Budget Madness

So the Ontario 2012 budget is already at risk of being defeated the day after it was announced. PC leader Tim Hudak let everyone know that the PC party would be voting against it within a short time of it being announced and the NDP will likely have a hard time coming to terms with the pressure being put on the public sector unions. However, I still appreciate Andrea Horvath's response on CBC Radio One today where she stated that the NDP will take some time to figure out what is good about the budget and is opening the channel for dialogue with the people of Ontario. I also like how she mentioned that Ontario elected a minority government to have the parties work together. This is what should be happening in a situation where the political views of the people of Ontario are split, you work together with those you "live with" in order to achieve what's best for the province. I don't really see the PC party having that mentality, but maybe that's because they're aiming to be in power in order to do whatever they want while the Liberals didn't consult with the people because they're used to having a majority and being able to push through whatever they want. These mentalities from the Liberals and the PC party make me wish we had a minority NDP government as it seems they would be the most willing to cooperate. I look at the minority governments that occur regularly in Germany and I see a system of collaboration that truly works in the long-term interest of a people - for the most part - and does not aim solely at re-election.

On another note, what would happen if we had the opposition government create their own mini budgets before they knew what the governing party's budget contained and all were released to the public on the same day. I think we might see some interesting similarities between some of the parties approaches that might help to reduce the voting down of budgets for purely partisan reasons. It may also work to some extent in businesses and not for profit entities as both those proposing and those setting the budgets would have to come up with their ideas of a realistic approach before knowing the results. Hopefully that would serve to increase the amount of objectivity involved in the decision making process. However, this would require an intimate knowledge of the department setting the budget in order to avoid situations of underachieving and will still not work if one of the negotiating parties is unwilling to be honest. That's where flexible budgets and management by walking around step in to supplement.