That didn't take long

Mark Mullins, writing in the National Post, has already been gracious enough to instruct our new Premier on our behalf as to how he must deal with the deficit.

Premier Dalton McGuinty's new Ontario government is running a $5.6-billion deficit. No amount of political spin can change the fact that this government is now responsible for the fiscal affairs of the province.

OK so far.

It has five months left in this fiscal year in which to balance the books.

Says who? Who died and made you King? Who is Mark Mullins?

Mark Mullins is director of Ontario Policy Studies for the Fraser Institute.

Ah, now it becomes clear. Let's skip the messy details in this column and cut to the chase.

At least $4.5-billion in spending cuts over a two-year period would be required to balance the budget....

How does the government achieve at least $4.5-billion in spending reductions in the next 17 months? They must come largely from health and education -- the reductions are too large to be made up elsewhere, particularly with health expenditures outpacing revenues.

Why am I not surprised by this conclusion? It seems the Fraser Institute never met a privatization it didn't like and that's the unspoken implication here - cut public spending and let the "invisible hand" take care of "business". The irony here is neck deep - Mike Harris, who is the prime architect of the last ten years of Tory policy that created this mess, now works for the Fraser Institute. So the mess created by conservative policies only has one solution - the conservative solution, of course. I've got one more quote from this article.

Since Mr. McGuinty signed a very public pledge not to raise or introduce new taxes without "the explicit consent of Ontario voters," and since he bound himself to the Taxpayer Protection and Balanced Budget Act, spending reductions are the obvious solution to eliminating the deficit.

Emphasis added. That would be us, Mr. Mullins. When you stand for election and win, you might have the authority to throw your weight around. Until then, I don't think I like your tone.

Update: Mr. Mullins is a busy fellow. He also has an article in today's Globe and Mail and this one has a somewhat different tone although much of the information presented is the same. It says something, I think, about the differences between the two publications.