NDP Leader Howard Hampton says the McGuinty Liberals’ budget overwhelmingly underdelivers and shortchanges Ontarians.

“This is a half-baked budget that offers up small potato solutions to Ontario’s pressing problems, such as the manufacturing and resource sector crisis, senior care, poverty and municipal finances,” said Hampton.

“Ontarians who were looking for assistance from Dalton McGuinty’s government are going to be sadly disappointed. In a time of economic uncertainty and need, this budget overwhelmingly underdelivers,” added Hampton, pointing to the budget’s paltry increase of 0.22 per cent in overall expenditures.

“Dalton McGuinty is offering Ontarian’s scraps from his kitchen table. Ontarians starving for solutions from their government deserve far better. This budget effectively leaves them to fend for themselves.”

Hampton says the budget fails to properly invest in four priority areas the NDP has identified:

· Assisting the hard-hit manufacturing and resource sectors: With more than 200,000 jobs lost in the past four years, the McGuinty government’s barebones re-training scheme would only assist one of every ten of these workers, while offering no direct assistance for ailing manufacturers.

· Improving care for seniors in long-term care facilities: The government’s threadbare plan provides seniors with an additional increase of just six minutes per day of hands-on care, leaving them far short of the 3.5 hours that healthcare workers, residents and families have called for.

· Tackling poverty: The government’s meagre plan falls well short of what’s needed to repair social housing across Ontario, fails to eliminate the clawback of the national child tax benefit and leaves 400,000 low-income kids hungry by giving them just a $1 a week for improved nutrition.

· Helping cash-strapped municipalities: The government’s infrastructure investment falls far short of the $65-billion municipalities urgently needed to replace aging roads, bridges and water systems, and there is no additional money to upload provincially-mandated programs and services.