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Liberals not spending responsibly Ted Chudleigh All governments spend money, but Liberal governments spend very liberally. For sake of discussion let's just say that we are taxed appropriately right now, that the current amount of revenue collected by the Province of Ontario is right and just. That means to counter any new spending; there must be reductions in order to maintain a balanced budget. We all know how much difficulty the Liberals have with balanced budgets. In fact, they managed one last year due to unexpected economic growth but didn't know it until the final numbers were tabulated. They were so embarrassed they announced it on a Friday when nobody was paying attention and treated it as if it was some sort of scandal. Of course I applaud them for pulling it off. It was all the more remarkable because they didn't even know it. Of course they immediately plunged the province back into a deficit situation by quickly spending the additional tax revenues that had done the deed. The idea of paying down some debt and waiting to ascertain if the new tax revenues were sustainable before ratcheting up spending never occurred to them. And so to John Tory's recent demand for a review of government spending. Much of the government's new spending has gone into consultants, advertising and hotels for staff members. Freedom of Information requests have turned up a bill for more than $550,000 to produce a TV spot promoting a government website, while another $2 million was spent on buying up the TV time to air the spot. Public accounts figures show spending on education consultants has increased 10-fold from $20,758 in 2003-04 to $286,035 two years later. The Ministry also spent nearly $1.2 million on hotels in 2005-06. That money could have wiped out the entire budget shortfall of the Huron-Superior Catholic School Board. Dalton McGuinty has refused to apologize to Ontarians for this waste of their tax dollars. He said the TV spot which shows adults on a bus morphing into young students as they disembark was helpful. Have you seen the ad? Can you remember what it was trying to promote? Dalton McGuinty said the hotel bills were allowing ministry officials to see what is happening on the front lines of education. Who knew that the front lines of education were at hotels? Maybe they should be visiting schools, plenty of which are within an easy drive of Queen's Park. Education Minister Kathleen Wynn said the consultants were used to help the government understand educational issues in rural communities. Maybe she could have asked. I've always found rural educators very forthcoming about the challenges they face. The end result is that John Tory has launched a website at www.wastebusters.ca where anyone can report government waste they see. Hopefully by providing this public outing of government waste we can embarrass the McGuinty Liberals into acting more responsibly with our tax dollars. --Ted Chudleigh is the MPP for Halton