{"id":32329,"date":"2015-08-12T03:00:26","date_gmt":"2015-08-12T07:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=32329"},"modified":"2015-08-10T20:54:41","modified_gmt":"2015-08-11T00:54:41","slug":"premiers-look-to-ottawa-for-one-reason-and-one-reason-only-to-beat-the-prime-minister-over-the-head-with-their-begging-bowls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/08\/12\/premiers-look-to-ottawa-for-one-reason-and-one-reason-only-to-beat-the-prime-minister-over-the-head-with-their-begging-bowls\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;&#8230; premiers look to Ottawa for one reason and one reason only: To beat the Prime Minister &#8230; over the head with their begging bowls&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/godscopybook.blogs.com\/gpb\/2015\/08\/the-wrath-of-wynne.html\" target=\"_blank\">Richard Anderson<\/a> explains why Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne is upset with Prime Minister Stephen Harper:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It is a time honoured tradition that premiers look to Ottawa for one reason and one reason only: To beat the Prime Minister of the day over the head with their begging bowls. What Kathleen Wynne is looking for is not a &#8220;partnership&#8221; but a ceaseless no-strings-attached flow of federal money. Like a petulant teenager the sextuagenarian premier always wants more and offers little in return. Prime Minister Harper has wisely refused to play her game. <\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Now imagine that you&#8217;re Kathleen Wynne &mdash; please try to subdue the gag reflex &mdash; and billions of dollars now flow into the provincial coffers from this <em>de facto<\/em> payroll tax. Perhaps the money gets tossed into general revenues. Queen&#8217;s Park then turns arounds and issues IOUs to the &#8220;arm&#8217;s length board&#8221; in the form of increasingly worthless provincial bonds. The pension would for actuarial purposes be &#8220;fully funded&#8221; but as a practical matter one pocket of government is borrowing from the other. <\/p>\n<p>But perhaps the Wynnesters are a tad more clever than all that. The revenues from this payroll tax go directly to the allegedly &#8220;arms length&#8221; investment board. Nothing goes into general revenues and the Liberals allow themselves a patina of fair dealing. The board, however, will almost certainly have its investment guidelines laid out by the government. Those guidelines, by the strangest coincidence, will likely have an &#8220;invest in Ontario&#8221; component.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the money will get used to buy up provincial bonds, lowering the government&#8217;s cost of borrowing at a time when capital markets are getting skittish about Ontario debentures. Quite a lot of the rest will be used to fund infrastructure projects, private-public sector partnerships and other initiatives that will, mysteriously, favour Liberal allies. The Chretien era Adscam scandal will seem like chump change in comparison. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Richard Anderson explains why Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne is upset with Prime Minister Stephen Harper: It is a time honoured tradition that premiers look to Ottawa for one reason and one reason only: To beat the Prime Minister of the day over the head with their begging bowls. What Kathleen Wynne is looking for is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,84],"tags":[363,957,87,544,258],"class_list":["post-32329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-government","tag-corruption","tag-kathleenwynne","tag-ontario","tag-pensions","tag-stephenharper"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8pr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32329"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32331,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32329\/revisions\/32331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}