Flaherty - March 1, 2008:"If you're going to make a new business investment in Canada, and you're concerned about taxes, the last place you will go is the province of Ontario."
Flaherty - today:
MISSISSAUGA — Ontario will for the first time collect from a federal program designed to shift wealth to Canada's poorest regions next year, an unpleasant reminder of the grim economic prospects facing the country's most populous province.
Premier Dalton McGuinty's government will receive $347-million in the fiscal year starting in March, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced at a meeting Monday with his provincial and territorial counterparts.
“It's sort of an odd feeling to see Ontario in such difficult straits,” Mr. Flaherty, a finance minister under former Ontario Premier Mike Harris, told reporters. “Regrettably, I expect Ontario will be in the equalization program for some time to come.”
Maybe if he'd actually listened to all of the opposition parties pounding on him day after day the last couple of years about the sorry state of the manufacturing sector in Canada, he wouldn't be experiencing whatever this "odd feeling" is today. (I suspect that feeling is actually indigestion from having to eat crow.)
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