By Surjit Singh Flora

Time after time, day after day, it seems like some company is looking to get approval to increase its prices. For instance, currently Hydro is said to be increasing its prices to recover the costs of the ice storm. It was also reported that Enbridge is going to increase the prices to recover for some shortfall that it allegedly came under.

Wouldn’t it be great if consumers and the public had the same power? Wouldn’t it be great if one could write to their employers and dictate that they are unable to pay their bills and, thus, are going to be raising the price of their labour which will be effective in 30 days? However, that is not the case.  These types of things take time, and are met with much resistance. Even when there is a promise of an increase, the increases that an employee sees are nowhere close to the costs that he/she faces.

Seeing that consumers are sick of the word “tax”, companies have started becoming creative when passing on the costs to their consumers.  At times it feels that they are waiting for a lame reason which will allow them to pass on the additional fees and costs. However, regardless of the reason, it appears that consumers are bombarded by increases in their bills which are passed on in the form of property taxes, insurance rates, premium hikes, mortgage rates, debt-repayment charges and so on. Regardless of what they attempt to call it, the bottom line is, it’s a cost that the consumer now has to bear.

What makes it interesting this time around is that its election time in Ontario. After the consumer has been clobbered by these hikes under the watch of all parties, it is now that the red, blue, orange and green parties come out with their speeches and promises of how they will make it easier for people if their party is elected.

This is not the first election that is held in Ontario – not the first promise that has been broken by an elected party. So what will be different this time around? How can anyone be assured that the elected party will actually stand by its word and do something for the people.  As history has shown, promises made by parties during election period are seldom upheld once the party is in power. Even if the party attempts to show that it is living up to its promise, the plan drawn up by the party is usually such that it will most likely not be completed in one term.

In other cases, where the party has not done anything to keep their promise, they spend more time on making excuses of why they could not do something, than actually trying to keep the promise.  In some cases, changes are passed off as being good for the consumer, when in fact it is not the case. An excellent example of this was the changes made to the Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule in September 2010. Insurance lobbyists successfully brainwashed the government into thinking that these changes were actually going to bring about positive change for consumers because instead of providing consumers a one package deal, that consumers would now be able to choose the exact services they wanted. This, in turn, would allow consumers to dictate their own price of insurance and, in some cases, lower the premiums by reducing the services. As such, many services such as housekeeping and caregiving services were made optional, while other services, such as medical rehabilitation, were significantly reduced.  The idea was to lower the overall burden on insurance companies, which will then lower insurance premiums.

The result? It has now been almost four years since the changes came into play and the only winner has been the insurance industry thanks to the dodgy work by our government.  Ontario now has one of the highest insurance premiums with one of the lowest benefits available to consumers.  In addition, insurance companies have been known to make record profits for the past few years.

The idea, as I understand it, was to bring some control into the expenses of insurance companies. Consumers were assured that these changes would bring about lower insurance rates since consumers would be able to choose the type of services they wanted. Instead, the opposite has occurred. Insurance rates have either stayed stagnant, or in some cases, increased; the services have decreased, and insurance companies are making profits.

The NDP also want to bring about changes in insurance premiums. However, they supported the Liberal government that did not put in proper oversight to ensure that premiums are lowered as soon as the problem of expenses was dealt with by the insurance companies. As we have seen many times in the past, governments are careless with the taxpayer’s money because they do not treat it as easy money.  It’s a trough, where any politician can put their snout in to suck out as much money as they need to pay for their next stunt.

The last few years, we have seen many of these examples. Some of the highlights being, the gas plant relocation, the ORANGE scandal, eHealth, the McGuinty slush fund, and the newest of which has been the PanAm Games. These are classical examples of our hard earned money being wasted by politicians who do not understand the value of a hard earned dollar. They do not understand how a majority of Ontarians stretch every single dollar to the limit. At times, it appears that our government needs a lesson from its people on how to spend money.

These scandals and continuous talks of tax hikes clearly illustrate that until the government is actually held accountable for its actions, no matter which party wins the election, the taxpayers will not feel much relief. The government itself requires a major overhaul in its own policies, procedures, and laws. By allowing politicians to make such expensive mistakes, and then step down or prorogue government to escape the consequences is a clear misuse of powers.  As such, this is an open invitation to all candidates and parties, if you truly believe and respect Ontarians and their hard earned tax dollars, then bring about this internal change and show us you are serious about the position and power that the public entrusts you with. Because until this happens – history will continue to repeat itself and at the end, the public will never win.