QUEEN’S PARK – Today’s Globe and Mail reports Ontario has hired two banks to look at privatizing government assets. Selling off public assets at fire-sale prices in the midst of a recession is exactly the sort of policy that McGuinty Liberals used to denounce:
“You’re selling off Hydro One in a fire sale.”
– Dalton McGuinty to then-Premier Ernie Eves, December 12, 2002
“Premier Eves plans to sell about $2 billion worth of essential public assets to balance the books this year. We’ve seen this movie before.
On May 5, 1999, the day the provincial election was called, the 407 was sold and the 407 users have been ripped off ever since. We are afraid that exactly the same thing is going to happen as you sell, once again, $2 billion worth of assets to balance your books… We want to know what you’re selling in this fire sale.”
– Gerry Phillips, then Finance Critic, to Eves, December 4, 2002
“I simply want to know, on behalf of the people of Ontario, who have a right to an answer to this, how in the world is it that you and Mr Eves got the province into a position where the only way our books are going to be balanced is by a fire sale over the next four months of $2 billion worth of the province’s key assets?”
– Gerry Phillips to Eves, December 4, 2002
“… this government has a fire sale every time it has a problem with money. During the last election they sold Highway 407 for $3 billion even though it was worth $10 billion, just so they could show a budgetary surplus for that election. We hear that they’re going to have to find something to sell to achieve the same thing before this election
– Jim Bradley on the Harris Government, June 25, 2003
“We are also refusing to sell off the LCBO, Hydro One or private generators. We’re not having a fire sale of public assets. We’re going to do the responsible thing.”
– John Wilkinson, November 11, 2003
