned that lesson yet.”

The Tories rejected the budget before seeing it, so the minority Liberals need the N-D-P’s support — or at least their agreement to abstain on the budget vote — in order to avoid being defeated and trigger another election.

What about issues important to zoomers?  Susan Eng is the Vice President of Advocacy for CARP – a New Vision of Aging.  She tells Zoomer Media News, “the things that they did do are certainly nothing to sniff at, but I think they could’ve done a lot more for seniors’ poverty for example.  They could’ve improved their record for reducing drug costs for all of us.  And even something as prosaic as driving, we welcome the 15 percent reduction of course, but they should eliminate the discriminatory insurance rates.  One of the concerns I have is that insurers may not choose to not insure older drivers and that concerns me, greatly.”

 

 

she was looking for a vision of what it would be like to age in Ontario … but instead the budget raises concerns …