The Ontario government’s fall budget is currently being debated and next week it will likely be passed, as is.
That would be a disaster. In fact, it would be a good example of “disaster capitalism.”
Naomi Klein popularized that term to describe instances of governments using the chaos and uncertainty of disasters to quietly usher in policies and measures that restructure societies to the benefit of the wealthiest and at the expense of the rest of us.
That’s exactly what the Ford Conservatives are practicing with this budget.
Much has been said about the amount of money they’re supposedly spending. But let’s take a closer look at what the budget actually says.
When we factor in inflation and population growth, base funding will decrease for education at all levels, social services, and municipalities. Funding for health care, the program area that sees the most support in this budget, will in effect be flatlined.
That means personal support workers and staff in long-term care aren’t seeing additional funding in this budget to ensure four-hours of direct, hands on care. Nor will they see any additional funding for compliance inspectors who help protect residents.
That means education workers who protect our schools, keeping them safe and clean while supporting students’ learning, will see no new pandemic funding to reduce class sizes or improve ventilation.
That means no support for Ontario’s universities, whose workers are critical to our economic recovery, even though they are dealing with both extra COVID-19 expenditures and decreased revenue due to the loss of international students.
That means social service workers — supporting Ontarians in child-care centres, child protection agencies, developmental services, and community agencies which have been underfunded for years — will not see the permanent funding supports needed to help Ontarians recover.
On a daily basis, Premier Ford holds a press conference to deliver his message. He tells us that he won’t hesitate to do whatever it takes to support Ontarians. He convinces a lot of people that his government has met the challenge of this crisis — and is spending the resources to keep us safe and to ensure a recovery for all.
But it’s simply untrue. The fact is that this budget is a case of Disaster Capitalism. This government is using the health and economic crisis to gut the public sector and cater to the already wealthy.
The Ford Conservatives’ budget includes significant and permanent tax cuts for, primarily, business and industry. These aren’t relief programs targeted at the small businesses most severely hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
No, we’re talking about permanent reductions that will even benefit corporations, like Walmart, who have only increased their profits during the pandemic.
The government is also handing over money to large industrial and commercial businesses with increased electricity subsidies. This means that companies like Loblaws and Amazon, which have reported record profits during the pandemic, are getting government money to pay their hydro bills. Electricity subsidies now cost taxpayers more than $6 billion a year.
Coupled with the more than $3 billion in tax cuts handed out in the 2019 budget, and the years of record-low corporate taxes, what we’re actually seeing in this budget looks more like just another chapter in a long, ongoing, systematic heist of Ontario’s collective resources.
We are witnessing more corporate giveaways that have robbed Ontario of the revenue needed to support front-line public services that everyday people rely on — before, during, and after this pandemic passes.
A disaster like the COVID-19 pandemic is bad enough. We don’t need governments that are supposed to represent all of us capitalizing on the crisis to benefit the wealthiest.
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