The Province of Ontario to Join the Have Nots

In early 2003, during a heated online debate with an Albertan and a Québécois, I remember being laughed at from both sides when I suggested that before the end of the decade Canada would be in an economically advanced recession, Alberta would politically more elite, Québec would politically become more grassroot, the province to their own left in geography would become the opposite of themselves, while Ontario would politically stay the same old status quo. After their minutes of laughter out loud were finished, I laid down the real bombshell, not only would the Province of Ontario remain the same politically, as comfort has its price, but it would before 2010 become a have not province!

The reaction then was forget it, even if the former engine of the Confederation politically, economically and socially was not all three anymore, there was no way any bond rating agency like Standard and Poor's, Moody's or Dominion would downgrade the province's AAA rating, which brings a higher cost of debt payments than at current. A lesson they had thought was learnt when during Bob Rae's reign of economic terror, which thrice had to drop from the AAA status to AA+ then AA and finally AA- given by its debt handlers, taking a decade and a half for yours to recover from the less than 5 year under $35 billion to over $100 billion debt burst with three straight budgets with deficits over $10 billion and its final being $8.5 billion, thus 1995 was a reaction to 1990 which had been the revolution. But no, I do not think people can remember, or learn those lessons of the past, without repeating them in the future as the National Post seems to point out towards.

Will 2011 or 2015 be a reaction to 2003 or 2007 which had been the revolution of late, people choice that kind of change, but got more of the same, as the Toronto Sun poll asks "Do you think Ontario is on track to become a "have not" province within a couple of years?" to which more than 97% of the 15000 respondents answered yes. I believe economically Alberta will continue to get better, socially Québec will continue to get better, but politically Ontario will soon learn what better actually means, as it continues to find its own cultural self until it can finally center upon and rest within it. The question is, while it finds its political soul, will the economic and social questions stay constant in time for them to be solved down the road or does time keep marching on without it?