Sense Revolution " .Actually, it could very well be " Jim Flaherty's Common Sense Revolution " for what he is proposing is pretty much " Right On The Money " or, again, " Right On The Savings " . Flaherty, the MPP for Whitby Ajax is fifty-four years old and married with 13 year old triplet boys. He ran for the leadership of the Ontario PC party last time and lost to Ernie Eves but is keeping his beliefs when the party didn't. Following are selected excerpts from a recent interview.
" The same ( conservative ) principles apply (in the Conservative Party ). I'm from the tradition in our party, the value driven part of our party. We met with a fair amount of success, two majority governments back to back 95 and 99 including more than half of the seats in the City of Toronto in 95. The other tradition in our party which has won in times is the more liberal tradition, that is the more poll driven that tries to be more all things to all people.”
" But I'm very comfortable based on my record in government as Minister of Labour, Attorney General, Minister of Finance and Deputy Premier that I have an understanding of the way the government works. People can rely on the fact I am a Conservative based on certain convictions and that the steps I take will be directly related to those convictions so vis a vis the party, I'm a pay as I go conservative. I'm shocked that we have an eight to ten million dollar debt in our party. Its inconceivable to me that we would go to the people of Ontario and hold ourselves out as fisically accountable and responsible when we can't balance the books in our own party. My own track record, I was the Minister of Finance, I balanced the budget in the year which we had relatively small economic growth and it was not easy to do, its one of the things genuine conservatives do is make difficult decisions and we did that year.”
" We have a couple of years to determine what our priorities are and to determine what our plans of action are to implement these plans of action for 2007 my vision is based on our conservative principals that we will quite simply unleash the economic potential of Ontario. We have the potential to be one of the wealthiest, most prosperous places in the world, highest standard of living in the world and with a high quality of public service in the world, and life and we are blessed to be in the middle of North America. We have the largest, wealthiest trading partner in the world next door to us, the United States. We could improve our relationship with our neighbour. We could also have expanding free trade with the countries of Central America, South America, which is a tremendous advantage to us where we are in Canada and North America. We have one of the best work ethics of our people in the world, here in Ontario. I would hear this repeatedly when I was travelling outside of outside of Ontario as Minister of Enterprise, which is something one tends to take for granted, the quality of workforce, which was a tremendous attribute. "
" And the tax burden, I would reduce that against middle class people. We are now with the latest McGuinty tax increase the health tax middle class people are now working more than half the year for varying levels of government for varying taxes. It is an enormous burden to be placed on middle class people. The average family in Ontario with two people working earn an average 70-80 thousand an year, they have a mortgage or two mortgages, they have a car or two cars with car loans, insurance costs on the car are going up, insurance costs on the house are going up, gasoline has gone up on the car, natural gas on the house has doubled in price, the tax burden from Queens Park has gone up. With Layton and Martin in charge in Ottawa we can expect to see bigger government and higher taxes. So the burden which is put on the middle class is onerous. My view is that we need to reduce the tax burden, encourage initiative to reward those who believe in work because I believe in work and self discipline. "
" And finally we have to take care of those who cannot take care of themselves which I did in my budget of 2001 with respect to childrens treatment centres for people with mental disabilities and developmental disabilities. The representatives in my caucus from the from the Association For Community Living in Ontario made great strides in terms of ensuring that adequate staff, reasonably paid staff, in their field back in 2001. So that’s where I want to go. Those are a few of my main missions. If we were able to accomplish those we would be well on our way to the goal of releasing our economic potential. "
It is good to be able run excerpts from an interview as verbatim quotes, done here because Flaherty speaks so well. If anybody wishes to become involved in Flaherty's campaign please phone 416-962-3223, 1-800-393 0019 or email www.jimflaherty.ca <http://www.jimflaherty.ca> .
