Ontario’s opposition parties stake their ground ahead of budget announcement

Thursday is the official 'budget day' in the Province of Ontario.

Going against the norm, however, Premier Kathleen Wynne has already shared some of the details: As explained by the Toronto Star, we can expect the budget to include a $260-million investment in home care, a 15 per cent cut to auto insurance rates, new funding for northern roads and bridges and some sort of social assistance reform.

Regardless of what's in it, Tim Hudak's PCs aren't going to support it.

[ Related: Oakville power plant closure will cost Ontario taxpayers $310M ]

In an interview with Yahoo! Canada News earlier this week, Tory Finance Critic Peter Shurman said he can say "with a high degree of confidence" that his party will not vote in favour of the budget.

"It doesn't matter what it is," he said.

"There's not been a budget in my six years here...that really ever materialized in terms of what it espouses do. The deficit is never the deficit, the spending that's meant to stimulate for example job growth, never stimulates job growth...money gets moved around like a shell game.

"At the end of the day we can't continue to have a government in which our party has no confidence and to which to an increasing extent, we believe, the people of Ontario have no confidence."

Shurman also begrudges the fact that the NDP is expected to, once again, prop up the minority Liberal government.

"I don't profess to understand the...NDP," Shurman says.

"On the one hand they can come to Question Period in the morning and berate the government for...spending over a billion dollars to cancel power plants aimed at entirely just one thing, saving Liberal seats in the last election.

"And, at the same time, they support the 'laudable' goals of the Liberal government."

[ Related: Ontario Tories call for non-confidence vote on gas plant controversy unlikely to succeed ]

For their part, the NDP say that it's "irresponsible" for the Tories to say they're going to vote against something they haven't even seen.

"I think the Conservatives see everything very simply and in very plain terms. We see the whole process, a whole lot more nuances than that," NDP Finance Critic Michael Prue told Yahoo! Canada News.

"The reality is yes the government wasted tons of money. Yes they need to be held to account for it. But we are only 16 or 17 months into this Parliament," he said adding that Ontarians do not want an election right now.

"And so yeah it's really easy to do what Conservatives do every day of their life, they stand up and they say 'no'."

Prue does stipulate, however, that the NDP will "explore" the possibility of forcing an election if the Liberal government doesn't deliver on all seven of his party's demands.

Among other things, the NDP has requested cuts to auto insurance rates, closure of corporate tax loopholes, new youth employment initiatives and a guarantee that no one will have to wait more than five days to start receiving home care.

Prue also wondered whether the Liberals themselves would force an election by including things in the budget that they know the NDP wouldn't vote for.

"We are anticipating the potential of a couple of poison pills as well," he said.

It promises to be an interesting few days at Queen's Park.

(Photo courtesy of the Canadian Press)

Are you a politics junkie?
Follow @politicalpoints on Twitter!