Tackling a record $24.7 billion deficit while protecting investments in key priorities like health care and education was the challenge presented to about 200 Ontario Liberals who met in Toronto Saturday with provincial cabinet ministers.
The goal was to educate party members about the deficit problem and get their ideas on how the government should address the huge shortfall in the March budget, said Finance Minister Dwight Duncan.
"How do we build on our achievements in education and health care at the same time get Ontario back to balance, get Ontario's fiscal footing back to where it was after we fixed it up in 2004 and '05," Duncan said in an interview. "That's a big tall order."
The budget, which Duncan said is still on schedule to be delivered before April, will outline a plan, and a timetable, to balance the books, but it's going to take longer than originally scheduled.
"Just last year when we laid out the plan we hoped it could be five years," he said. "Obviously things went deeper than anybody imagined, but we will again address that, set goals and move towards achieving those goals."
The New Democrats said the Liberal plan so far includes reduced hospital budgets, talk of selling public assets such as the LCBO and Hydro One, and hitting people with a tax increase in the form of the 13 per cent harmonized sales tax that takes effect July 1.
Attorney General Chris Bentley, who heads a special task force to advise the finance minister, said the Liberal delegates were not talking as much about what programs to cut as they were about what programs the government should invest in.
"People around the province know we have a very large deficit and it's not going to disappear, and it will -- if we don't deal with it -- affect our ability to deliver the type of improved programs that Ontarians hold near and dear," said Bentley. "We have rejected the old slash and burn approach, so what is the approach?"
While no Liberals would talk publicly about what programs could or should be cut as they face what Duncan calls "difficult choices," party president Yasir Naqvi said the provincial council meeting was important to the government as a listening session.
"It gives an opportunity to party members to give their feedback, from a Liberal values point of view, as to what they would like to see in the budget and which direction they want government to move forward," said Naqvi.
"We've got the people who are responsible to actually shape policies are the ones who are listening. It's not being filtered."
Getting grassroots members involved in the decision making process is vital when you need them to help sell the government's policy decisions, which is how the Liberals dealt with the decision last year to harmonize sales taxes starting this summer, said Duncan.
"The party rank and file were very, very helpful in promoting the importance of the tax reforms we did last year," he said. "We're starting to hunker down for the decision making, the priority setting in the next couple of weeks."
The delegates also planned to fan out across Toronto Centre to help former Winnipeg mayor Glen Murray, the Liberal candidate in the Feb. 4 byelection in the downtown riding. The provincial council meeting was moved from Ottawa to Toronto so the out of towners could help drum up support for Murray, admitted Naqvi.
"It's a sign that we take our byelections very seriously and don't leave any stone left unturned," he said. "If there's a byelection going on it doesn't make sense to host a meeting in some other city."
The NDP wern't surprised by the Liberal show of force to defend their turf in Toronto Centre.
"I expect them to spend the maximum money, I expect them to bring in every outside person they can to try and hold it," said New Democrat Michael Prue.
