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Bob Delaney

Member of Provincial Parliament, Mississauga-Streetsville

Bob Delaney
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Next generation

Bob Delaney Posted on April 13, 2018 by Bob DelaneyApril 13, 2018

Programs and supports for children and youth in Ontario

Ontario has, over the past 15 years, built support systems for low- to moderate-income families; enhanced education supports; offered programs for children with special needs; provided the health care support children and youth need; and helped youth take the first steps in their careers.

Click here for a comprehensive list of programs aimed at benefiting children and youth, and covering:

  • Education
    • Full-day kindergarten;
    • Ontario Student Assistance Program;
    • Child care subsidy;
    • Early ON Child and Family Centres.
  • Ontario Child Benefit;
  • Children with special needs
    • Assistance for children with severe disabilities;
    • Assisted Devices Program;
    • Pre-School Speech and Language Program;
    • Infant Hearing Program;
  • Kids Help phone;
  • Health care
    • OHIP+ pharmacare for children and youth;
    • Free dental care for eligible children and youth 17 and under;
    • Support for vision and eye exams and eyeglasses.
  • Youth employment.
Posted in Community | Tagged Assisted Devices Program, autism, Child care subsidy, children and youth, dental care for kids, Early ON, Infant Hearing Program, Kids Help Phone, learning disabilities, Lisgar, Meadowvale, OHIP, Ontario Child Benefit, OSAP, Pre-School Speech and Language Program, Streetsville, vision care for kids, Youth Job Conection | Leave a reply

Solar Panel Sales

Bob Delaney Posted on March 31, 2018 by Bob DelaneyMarch 30, 2018

See the light before signing

Time at home is relaxing and refreshing. Also, I get to answer the telephone and the door at home to see the same people that my neighbours encounter when vendors sell services and products direct to consumers.

  • Know what your rights are when people come to your door to sell something;
  • Talk to your home insurance carrier or broker before you sign an agreement or install something. Have a lawyer, or your insurance agent, read the proposal before you sign it;
  • The Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator sets the rules on how electricity vendors can operate;
  • Consumer protection information information is available at the Ontario Energy Board web site.

This is a cautionary note about the rooftop solar installers going door-to-door. New Ontario Legislation prevents a valid contract from being signed at the door to give homeowners added time to think, and protection from high-pressure doorstep sales pitches. While I was the Parliamentary Assistant to the Ministry of Energy, I cautioned (and continue to caution) homeowners on rooftop home solar photovoltaic (i.e. that generate electricity) installations.

You need to read the contract very carefully, and have time to think about it, possibly consult a lawyer, and certainly verify the arithmetic. If the sales pitch is that the Ontario power grid will buy all the electricity your rooftop can produce at very high rates, close the door and stop right there. If it reads, or sounds, like it is just too good to be true, it probably is not true.

Time is on the side of the purchaser

As it stands now, the amortization time (years it takes to pay off the capital cost of the panels and other equipment) is almost the same as how long the gear lasts. The costs of the panels themselves are falling in a manner similar to how such consumer products as flat-screen televisions fell after they gained a share in the consumer market. The gear is less expensive now than it was a year ago. As well, electricity storage technology is about to undergo a seismic shift, enabling an integrated solar photovoltaic (“solar PV”) installation to go from science fiction to reality.

Solar PV is not the same as solar space heating. Want to heat your swimming pool, or possibly your house, with solar heating panels? That is a different product, different configuration, and different decision than solar PV. Do your research before, not after, you buy anything or sign any type of agreement.

Solar space heating and solar PV can both be expensive, time-consuming processes between a decision and the time you are either generating electricity or heat for personal consumption. Don’t get seduced by a cash-up-front or any guaranteed cash flow offer before you have seen and thought about the contractual agreement, and before you have had time to reflect on what it means to you, your home, any subsequent buyers for your property, and whether it makes sense in your personal circumstances.

Everything above also applies when people try and sell you water heaters; lawn care services; snow removal; natural gas or electricity supply contracts.

Posted in blog, Energy | Tagged consumer protection, door-to-door selling, rooftop solar, solar panels, solar PV

Budget 2018

Bob Delaney Posted on March 28, 2018 by Bob DelaneyApril 3, 2018

A 905 Ontario Budget for families

Note from Bob: It has been a long road back from the bottom of the 2008-11 recession for Ontario. It began with a near-collapse of the global financial system that did not start here, but reverberated through the Province as it brought down banks worldwide (but not in Canada). Ontario started its long road back with a $24.5 billion budget deficit, and a determined plan to return to balance in nine years. Right on schedule, Ontario made back into the first surplus since the three straight Budget surpluses in the fiscal years ending in 2006, 2007, and 2008. I was in the caucus rooms when those plans were made, and it was a particularly poignant moment to watch Ontario go back into black ink exactly when and how it was planned in the autumn of 2008.

Why, the first question normally goes, should Ontario go back into deficit when it has balanced its provincial budget (and run a $600 million surplus), after nine years of deficits. The answer is not too hard to fathom. After a recession caused entirely by sheer avarice by global financial institutions, and during which families, schools, hospitals and social services needed to often get by on just enough to get the job done, would Ontario then move into surplus, and hand those surpluses over to the very financial institutions whose short-sighted greed got the people of Ontario into nine years of deficits in the first place?

Not likely!

During the next few years, a series of small deficits will be used to help ordinary Ontarians, families, seniors, youth, schools, hospitals, the disadvantaged and the poor get back to where they might have been had the Province been able to run surpluses all these years, and invest in them during the recession. The banks can wait a few years. It’s your turn now.

At the end of a few years of catch-up investment, Ontario will again be back into structural surpluses. That’s why Ontario will run a few small budget deficits. Because important things have to be done, and they have to be done now.

How can Ontario afford these initiatives? Because:

  • Ontario’s economy has outperformed those of all G7 nations each year since 2014;
  • Ontario’s unemployment rate of 5.5 percent is the lowest it has been in nearly 20 years;
  • In 2017, about 500 net new jobs, overwhelmingly full-time and high-value, were created each day in Ontario.

Download and read the full Ontario 2018-19 Budget document in PDF format. Click or touch here. Keep it on your tablet as a reference book.

This Ontario Budget helps families, seniors, children and the vulnerable with challenges they face right now. In the past quarter-century – worldwide – costs that baby boomers grew up feeling were affordable swiftly became very expensive: prescription drugs; education; health care; housing; child care; dental care; elder care; dental costs. With this Ontario Budget, the standard by which Ontarians can measure their government support for life’s essentials is no longer any place in the USA, or even any place in North America.

Ontarians can now stand with the most prosperous and progressive places on earth, because Ontario offers world-class support to people fortunate enough to live here.

Highlights

Increased hospital funding

Building on 2017’s announcement of an additional $618 million in Ontario hospitals, the 2018 Ontario Budget invested an additional $822 million into Ontario hospitals. Our Trillium Health Partners have already received an additional nearly $23 million of that total. Still to be allocated are $305 million to support high-growth hospitals; $187 million for more hospital beds; $95 million for clinical services and new patient spaces; and $54 million for greater access to specialized services. There is more. See page 6 of the Budget.

Expanding OHIP+ for seniors

Young people from birth to age 25 were the first to benefit from expanding OHIP coverage of all 4,400 drugs on the Ontario formulary as of January 1, 2018. Starting in summer 2019, OHIP+ will be expanded to seniors, eliminating the annual deductible and co-payment for seniors under the Ontario Drug Benefits program. The average senior will save about $240 per year.

Helping seniors live independently

The 2018-19 Ontario Budget proposes a new Seniors Healthy Home Program, starting in 2019-20, to benefit households led by a senior aged 75 or older. The benefit would be designed to assist with specific expenses up to $750 per year.Ontario proposes to invest an additional $23 million to add an estimated 5,500 personal support workers to ensure home care clients get the care they need, along with an investment of an additional $38 million in education and training for new and existing personal support workers.

Other initiatives will support Ontario’s caregivers; support Ontarians living with dementia; and reduce the wait time for long-term care.

Reducing prescription drug and dental costs

About one in four Ontarians has no access to extended health care plan. Most of those are self-employed, unemployed and precarious workers. The 2018 Budget introduces a new Ontario Drug and Dental Program or individuals and families without an extended health plan, beginning in summer of 2019. This program would reimburse participants up to 80 percent of eligible prescription drug and dental expenses, to a maximum of $400 for singles; $600 for couples; and $50 for each child in the family. (Remember, children are already covered by OHIP+).

Major investment in mental health

The 2018-19 Ontario Budget proposes an historic investment of an additional $2.1 billion over four years into a more comprehensive and better-integrated mental health and addictions system for people of all ages across Ontario. This brings the Province’s investment in mental health and addictions to more than $17 billion over four years.

Affordable, accessible child care

The Province proposes investing $2.2 billion over three years to increase access to child care and affordability by offering free pre-school, starting in September of 2020. When fully implemented, an average Ontario family with a pre-school child could save about $17,000 per child in up-front costs during the time such a child is enrolled in a licensed child care. Im Mississauga, with our often-pricey child care facilities, this could help working parents resume their careers sooner.

Developmental services and autism

The Budget proposes an additional commitment of $1.8 billion over three years to expand developmental services, expanding the Passport program, and the Special Services at Home program. Ontario needs a round-the-clock emergency hotline for families with urgent needs, and programs to ensure individuals, especially young adults, with developmental disabilities do not end up in the justice system. This would benefit ErinoakKids; Community Living Mississauga; and the Peel Children’s Aid Society.

Taxes, jobs and economic outlook

  • No new taxes are proposed in the 2018-19 Ontario Budget.
  • Ontario has out-performed more than the rest of Canada. Ontario has outperformed the USA, the UK, Germany, France and Japan since 2014. Since the recession, Ontario has seen the creation of some 811,000 net new jobs: 774,300 of them full-time; 580,600 in the private sector; and 542,600 of those jobs in above-average wage sectors. By 2021, Ontario is forecast to have created more than one million net new jobs since the bottom of the recession;
  • Ontario’s benchmark interest-on-debt to revenue ratio peaked at 15.5 percent in 2000-01, and now stands at 8.5 percent. It has fluctuated between 8.4 percent and 9.1 percent since 2006. Ontario’s net-debt-to-GDP ratio, a measure of the Province’s ability to afford its borrowing, stands at 37.1 percent and falling in 2018. The same ratio (debt-to-household income) for the average Canadian home is 161 percent and rising. Ontario’s effective interest rate on total debt is today 3.5 percent.

Information links

  • Ontario Budget 2018 home page;
  • Ontario Budget book (PDF format).

More information to come on the 2018-19 Ontario Budget

Posted in Budget | Tagged balanced budget, Bob Delaney, Credit Valley Hospital, deficit reduction, health care, Lisgar, Meadowvale, Ontario Budget, seniors, Streetsville

Hospital funding

Bob Delaney Posted on March 27, 2018 by Bob DelaneyMarch 28, 2018

Nearly $23 million for our hospitals

Our Trillium Health Partners hospitals serve us from three locations: Credit Valley; Queensway; and Sherway Gardens. Over and above next year’s base funding, Ontario’s 2017-18 Budget surplus means the ability to invest in the health care sector with an additional $822 million Ontario-wide.

In Mississauga, our MPPs joined the Trillium Health Partners staff and management for a local announcement of growth funding to help our hospitals with the greatest concern: the rapid and continuing growth in the number of people they serve. Trillium Health Partners, for the upcoming 2018-19 fiscal year, will receive an additional:

  • $12.8 million in non-targeted funds, to use to meet rising day-to-day costs, growth funding, and to fund additional procedures;
  • $9.9 million in targeted funds, with includes wait-time funding; priority programs and services; post-construction operating plans; and quality-based procedures.

This means a better ability to increase the Emergency Department volume; more nurses and physiotherapy procedures; longer clinic and MRI hours. It also means more ability to meet next year’s salaries, buy supplies used in the hospitals, pay utility bills, and ensure the hospital staff have all the tools, instruments and supplies they need to treat us when we go to the Credit Valley, Queensway or Sherway sites for treatment.

The 2018-19 budget supplied to Trillium Health Partners by the Province, which means not including the funds from its Foundation and from other sources, will be $767 million.

Posted in Health Care | Tagged Credit Valley Hospital, hospital funding, Lisgar, Meadowvale, Ontario Budget, Ontario budget surplus, seniors, Streetsville, Trillium Health Partners

Volunteer Service Awards 2018

Bob Delaney Posted on March 26, 2018 by Bob DelaneyMarch 31, 2018

Immortality through volunteer service

Each spring, one of an MPP’s pleasant tasks is to help host the annual celebration of volunteers in one’s community, at the Ontario Volunteer Service Awards. In Mississauga, we normally have two such awards ceremonies: one in north Mississauga, and the other closer to the lake. In late March 2018, I spoke at the north Mississauga ceremony, and distributed 185 Volunteer Service Awards to representatives of volunteer-driven organizations such as churches, scout troops, ethnic organizations, Carassauga and many more. Our 185 volunteers celebrated an aggregate of 1,955 years of service to the organizations they help. Turned into a time tunnel back into the past, those years of service would take the hypothetical traveller back to Roman times. Well done to all the winners. Plenty of them asked me for a copy of my remarks at the gathering. Here they are.

Tonight, we celebrate some exceptional people. Tonight’s awardees are young, and they are mature, and everywhere between.They are at all phases of life. Our awardees come from many places, many occupations, and many backgrounds.

Perhaps you went to church this weekend, and were served by an usher. Maybe you attended a dinner at a local cultural or ethnic event, and were looked after by a server, or ticket taker. Perhaps you or your kids have participated in scouting, where volunteers transferred their life skills to you, and enriched you with their experience.

What volunteers do is so priceless simply because the best of their life and passions are given so freely.

None of us could grow up as complete and well-adjusted men and women without the best of our best practicing volunteerism in a manner once expressed by India’s founder Mahatma Gandhi this way, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”

Being a volunteer makes you a better person. What volunteers do makes our communities better places. That part of a volunteer’s life that is transferred to others through teaching our skills, investing our time, and inspiring with our dedication shapes the lives and character of each person the volunteer touches. With this transfer of the best of our skills and character, each volunteer recognized here this evening truly becomes immortal.

Congratulations, thank you and well done.

Posted in Speeches | Tagged Bob Delaney, Lisgar, Meadowvale, Ontario Volunteer Service Awards, Streetsville

New Legislative Session

Bob Delaney Posted on March 15, 2018 by Bob DelaneyMarch 31, 2018

Speech from the Throne

Speech from the Throne

On behalf of the Crown, the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario reads the Speech from the Throne, which begins a new session of the Legislature.

With the Province’s budget back in surplus for the 2017-18 fiscal year ending March 31, 2018, it’s time to look ahead and lay out Ontario’s agenda going forward the next few years. That is what the 2018-19 Ontario Budget will be all about. It’s the end of the long climb out of the effects of the recession of 2008-10.

To clearly signal a new beginning, Ontario will begin a new session of the Legislature next Monday. The Lieutenant Governor granted a request to prorogue the current session effective Thursday March 15. For more information on prorogation of a session of the Legislature, click or touch here.

All government bills and substantive government motions that were before the legislature prior to prorogation will be re-introduced.

A Throne Speech is a new beginning for a session of the Legislature. With the budgetary efexts of the recession behind, the Throne Speech will address peoples’ stress and anxiety and outline the choices Ontario will make to invest in the care and the services Ontarians rely on.

Ontario will make investments in mental health, health care, home care and child care and in areas that make life more affordable — because people need that relief. A strong and growing economy is no time for a government to take a step back or make deep cuts.

The Throne Speech will set out the Province’s plan for care and opportunity, outlining how Ontario will do more for people, not pull back at a time when people most need that support.

Posted in blog

Streetsville fire

Bob Delaney Posted on March 3, 2018 by Bob DelaneyMarch 9, 2018

Local condo building destroyed by fire

By Saturday afternoon, March 3, 2018, the major fire that completely destroyed a condo project under construction in Streetsville was out. Fire fighters remained on the scene to douse smouldering embers on the site, at Rutledge Road just off Tannery, between Joymar and Queen Street in Streetsville.

Destroyed condo building

Only structural steel and brick stairways remained of the condo project under construction on Rutledge Road. The structure was completely destroyed by a major fire that began in the early evening of Friday March 2, 2018. Click to enlarge the panorama composite image.

The condo building had reportedly been scheduled for early summer 2018 occupancy by its developer. There were no deaths or injuries during the major blaze. No nearby homes were damaged. Mississauga Fire Chief Tim Beckett had been on the scene all night when I saw him Saturday morning. The fire had been put out by morning. The Fire Marshall is investigating the cause.

Power was restored to affected nearby homes by early afternoon Saturday March 3. Residents of the seniors’ residence across the street on Rutledge Road who had been evacuated on the evening of Friday March 2 were returning home. Click the panorama photo above for a detailed view. Tannery had re-opened to local traffic by Saturday afternoon.

Thanks to Mississauga’s first responders: our City’s fire fighters and the Peel Police.

Posted in Community | Tagged Fire Chief Tim Beckett, Joymar Drive, Mississauga Fire and Emergency Services, Peel Police, Queen Street, Rutledge Road, seniors, Streetsville, Tannery

February Tele Town Hall

Bob Delaney Posted on February 8, 2018 by Bob DelaneyFebruary 16, 2018

Q & A with our neighbours

Back in days of yore, you’d get on your best Sunday suit/outfit, and go down to the town hall to hear your local elected Member talk about the state of the country or the province or the town. You might have to hitch up the horse, and drive through snow, but you’d do it.

Listening to their MPP

Our neighbours in Lisgar, Meadowvale and Streetsville can join me from time to time for all or part of an hour to discuss what matters to us in a tele-town hall meeting.

Today, a few thousand folks can camp out on the phone line, and we can answer perhaps a dozen (sometimes more) of the several dozen questions in the queue during the one hour of a tele-town hall. Our latest dialogue, Thursday February 8th, we hosted just shy of 4,000 folks from Lisgar, Meadowvale and Streetsville.

We talked about seniors, GO Transit, post-secondary tuition, child care, and a host of other things on people’s mind, a few of them straying into the city’s jurisdiction.

If you didn’t get your question asked and answered (and if it is about things to do with the Province), try asking it via e-mail. Click here to send me your question by e-mail. Before you do, however, search this web site for the subject. There is a better-than-even chance your query has been answered.

Those tele-town halls sure beat saddling up that horse and riding into town to crowd into the hall, and hope somebody brought in enough wood to keep the fire going.

Posted in News | Tagged Bill 148, GO Station, Lisgar, Meadowvale, Ontario jobs, Streetsville

Quick Updates

Bob Delaney Posted on January 26, 2018 by Bob DelaneyMarch 31, 2018

Infrastructure and electricity in Ontario

At the Mississauga Board of Trade’s January meeting of its Environment, Sustainability and Infrastructure Committee, I was invited to spend a half-hour engaging in an Ontario update and a question-and-answer session in late January. Below are the highlights of the briefing. Download the documents referred to in this post. They are well-written, clearly-illustrated and tell the story of the ‘why’ and ‘how’ that you won’t find in media coverage of electricity and infrastructure.

Infrastructure

Beginning in Fiscal year 2014-15, Ontario launched a new phase of infrastructure investment: of $190 billion during a 13-year span, ending in the late 2020s. It is the largest infrastructure investment in Ontario’s history.

Much of Ontario’s civil infrastructure: water distribution; waste water removal; storm sewers; roads; bridges; public buildings, schools and universities needs renewal. Ontario has, in contrast of much of the Great Lakes Basin, kept up its assets to a higher standard than our neighbouring provinces and states. They, however, have awoken to the need to do what Ontario has been doing since the early 2000s.

China’s Belt and Road initiative is the world’s biggest infrastructure project, linking some 60 countries along the old Silk Road, with an investment pegged at between $4 and $8 trillion (USF).

The 152,000-member, Virginia-based American Society of Civil Engineers released a 2017 report on the state of infrastructure in the USA, gave a range of unacceptable grades, most of them “D” rankings, to the state of infrastructure in the United States today, estimating an American infrastructure deficit in the range of $2 trillion over ten years.

Ontario’s 13-year infrastructure investment plan breaks out approximately like this:

  • Transit: 35%;
  • Highways & Transportation: 19%;
  • Health: 15%;
  • Education (incl. post-secondary): 15%;
  • All other: 16%.

The peak years of Ontario infrastructure investment will be between 2018 through 2022, with an estimated average of $20 billion spent on infrastructure projects in each year.

Download a copy (PDF format) of Ontario’s Long-Term Infrastructure Plan. With the luxury of more than ten years’ head start on most other jurisdictions, Ontario can – and does – implement proper asset management toward building, maintenance and integration with municipalities and other partners. Regular, and timely, renewal expenditures save money over infrequent and expensive total rebuilds of infrastructure.

Ontario is considered an example of global best practices, and has the ability to learn and apply the best and timeliest lessons learned abroad on an ongoing basis because the province’s ongoing investment has meant it is not lurching from crisis to crisis. Ontario’s plans now factor in climate change and waste stream mitigation.

Community hubs in new public building infrastructure allow buildings to be used outside normal business hours, and enable a denser neighbourhood to have a central place for a multiple of services. Mississauga’s forthcoming Urgent Care Centre is one such local example.
Each year, for more than a decade, renewal and building of Ontario infrastructure will support some 125,000 high-value, skilled jobs.

Download a copy of the 2017 Greater Golden Horseshoe growth plan. The Hurontario Street LRT will be fully funded by the Province, at an estimated cost of $1.4 billion.

Electricity

Two years ago, China, the world’s leading hydrocarbon importer and user, announced its move to a low-carbon economy, and cancelled more than 100 coal-fired electricity generating stations. By that time, Ontario had already phased out coal for electricity generation two years previous.

Ontario’s Great Lakes Basin neighbours have a looming electricity crisis. They are losing all their nuclear generation capacity with no (or few) plans to replace it. Their utilities are not building or replacing coal generation. They are a decade behind Ontario in deploying renewable power. Their transmission assets are in a state of long-term neglect. And their utilities are carrying heavy debt loads as Public Utility Commissions have refused to allow power rates to rise and enable electricity infrastructure investment. Natural gas, which produces heavy carbon dioxide emissions, is being used as a stop gap.

Ontario took the pain that our U.S. neighbours have not a decade ago. The Province invested $35 billion in new and renewed electricity generation, and an additional $15 billion in new and upgraded electricity transmission. Our main power generators: Ontario Power Generation and Bruce Power, have light and manageable debt loads, as does Hydro One, Ontario’s main transmitter, and Alectra, the former Enersource, that serves Mississauga. Our transmission and distribution sector continues to consolidate at a healthy rate, and is well-managed.

Download the 2017 Ontario Long-Term Energy Plan.

In 2002-03, Ontario was a net electricity importer, paying other jurisdictions about $1 billion annually to buy electricity, often at spot prices above $1 per kWh. Today, Ontario is a net electricity exporter, earning between $250 million and $350 million annually from the sale of electricity to jurisdictions with which Ontario connects at 26 ‘intertie’ points with Quebec; Manitoba; New York; Michigan; Ohio; Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Quebec is among the largest purchasers of Ontario electricity when, in winter months, Quebec cannot generate sufficient power to meet its domestic demands and its export commitments.
The Darlington nuclear refurbishment investment will increase Ontario’s nominal GDP by a total of $14.9 billion, and a total of $89.9 billion when calculating in 30 more years of station operations. Due to the project’s low import content and heavy reliance on Ontario-based contractors, on average, for every $1 spent on the project, Ontario’s GDP will increase by $1.40. Along with the Darlington nuclear refurbishment project, and ongoing operation of the station, will create about 14,200 jobs per year from 2017 to 2055.

Reference downloads

  • Ontario Budget 2017;
  • Ontario Fall Economic Statement;
  • Download this post as a PDF document.

Resources

  • Ontario Power Generation;
  • Independent Electricity System Operator;
  • Bruce Power;
  • Electricity prices.
Posted in Energy | Tagged electricity, infrastructure, Lisgar, Meadowvale, Streetsville

Minimum Wage

Bob Delaney Posted on January 20, 2018 by Bob DelaneyJanuary 21, 2018

Wealth-hoarding and the minimum wage

Back at the dawn of the 20th century’s automotive industry, Ford Motor CEO Henry Ford enraged his fellow industrialists by paying his workers enough money to be able to afford the very products they were making. Ford was pilloried by the wealthy of his day for lifting his employees out of poverty. Ford paid them $5 per day. It turned out Ford’s calculation was correct. Industrialized economies grew, and people were able to buy cars, household appliances, clothes and many other consumer goods.

The very wealthy have a malignant habit of forgetting this fundamental economic lesson. Has the ‘trickle-down’ money of the last three decades of tax cuts ever made its way into the pockets of the people whose effort make that wealth possible. Nope. It is skimmed off in the form of low or non-existent taxes and lucrative loopholes, hoarded and stashed outside the tax jurisdiction of the countries from which the wealth was generated. Those outsize profits benefit nobody.

At the start of 2018, Ontario’s minimum wage rose to $14 per hour. To put that number in perspective, Ontario’s inflation-adjusted minimum wage just now managed to catch up to where it was 40 years ago, in 1977. To listen to some of the wealthy and privileged, they are aghast that they can’t continue to operate a business model that drives the real earning power of the people they employ ever downward.

Economies just don’t function when the very wealthy hoard all the money, in their country or offshore. Everybody loses that way, including the wealthy.

Now, let’s watch the wealth-hoarding syndrome explained in less time that it has taken you to read this far down in this post. Robert Reich is a former U.S. Secretary of Labour. Back in 2016, long before Ontario’s Bill 148 and its long-overdue labour reforms were introduced, let alone enacted, he put together a 90-second explanation of precisely what Ontario’s higher minimum wage and package of labour reforms actually mean. Click the video, and enjoy!

If you enjoyed this article and video, use your social media accounts,
and forward it to your network of friends and associates.

More information

  • What is Ontario’s Bill 148 all about?
  • Letter from 50 leading Canadian economists in support of a higher minimum wage;
  • Same tired old arguments that don’t stand up to scrutiny;
  • Explaining Bill 148 on the Ontario Ministry of Labour web site.
Posted in Economy | Tagged Bill 148, deficit reduction, labour reforms, Lisgar, Meadowvale, minimum wage, Ontario economy, Robert Reich, seven fundamentals, Streetsville

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Bob Delaney
Member of Provincial Parliament
Mississauga-Streetsville
2000 Argentia Road
Plaza 4, Suite 220
Mississauga ON L5N 1W1
Tel.: (905) 858-4262

© 2018 Bob Delaney – Member of Provincial Parliament, Mississauga-Streetsville
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