In 2009 the Budget for Ontario was a very different beast.
Mixed Tax Budget?
The McGuinty Liberals bring down yet another budget Thursday for the Province of Ontario with promises of large deficits to help with the Financial Apocalypse and such.
There is also talk of harmonizing both the PST and GST (for Ontario), which makes sense for small businesses (easier to collect and such), but concerns have been brought forward about things that are exempt from the Provincial Sales Tax increasing in price with the new merged tax (hopefully that is simply an accounting issue, and not an issue with unscrupulous vendors attempting to gouge consumers).
Other areas have worries (subsidized child care and such) about losing funding, but again this is a wait and see type of budget.
Cuts, Cuts, Cuts
The CBC is cutting 800 jobs across Canada (will Ottawa lose yet another dinner time news cast?), the City of Ottawa laid off 44 managers Wednesday and various companies are announcing further cuts as well (IBM saying a very large number, but given they are looking to buy SUN Microsystems it might not be exactly what everyone thinks).
With EI benefit claims being much higher in January up 4.4% from December, according to Stats Canada. The graph showing this is quite dramatic.
