"Honey, I shrunk the Deficit!" -- Now, does that mean you'll shrink the attack on the public sector?

Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan claims Ontario is seeing "stellar growth", with the Finance Ministry stating that “the economy grew at annualized rate of 6.2% in the first three months of this year. The province has now had nine months of uninterrupted economic growth.

Duncan adds: "We're looking forward to continued good performance in the coming quarters” and brags that the province is growing at twice the rate of the United States.

Moreover, Duncan says the government deficit will turn out to be smaller than he had estimated. In fact, this would be the second reduction in the estimated size of last year's deficit. A day before the March Budget, the government lopped $3.4 billion off the estimate they had made in the fall. Duncan expects that this year's deficit will also be smaller than thought.

We should learn more when the Public Accounts come out next month.

Might this mean they'll give up hacking away at hospital (and other public) services? Unfortunately, they won't give that up without much more push back from working people. Nor their attempt to freeze public sector compensation. As usual, economic growth doesn't go to working people -- without a fight.

The struggle continues, their rationales just change...

dallan@cupe.ca

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