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A Letter from Dalton McGuinty

This is quite a place, our Ontario.

We are, all of us, blessed to live in the greatest province in the best country in the world.

Our public schools now rank the best in the English-speaking world. Our hospitals now have the shortest surgical wait times in the country.

Even our economy, in the midst of a punishing global recession, has created nearly half the new jobs in Canada, and more new jobs than any of our neighbouring states.

These things didn’t happen by accident.

We didn’t get lucky.

Working together, we made our schools and our hospitals better, and our economy stronger.

But now the recession and continued global economic uncertainty have left us with a problem: a stubborn deficit that threatens economic growth and job creation, and puts our schools, our health care, and our very quality of life at risk.

We can’t allow this deficit to defeat us. And we won’t.

Our strong plan will eliminate the deficit by Ontario’s and Canada’s 150th anniversary, on July 1, 2017.

It won’t be pretty. It won’t be easy. But we will succeed.

We’ll make difficult decisions and tough choices.

Sacrifices will be made.

But then who among us didn’t grow up hearing of the hardships and sacrifices our parents and grandparents made to create a better life for us.

Well, now it’s our turn.

Time for our generation to stand up and take action.

We will do whatever it takes to protect the gains we’ve made in our schools and our health care.

We’ll do whatever we need to do to preserve what is so very special about this place.

And we’ll do it together. Because that’s the way we do things around here. Together.

We can do this. We’re Ontario.

Dalton McGuinty
Premier of Ontario