The numbers presented by SME certainly point to there being a strong economic case to bring back lost manufacturing jobs but there are massive roadblocks that must be overcome. Unfortunately these roadblocks are not ones that can be discussed, rationalized, and negotiated. They are not technical that can be easily put into a formula and the answer comes out. These are roadblocks that have been put in place by our political system and as such have very little chance of being overcome.

The major problems for manufacturers in Ontario, as has been discussed in this forum previously, are:

1) An ineffective Apprenticeship Program that is of little help to aspiring apprentices and to the many small manufacturers who would hire an apprentice but can’t.

2) The recent and planned increases to the cost of electricity at the rate of about 10% for the next few years, after which time our cost of electricity will have risen about 50% over a five year period.

3) Financially debilitating taxes such as WSIB (yes, this is a tax), EHT, and Source Deductions. These taxes are imposed on businesses whether they make any profit or not and can easily result in the acceleration of the destruction of a business.

Because these problems were created by Government it will be nearly impossible to have them corrected. The current Liberal government has not solved, and in fact worsened, these problems so it’s not reasonable to assume that they will be a part of the solution. None of the three major parties in Ontario have plans or strategies to adequately repair these problems because their platforms desperately depend on the revenue generated by them.

This is one of the major reasons why The Parkdale Party was created. A Party that has no ties or obligations to any influential organization. A Party that has the ability to collect the best ideas to use in attacking the problems without having to stay within existing party ideologies. A Party that recognizes that you can’t assume that businesses will stay in the Province if they are subjected to continuous interference and bad policies that are made for the sole purpose of getting re-elected.

The Parkdale Party supports and encourages the TBM initiative and will help in any way possible.

Large corporations are actually paying less for their electricity at the expense on consumers and small businesses but we can’t blame these companies for taking full advantage of a severely flawed energy plan. If the government hands you an opportunity to possibly save hundreds of thousands of dollars it would be irresponsible for corporations not to take full advantage of such an opportunity, unless a corporation has an extremely high ethical mandate at the expense of profit. How many such corporations are there, really?

Energy Minister Chris Bentley is proud of the fact that Ontario’s peak demand has been reduced by 700 megawatts. I imagine he’ll be doing handstands as this demand continues to drop when businesses continue to turn the lights off on their way out.

Seeing the tactic being used by the Ontario Liberals to try to gain a majority by bribing Elizabeth Witmer out of politics just emphasises how politics has evolved into a business where victory means a front seat at the trough. Win at all cost, get a front row seat, stuff yourself silly. To make matters worse what does this move say about Ms. Witmer as a politician? She knows the impact her accepting the position will have on Ontario’s political landscape and she is still willing to put her personal advancement in front of the interests of her own party, and more importantly, the interests of the citizens of Ontario. By accepting the offer to chair the WSIB  Ms. Witmer has in fact crossed the floor and given the Liberals an opportunity to gain a majority. This is politics at its worst! Shame on the  Ontario Liberals and shame on  Elizabeth Witmer.

So, what can be done about this? Does anything have to be done about this?

Doing nothing but complaining is just not the way of  the members of The Parkdale Party. This is the reason that our Party was formed and we believe that there is room in our society for genuine honour and honesty in politics.

It is up to us, the silent majority, to stand up and finally be counted. “For Communities by Communities” is our vision for Ontario. Decisions impacting a community must be approved by the majority of the citizens in that community. Power plants can’t be forced onto communities. Taxes can’t be forced onto the citizens without assurances that they will be used for their intended purposes and just squandered away. Politicians actually working on behalf of their communities and not their political masters!

Utopian? Cynics believe so, we don’t.

The Parkdale Party, taking the “moron” out of the oxymoron that describes the majority of members of our current political system. We will stand up for the majority of Ontario’s citizens.

To say this is disturbing is an understatement but it really is no surprise. Our government has planed such annual price increases for at least another 3 years. So here we are, businesses and consumers alike, getting sent to the Liberal Electric Chair!

To think that this type of insane policy will create jobs is unbelievable. When the next plant shuts down throwing people out of work we know that one of the recent nails in our coffin has come from an energy policy that is truly an electric shock hazard.

“Ontario’s unemployment rate fell by half a percentage point to 7.6 per cent, as more people became discouraged and gave up looking for work.”

Yes, our unemployment rate went down not because of job growth but people just gave up looking for work. There is nothing to be happy about the unemployment rate in Ontario falling last month. As a matter of fact our government should be quite ashamed of how they accomplished this. How sad that so many people have actually just given up finding a job.

It must be clear by now, even to the Liberals, that their job creation strategy is a disaster. Can you imagine how hopeless a person must feel to give up on finding a job? The situation must seem hopeless.

This is the legacy that Mr. McGuinty is leaving in his wake. The next election can’t come quickly enough!

So, in summary, what would The Parkdale Party do to fire up our economy? Our solution in 8 easy steps:

1) Focus on providing affordable and stable electricity prices. This means providing a well-managed hydro and nuclear supply (this is for the base load), investment in clean-coal technologies (for cost effective short term future energy security), and supporting green energy technologies on a very selective basis (for cost effective long term energy security). In most cases there must be strong movement to Private-Public-Partnerships to help with the financing of new initiatives.

2) Give businesses the workers with skill sets that are required to compete and sell their goods and services internationally. This requires an education system that is driven by the real needs of the business community and not by what the educators think businesses need.

3) Stop looking for more and more creative ways to pull money out of the pockets of businesses and workers and let them succeed, resulting with more disposable income that will be put back into the economy.

4) Publish all expenditures against the Provincial budget for all departments, in real-time, to permit everyone to see where their money is being spent. This will take the mystery out of government spending that causes a tremendous amount of anxiety and mistrust by the public of the government that is supposed to be working for them.

5) Get out of the way of businesses and let them succeed , hire, and profit. Make it easy to do business in Ontario by putting in place reasonable checks and balances. Deal with violators harshly but let good businesses flourish.

6) Ensure that the middle management of the government is efficient and affective. Review the qualifications of ALL management level employees to ensure they are capable of managing their workers and their budget. Reduce the size of management and move the savings to the delivery of the services. A good workforce does not need a lot of management interference. Hire qualified people, or train as required, and let them do their jobs.

7) ALL negotiations with unions and employee associations must be done in public so that the taxpayers understand the position of both sides. This will allow every taxpayer to draw their own conclusion about which side to support.

Have the courage to do what is right for the people of Ontario and not what is right just for the supporters of your political party.

This is what The Parkdale Party would do.

The Parkdale Party is a community based organization that wants to put power back into the hands of the people who are most affected by the decisions made on their behalf.

“For Communities, By Communities”.

In his Feb, 2011 article “What is the secret to Germany’s economic success?”, Edward Harrison concludes:

“Overall, we should credit Germany for building a recovery based not just on exports, but on capital investment and saving. One reason that Germany is a manufacturing and export powerhouse is because it has invested in those businesses. Certainly, wage restraint over the past decade by German labour unions has kept German companies in the mix. But, at heart, the German export story is about investment in human and physical capital. And that is definitely worthy of emulation.”

Furthermore in their article “The Secrets of Germany’s Success” published in “Foreign Affairs” by the U.S. based Council on Foreign Relations:

“By the time U.S. President Barack Obama was telling Americans in his January 2011 State of the Union address that the United States needed to double its exports, Germany had quietly become the world’s second-largest exporter (after China). Indeed, Germany’s exports have contributed two-thirds of the country’s economic growth over the past decade and have driven its GDP per capita to increase faster than that of any other major industrialized country.

When it comes to boosting exports, of course, the need to maintain or even increase the size of the manufacturing sector, in particular, has been an article of faith in major developed countries for decades. Politicians and voters alike believe that having companies that “make something” is a key element of economic success, in part because manufacturing jobs have historically paid above average wages. For its part, Germany embraced manufacturing, and much of its economic success is thanks to that decision.”

It is a long-established process in the engineering sector that a person cannot check their own work. This is not a criticism of any individual but simply a recognition of human nature. This method of management review has finally been executed by the Liberals by hiring Don Drummond to review their plan with independent “third-party” eyes. Such a hire clearly states that our current government doesn’t have the strength within its existing management group to perform such reviews. Having to sub-contract such an analysis should result in the replacement of a large number of existing managers as it is their core job to clearly understand how to run their departments to the highest efficiency possible. Clearly the current crop of managers has not been doing their job.

Third-party evaluations will shake up the management group very quickly and they will either shape up or they should be replaced. With the Provincial government’s payroll consuming about 50% of the budget it is clear that this is a huge opportunity for both short-term and long-term operational efficiencies.

Remember, the government is not in the business of creating jobs. If people have jobs that are not required or that are not being performed adequately then changes must be made. This may sound cold-hearted but it is also not fair to employees who are not used effectively, nor to taxpayers, to have people floundering around looking for something to do.

Effective management will pay huge dividends to government employees and tax payers.

The core problem in the operation of the Ontario government is that there is too  much money spent on the many levels of management, and not enough on the delivery of the services. The structure of the Ontario government resembles a rectangle much more than it does the traditional pyramid. With the current management structure a disproportionate amount of money is spent on middle management.

The problems always start at the top, and this is where we should be looking for the solution. If the top management group does not keep tabs on the managers reporting to them then the example flows down through the entire system. Conversely, a strong management group at the top will have tremendous impact on the layers below as each layer will have a good example to follow.

Having such a large middle management sector really only means that the system is filled with inefficient or otherwise underqualified managers. If managers are doing their jobs effectively then they will be constantly working to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their departments, without being instructed to do so. The fact that, generally speaking,  the Ontario government is overloaded with middle management means that the managers at the top are not doing their jobs.

Start at the top and make the necessary personnel changes to get qualified people making decisions. Either the existing management team will be shaken up to do their jobs properly or those new managers will make the required personnel changes.

This is what The Parkdale Party would do.

Ontario is committed to fully roll out the all day kindergarten program that is projected to add $1.5 billion annually to the provincial budget. The problem with expenditures in education is that the results cannot be challenged in the short-term as they are hypothetical. We do not see the results of such investments until at least a few years later.

“Ontario has the most educated skilled workforce in the world. It is multilingual and multicultural. The best way for it to compete is on quality, investment in new technology and better use of its labour force”, says David Wolfe, a University of Toronto professor who specializes in manufacturing. If this is indeed the case then why are there so many people looking for work and why are there so many businesses looking for workers? The numbers don’t add up.

In a recent column in the National Post, Matt Gurney reports: “A report by the Toronto Region Research Alliance finds that many students in Canadian universities go into their post-secondary education with hopes of a career in medicine or business. But in the Toronto region, there are only limited spots available for those jobs — and way too many graduates coming out every year, looking for work. For example, the report estimates that in 2012, there will be 6,531 new jobs available for graduates with business and commerce degrees, to be fought over by almost 16,000 graduates. It’s even more lopsided for medicine — barely 3,000 new jobs are forecasted for the current year. Almost 11,000 students will graduate with relevant degrees. Graduates from teacher’s colleges are also having a hell of a hard time finding any open positions. And keep in mind, estimates for the average level of education debt held by Canadian students upon graduation hover around $27,000 each. Meanwhile, Toronto will need almost 10,000 IT specialists this year. Less than 4,00 will graduate.”

It is clear that the provincial education system is not providing the skills that are in demand by the business community. High unemployment while businesses can’t find suitable employees? The entire education system must be adjusted so that businesses get workers whose skills match the needs. The current apprenticeship program also needs a major overhaul as many potential apprentices cannot find placements while many small businesses that could hire and develop apprentices are not permitted to do so due to ridiculous journeyperson-to-apprentice ratios.

The education sector must listen to the business community and better prepare students for their future. To be able to do this the educators need much better direction from the Province. Politicians in turn must understand the business climate and the strengths and weaknesses of its business community. This is perhaps the greatest failure of the three major Ontario political parties, each of which has their own ingrained ideologies.

New fresh political leadership is required that is open-minded without political blinders, like The Parkdale Party.