[LINK] "Ontario shortfall $11.8B, McGuinty says"

[rfmcdonald]

As Robert Benzie and Rob Ferguson report in the Toronto Star, the question of Ontario's econopmic standing within Canada has not only been taken up at the federal level but the provincial one as well.

The cost of fairness for Ontario is $11.8 billion.

So says Premier Dalton McGuinty, who for years has refused to reveal how much he'd like to shrink the gap between what Ontarians send to Ottawa and is returned in federal services and transfer payments.

While McGuinty has long spoken of a "$23 billion gap" – though it now hovers closer to $20 billion – he's been reluctant to say how much more the federal government should leave in Ontario.

That is, until yesterday.

Armed with a new report by TD Bank chief economist Don Drummond, which revealed the $11.8 billion figure, the premier gleefully delivered a eureka moment.

"Nobody's ever put a number on it before. (Journalists) often ask me, `So how much of the $20 billion or the $21 billion do you want to keep?' Well, Don Drummond actually put a number on it," said McGuinty.

"He says the discrimination against Ontario can be quantified precisely at $11.8 billion," he said. "If we had $11.8 billion here, right now, we wouldn't be talking about a struggling economy."

Indeed, Drummond concluded in his report that "there may be a compelling story of discrimination" for the $11.8 billion, which is based on calculations from 2005 Statistics Canada figures. "It's hard to say what it would be now," said senior TD economist Derek Burleton, who also worked on the report.

[. . .]

In an effort to influence voters, the Ontario government yesterday distributed 6,000 flyers titled "this election vote fairness for Ontario" at 10 subway stations, with lawn signs to be available through MPPs' offices. Overall, the province has spent about $50,000 on the "fairness" campaign; the non-partisan material boasts the word "Vote" in Tory blue, Liberal red, NDP orange, and Green Party green.

The flyers recap concerns that McGuinty has been trying for years to impress on Ontarians and their MPs in Ottawa, but with little success. They include the assertion that the average laid-off worker in Ontario gets $4,600 less in Employment Insurance than counterparts in other provinces and that southern Ontario – where manufacturers are struggling – deserves a federal economic development program like the ones for Atlantic Canada and Quebec.

On unemployment, McGuinty admitted the government's "second careers" strategy – with space for about 20,000 workers seeking long-term retraining for up to two years with $20,000 in support for tuition and housing costs – has so far attracted only 1,100 people.

Training, Colleges and Universities Minister John Milloy was defensive when asked about the program's apparent ineffectiveness. "I'm saying that we've had some wonderful success stories on an individual basis. We're going to take a look at the program to ensure that it's effective as possible," he said.