TORONTO – Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne were set to meet Monday night in Toronto, marking their first face-to-face talk in more than a year.
The Conservative prime minister last met with the Liberal premier Dec. 5, 2013, and Wynne has since embarked on a public campaign urging Harper to sit down with her.
The two will be meeting at 6:15 p.m. at an undisclosed location in Toronto, where Harper was set to attend the gold-medal World Junior Championship hockey game between Canada and Russia.
When Harper was in the Toronto area last month he did not meet with Wynne, but fit in a private meeting with newly elected Toronto Mayor John Tory.
Wynne told The Canadian Press in a year-end interview that she hoped Harper did not have a “particular vendetta” against Ontario because “this isn’t personal.”
The two politicians have publicly taken jabs at each other over pension plans, the provincial deficit and infrastructure spending. Wynne often invoked Harper criticisms on those topics during the spring election that saw her win a majority government.
She has also used letters to Harper — released to the media — and social media to press the prime minister for a meeting. Last month Ontario’s opposition leaders criticized her approach, saying it clearly wasn’t working.
Wynne has set about to create a made-in-Ontario pension plan, complaining that Harper’s aversion toward pension reform is “offensive and inexplicable.” Harper, meanwhile, has panned Wynne’s pension plan proposal, saying people prefer tax breaks as a reward for saving for retirement, rather than having their taxes hiked to force them to save.
Harper has also recently said the Ontario government should focus less on “confrontation” and more on getting its fiscal house in order. Ontario has a $12.5-billion deficit, which it plans to eliminate by 2017-18, while Ottawa is banking on a $1.6-billion surplus for 2015-16.
Most recently, Wynne added her voice to a growing number of groups concerned for sex workers’ safety by saying she has “grave concern” about the Harper government’s new prostitution law.
The premier and her finance minister had also complained that the Harper government shortchanged the province in 2014-15 when it unilaterally tweaked the transfer calculations. Last month the federal government said Ontario would get an additional $1.25 billion for 2015-16 — though the announcement also came with a dig from the federal finance minister, who called on Ontario to balance its budgets.
Source:: Metro News
