The McGuinty government looks to meet economic challenges head-on and is piling up a huge defecit in order to do it.
The budget delievered by Finance Minister Dwight Duncan yesterday calls for 27.5-billion dollars to be transferred to municipalities for infrastructure projects like road, bridge and sewer repairs.
The budget shortfall will be just over 14-billion dollars in the current fiscal year, and almost 57-billion over seven years.
Huron-Bruce MPP Carol Mitchell defends the budget, saying it addresses the needs of Ontarians invidually and collectively.
Mitchell says the document is timely in that it lays out a plan that will allow the province to regain its competitive edge.
Bruce Grey Owen Sound MPP Bill Murdoch is horrified by the budget.
He says it is deja vu all over again with the Liberals on a wild spending spree just like the NDP government of Bob Rae.
Murdoch says the only group wanting the harmonized sales tax was the Ontario Chamber of commerce.
The province is folding the retail sales tax and GST into a single tax which the provincial Opposition has warned will cost Ontarians more for certain items.
The single 13 per-cent tax will take effect next year.
Mitchell says the harmonization answers a call made by Chambers of Commerce and BIAs across the province whose members say having two sets of tax is clumsy.
She says the separate PST and GST are labour-intensive to collect and adminster and that the McGuinty government committed itself to improving the situation.
The province will send families earning under $160,000 annually and singles earning less that $80,000 a year one-thousand dollars to help them cope with a single, 13 per cent sales tax.
The harmonzed tax kicks in on July 1st of next year and three sets of cheques will be mailed out between then and the fall of 2011.
Mitchell says infrastructure spending will benefit residents here at home by improving services and putting people to work.
Mitchell says a number of infrastructure projects need to be done in Huron-Bruce to get the riding ready for economic recovery.
The document also calls for the lowest personal income tax rate to fall from 6.05 per-cent to 5.05 per-cent.
And small business taxes will be cut from the current 14 per-cent to 12 per-cent.