The 2007 Ontario Budget ploughed over farmers and left grape growers to wilt on the vine, Tim Hudak, MPP for Erie-Lincoln, said in Legislature this week.

Hudak, finance critic for the official opposition, condemned the McGuinty government Tuesday in a speech to the budget motion sponsored by Finance Minister Greg Sorbara saying the Grits’ latest budget ignores the priorities of Hamilton and the Niagara region, despite a record setting $91 billion in government spending (an increase of $22 billion since the McGuinty Liberals took office in 2003). Hudak said the City of Hamilton was very upset to see funding decrease in their area, and added his constituents in the Niagara region were aghast to find out the mid-peninsula highway corridor plan has entirely fallen off the map.

“The mid-peninsula corridor, as you’ll see in the budget, has been relegated to a vaguely defined term: future projects,” Hudak said from the floor of the assembly. “No dates for completion, no dates for completion of the environmental assessment, (and) no funding attached whatsoever. So this government will have gone through an entire mandate and advanced that project not a single centimetre.”

Several of Niagara’s priorities were overlooked in the 2007-08 budget, Hudak said, including a lack of funding for a replant program for grape growers and a gypsy moth spraying program to avoid infestation this spring in West Lincoln. Hudak said convincing the Ministry of Natural Resources to help fund a gypsy moth spraying program will be even more difficult now that the ministry’s budget has been cut by $36 million.

Hudak said the McGuinty government indicated it was going to provide funding for a grape replanting program, but instead cut spending on agriculture by $191 million.

“(Premier McGuinty) has led people to believe one thing and delivered the opposite,” Hudak said. “So it’s unfortunate that the replant program did not find purchase in this budget. But you know what? Not surprisingly, because, as I said, it looks like Dalton McGuinty has written off rural Ontario for funding.”

Despite increased Liberal spending, Ontario was dead last in all of Canada in 2006 in terms of economic growth, Hudak said in the Legislature, and 120,000 good-paying manufacturing jobs were lost. Many of the banks of Ontario are projecting Ontario to once again come in dead last in economic growth in 2007.

“A band of pirates on shore leave would show more restraint than Dalton McGuinty in his budgets,” Hudak said, “and would probably be less destructive than Dalton McGuinty’s policies have been to the economy of Ontario.”

Contact: Tim Hudak, MPP