If people listening to Finance Minister Charles Sousa in Guelph on Tuesday hoped for juicy details of next month’s provincial budget, they were likely disappointed.
Still, the speech – a lunchtime affair at a Guelph Chamber of Commerce event – may have provided a glimpse of the minister’s thinking as the budget comes together.
“The province is attracting investments because of our talent, because of our skills training, and also because … we are stimulating economic growth through infrastructure spending,” he told reporters after the speech.
“We have to ensure that we keep our house in fiscal order, because that’s how we can afford the things that matter going forward.”
Sousa’s remarks focused on talking up Ontario’s low tax rates, the need to train young workers including in the skilled trades, and what he described as the strength of the province’s economy in the face of global turmoil.
Outside the Cutten Fields golf course, where the speech took place, a group of Ontario Public Service Employees Union employees held a protest.
OPSEU representative Lorraine Skitch said the protesters were raising the issue of stalled contract talks with the province.
“The Wynne government has publicly said it’s zero per cent raises. We’re just coming off two years of zero per cent raises,” she told CTV News.
“We’re not going to attract the brightest and best workers to the Ontario public service with a contract that contains those kinds of concessions.”
Sousa said negotiations continue, with the province bargaining in good faith.
“We’ve also made clear … that we’re working on net-zeroes, because we’ve got to find savings in the system in order to make those things happen,” he said.
The province has pledged to eliminate its $12.5-billion deficit by 2017-18.
