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Back to Home Letters - September 29, 2011 Letters: Sept 29

Sharbot Lake Farmers market, Marlene Wheeler

PC Fiscal Responsibility, Steev Morgan

Sharbot Lake Farmers market

As a regular customer of the Sharbot Lake Farmers market I would like to thank the vendors for making the venture so successful.  They provide a variety of local produce and products - from maple syrup to bees wax candles, fresh tomatoes to fresh herbs, fair trade coffee to gourmet sausages, relishes to desserts, sweat shirts to hand made walking sticks and soaps to lotions. The personal touch of the vendors and the quality of their products is second to none.  The market is also a place to meet friends and neighbours, have a coffee and fresh pastry and enjoy the beauty of Sharbot Lake. I will look forward to opening day 2012. 

Marlene Wheeler

PC Fiscal Responsibility

The economy is complicated. We get a taste of that when we do our taxes, negotiate a mortgage, get a credit card, etc. That’s the closest we get to what it’s like to be a politician managing the economy; but we have to deal with reality, not wishful thinking.

Tim Hudak has been trying to win votes by saying he will eliminate the Debt Retirement Charge (DRC) from our Hydro bill (yearly average about $76/family). He’s calling it a “McGuinty Tax Grab” but it was the Harris Tories who put that charge there in the first place back in 2002 when they sold off Hydro.

It’s a sad fact we face paying off a mortgage or other big debt: by the time we are done we have paid more interest than what we borrowed in the first place. That’s how the banks make their money, like it or not.

We’d all like to save $76 off our Hydro bill, but at what cost? The fact is, that although it may seem like we’ve paid enough, we still owe over 13 billion in interest as a consequence of the PCs privatizing our public power utility ten years ago.

Will this Harris Hydro Debt be added to the deficit or passed down to the municipalities, raising our property taxes and reducing services? Hudak, by saying he’ll eliminate the DRC, is trying to bribe us with our own money.

Now there’s a mix-up with Randy Hillier’s unpaid taxes. The Federal Government put two liens on his house for almost $15,000. That in itself is no big deal; anyone can find himself in a dispute with the CRA, but he’s in trouble because a few months later, in his disclosure to the Integrity Commissioner, he claimed he didn’t owe any back taxes.

An honest mistake perhaps, but is it another sign of that Tory wishful thinking? Is this the kind of government transparency and fiscal management we want? The PCs say they support families who “pay their taxes and play by the rules”, but can we trust them to do the same?

Steev Morgan