Wynne's 2014 Budget

New Window Dressing for Liberal Austerity

Premier Kathleen Wynne called the general election immediately after her Finance Minister Charles Sousa released the government's 2014 budget as it lacked support for it to pass. Since then, the Liberal Party has been using this budget as its election platform. Most of the monopoly media characterized the budget as "progressive," which no doubt the Liberals had anticipated when they released it as a pre-election budget.

This spin about the alleged progressiveness of the latest Liberal government budget was given a boost with the publication of a protest letter sent to NDP leader Andrea Horwath by a group of well know political personalities describing themselves as life-long NDP supporters. While the protest letter denounced the whole NDP election platform and strategy, the main complaint of its authors was that the NDP would not support Wynne's budget. "We were angry when you voted against the most progressive budget in recent Ontario history," the letter said.

Praise of the 2014 budget as progressive is totally unwarranted. It focuses attention on the superficial political elements of the budget while ignoring the overall economic direction it sets out. The 2013 and 2014 budgets of Finance Minister Sousa have the same essential economic elements as the austerity budgets of former Finance Minister Dwight Duncan in 2011 and 2012.

All of these Liberal budgets have the same aim: extracting billions of dollars from health, education and other social programs in the name of deficit reduction while at the same time channelling billions of dollars into pay-the-rich schemes. Only the political elements of the budgets -- the political window dressing -- have changed.

Under McGuinty and Duncan the Liberals were following an openly pro-austerity strategy in their competition with the PCs to be the champions of the ruling elite. The budgets of the Liberals at that time included many measures that had little economic significance but contained a strong pro-austerity political message. For example, in the 2012 budget Duncan cut $150 million from social assistance, disability and low-income child benefits and publicized these cuts widely. These cuts were a hardship for the vulnerable people affected but amounted to less than a rounding error on the $127 billion budget.

Their openly pro-austerity stand turned into a disaster for the Liberals because of the widespread opposition to austerity and mobilization of working people to defend their rights as the government tried to impose it. Without changing their commitment to austerity, the Liberals reset their approach for imposing it. McGuinty, Duncan and other ministers were dumped and Kathleen Wynne was installed as leader to give the Liberals a "social justice" brand behind which they could impose austerity more stealthily.

As part of this rebranding, Wynne's two budgets did away with such political measures as Duncan's gratuitous attacks on the poor. The Liberals have let up on their attacks on the most vulnerable. Good. But how can a budget be considered progressive when it sets out the plan for continuing the broad austerity offensive aimed at driving down the living standard and trampling on the rights of working people?

Behind the political window dressing of the budget and the cascade of Liberal smooth talk about "balance" and "fairness" are the cold facts. A Liberal government, especially a Liberal majority, means four more years of cuts to health, education and other public services and more attacks on the rights of workers who deliver these services and on the rights of all.

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