Ford Conservatives Pandering to “Corporate Welfare Bums” as People and Public Services Go Begging: CUPE Ontario

TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--While Ontarians struggle to make ends meet and workers struggle to deliver threadbare public services, Ontario Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy has announced a huge corporate tax break that takes billions out of government coffers and further shortchanges the public services that Ontarians rely on.

Calling it Ontario’s component of the federal government’s “Productivity Mega Deduction” proposal, Minister Bethlenfalvy announced an $8 billion tax cut that lets businesses immediately write off 100 per cent of the value of capital investments.

“This Conservative gimmick calls to mind the late, great David Lewis’s label of ‘corporate welfare bums,’” said CUPE Ontario President Yolanda McClean. “Ford’s government has billions in public money for private corporations and austerity for the rest of us.”

CUPE Ontario slammed the tax cut with the following facts and statistics:

• Spending $8 billion to create 30,000 jobs works out to more than $266,000 per job.
• Forgoing $8 billion in revenue for $11 billion in capital investment means the public is underwriting 72.7% of private capital investment.
• The most recent report from the Financial Accountability Office states the provincial government will short funding for public services by some $16.8 billion over the next three years.

“Corporate giveaways aren’t going to make our province more resilient; the Stellantis fiasco has taught us that,” said McClean. “Major investments in our public services and a reversal to the government’s ongoing program of privatization will make our province a better and more equal place for ordinary Ontarians.”

She noted that Ontario has the second-highest unemployment rate in Canada but that there are also 37,000 job vacancies in the public sector, corresponding to “the crying need for more child care, education, social service and health care workers, among others.”

“In our current cost-of-living crisis, the government should worry about providing the public services that Ontarians are in desperate need of, instead of providing corporate handouts,” concluded McClean.

Following the release of tomorrow’s Financial Accountability report, CUPE Ontario will update its numbers comparing the FAO’s cost-driver projections to the government’s 2026 spending plans for health care, education, post-seconding education and social services.