Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan has unveiled the new provincial budget.
It includes no new tax increases, or tax cuts — and shows spending for this year 2.6 billion dollars lower than forecast at 113.3 billion dollars.
One of the belt tightening measures is a plan to close under-utilized prisons in Owen Sound, Walkerton and Sarnia.
That comes as a surprise to Bruce Grey Owen Sound MPP Bill Murdoch.
He says the closure of the two local jails makes no sense.
Murdoch says an attempt to close the jails before failed, when it was found it was too expensive to ship the inmates to other jails in the province.
The Conservative MPP says already municipalities are strapped with policing costs and having to ship prisoners around will just add to those costs.
Murdoch says the Liberal McGuinty government is planning a deficit of nearly 17 billion dollars for this year and it is calling that good news….
Ontario Green Party leader, and Simcoe Grey candidate Mike Schreiner is also opposed to the jail closings.
He says he has always been opposed to this bigger is better approach that first came under Mike Harris’ leadership.
Schreiner says his major concern with the budget is we are spending 10.3 billion dollars a year on interest, just to service the Ontario debt.
