Finance Minister Dwight Duncan has tabled his 126- (b) billion-dollar budget. Cash-strapped hospitals will get a meagre 1.5 per cent boost to their base funding. There is 63.5 (m) million dollars annually to replace federal child-care funding. There is a 310- (m) million-dollar increase in post secondary education funding to pay for 20-thousand new college and university spaces this fall. Despite the 21.3- (b) billion-dollar deficit last year and nearly 20 (b) billion-dollar deficit in the next year, the Liberals won’t re-balance the books until 2017-18.
Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak says Premier Dalton McGuinty will never balance the books.
The president of Loyalist College is pleased the Ontario budget focussed on post-secondary education. Maureen Piercy says Loyalist College would be prepared for some of the 20-thousand new spaces for colleges and universities, announced by the McGuinty government. Piercy says Loyalist is also interested in the 30-thousand new spaces for the Second Career Program for people who have been laid off the job. The college is already involved in that program.
The Ontario budget promises that child care spaces will be protected despite the end of a federal subsidy. Minister of Education Leona Dombrowsky says the McGuinty government will invest 63-point-five-million dollars in child care. Dombrowsky says the post-recession budget is just what the economy needed.
