The Member of Provincial Parliament for Hastings-Lennox and Addington says 2019 was a year of action, change, and learning.
MPP Daryl Kramp says his Progressive Conservative government inherited a bad financial situation after years of Liberal overspending and
the PCs faced a very challenging situation.
“The deficit/debt was so high that we have to spend $30 million a day just to pay the interest every year. That’s not sustainable and dangerous. We need to get the spending under control and have more of our taxes going into valuable programs and services. But that’s not an easy fix and it can’t be done overnight.”
Kramp admits his government moved too fast on some program/funding changes and had to pause and rethink some issues such as the reworking of autism programming and funding.
“We weren’t, aren’t perfect. We didn’t implement decisions right some of the time. You can’t tell people what to do, you have to consult and you have to explain why you’re doing certain things. You can’t just march in and order changes. We’ve learned from the mistakes. It’s about more consultation and less confrontation. But in the end we have to remember that to control spending we have to concentrate on providing what our residents really need not what residents want or we’ll dig ourselves a deeper hole.”
Kramp was happy that his government was able to provide $5 million recently to ease financial pressures at Quinte Health Care. But he, along with Bay of Quinte riding MPP Todd Smith know that the bandaid solutions have to stop.
“Every year, Quinte Health Care runs out of money before the end of the year. And to be clear QHC has made all kinds of changes over the years and they are and have proven themselves to be a well-run efficient organization. We are going to try to make sure that the funding formula for multi-site hospital organizations like QHC gets changed so the annual base funding to them is increased and we get away from financial emergencies year in and year out. Both Todd and I are optimistic that this can happen.”
