Ontario will keep all-day kindergarten despite high-placed advice that the program should be scrapped.
Finance Minister Dwight Duncan made the commitment on Monday, following a speech on how to wrestle with the province’s multi-billion-dollar deficit.
On Wednesday, a long-awaited report from former TD Bank economist Don Drummond will be released and it will recommend closing all-day kindergarten, but the finance minister says they won’t do it.
Duncan does say the province will sell the LCBO’s headquarters property, a move expected to generate 200 million dollars.
The Ontario Finance Minister also says he will review the 345 million dollars in subsidies given to horse racing in Ontario each year through the OLG.
That remark is challenged by Hanover Raceway General Manager Gord Dougan.
He says it is not a subsidy, but a 10 year old partnership agreement between the province and 16 racetracks in Ontario.
Dougan says losing that partnership would threaten the 60 thousand jobs in the harness racing and breeding industry.
He says it would be tough to maintain the 16 weeks of harness racing in Hanover, or the even longer seasons at Woodbine and other tracks, if the government pulls out of the nearly 10 year old agreement.
Dougan notes the provincial government receives 75 per cent of the slot income generated at the racetracks in Ontario.
Five per cent goes to municipalities, 10 per cent to purses and 10 per cent to the tracks.
