The Liberal MPP for Huron-Bruce says everything is on the table when it comes to trimming the province’s record 24.7-billion dollar defecit.
Carol Mitchell was reacting to word last week that the McGuinty government is at least looking a tthe possibility of selling off major Crown Corporations.
Mitchell says the possibility of privatizing the so-called Crowns is defintely in the hopper of all possibilities of addressing the shortfall the province finds itself in.
CIBC World Markets and Goldman Sachs Group is undertaking a study on the issue that’s expected to take only about two months to complete.
Some of the familiar names being bandied about for possible privatization include Hydro One, Ontario Power Generation and Ontario Lottery and Gaming.
Mitchell says the size of the defecit is in part a product of the recession.
She says stimulus spending contributed to the rapid rise in the amount of the shortfall and it’s all in the interest of putting Ontarians back to work.
Mitchell says the study comes about as the Liberal government re-shapes its spending priorities.
Mitchell says there are no sacred cows in cutting the defecit and to help strengthen education and health care.
About a third of the province’s hospitals say they can’t balance their budgets and school boards by law cannot run defecits.
In recent months, Premier McGuinty toyed with the idea of dealing with the defecit by reviving “Rae Days” where provincial civil servants would take unpaid days off.
Former NDP Premier Bob Rae came under heavy fire for the original move to deal with the recession of the early 1990’s and McGuinty quietly scuttled the idea.