The Premier has a plan to pay for the structures we need to get around in Ontario — subways, roads, bridges and tunnels. Part of her idea is to somehow or other divert $29 billion in existing provincial gas and sales taxes to the job. It’s not clear what gets short changed in that bit of legerdemain. For the rest of it, Ms. Wynne promises to reveal further “revenue streams” in the budget expected within weeks. Ontario has released a long-term economic report showing the province’s economy is expected to grow “somewhat more slowly” over the next 20 years than in the past. It isn’t surprising. Like the rest of North America, the once robust industrial heartland of Canada has taken a 40-year whipping from the low-wage manufacturing miracles of Asia. In more recent years, free trade has caused the Americans to call home manufacturing they placed here in the 60s and 70s in order to make Canadian sales. None of this is belly aching. It’s just reality. We have no one to blame but ourselves. Millions of us decided the strategic decision to buy goods from abroad and eliminate tariffs was the right thing to do. And maybe it was. We just didn’t know how much it would hurt.
