Facts speak for themselves

Posted on April 2, 2008 in Debates

TheStar.com – comment – Facts speak for themselves
April 02, 2008
Re:Flaherty’s broadside hit many targets – Column, April 1

Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty takes too much credit for Ontario’s economic performance in the second half of the 1990s. The growth in Ontario’s prosperity resulted more from the boom in the United States than from anything that Mike Harris’s Conservative government did.

Had Bob Rae won in 1995 instead of 1990, he would have come across as an effective social democrat instead of an economic blunderer. Had Flaherty implemented the Common Sense Revolution in 1990 instead of 1995, he would have come across as a minor-league version of Herbert Hoover, cutting spending as the economy slid into recession. Flaherty took the most fortuitous economic circumstances in decades and left the province with largely unimproved infrastructure, gutted social programs and a budget deficit.

Premier Dalton McGuinty’s government could be doing more to promote economic competitiveness, but Flaherty is the last person who should be pointing that out.

Trineesh Biswas, Geneva, Switzerland

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