Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW
He also offers his thoughtful perspective of Stephen Harper’s last 10 years in his recent eBook, The Harper Decade.

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Yours to discover

by Paul Wells on Monday, May 5, 2008 10:59pm - 0 Comments

I’d really hate it if John Geddes’ excellent article on Ontario’s economic situation got lost amid everything else going on here at macleans.ca. A highlight is the transcript of John’s interview with Dalton McGuinty, where the Ontario premier picks up the Flaherty/Poilièvre gauntlet with surprising elegance:

“This arose because Minister Flaherty took it upon himself to decide that Canada would offer the world a combined corporate income tax rate of 25 per cent. We had no discussion as to whether we would embrace that or how long it would take to get there. By the way, he’s decided it’s 15 for him and 10 for us. So I think there was frustration on their part about our not embracing that.”

Tags: Dalton McGuinty, economics, federalism, ontario

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Joan Tintor

Well, I will certainly read the interview (as I do most things in Macleans), but until then I can’t help myself:

In the 2006 Ontario budget, McGuinty and his finance minister Dwight Duncan took it upon themselves to announce a $2-billion subway extension into York Region, 2/3 of which they expected to come from the feds and municipalities (that would be 1/3 from Ontario, 2/3 from the other guys). There was no “discussion” with McGuinty’s presumed funding partners beforehand. (Though Greg Sorbara apparently dropped some hints to his local municipal pols.)

I’m guessing that Harper and Flaherty had some “frustration” with McGuinty. Sadly, they weren’t as clever as McGuinty, with his hair-shirted scrums and interviews in Macleans and what not: they eventually coughed up the money. Bastards.
Ted

Funny, I don’t remember McGuinty and Duncan and Sorbara and other Ontario cabinet ministers going on an anti-federal government binge. Maybe I missed Macleans that week.
Emmett

Of course, Coyne sure doesn’t see much elegance in McGuinty’s arguments lately: http://andrewcoyne.com/2008/05/three-card-mcguinty.php