Promised by Premier Doug Ford final fall, $200 cheques at the moment are touchdown in mailboxes throughout Ontario. Heather Rivers reviews on what you might want to find out about them.
Printed Jan 24, 2025 • 3 minute learn
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Premier Doug Ford speaks at RBC Place London conference centre on March 19, 2024. (Derek Ruttan/The )
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Promised by Premier Doug Ford final fall, $200 cheques at the moment are touchdown in mailboxes throughout Ontario. Heather Rivers reviews on what you might want to find out about them.
THE BIG PICTURE
In a shock transfer late in October, Ford introduced the $200 funds – roughly $3 billion in complete – would exit early within the new 12 months to assist households address greater prices together with from the federal carbon tax. The announcement got here a day forward of the Progressive Conservative authorities’s fall financial assertion, a sort of mini-budget, and at a time when Ford seemed to be toying with calling an early Ontario election. “That’s money that families can use to pay off their credit card after the holidays, to buy a winter coat for their kids, or to cover the cost of gassing up the family car to make up for the cost of the Liberal carbon tax,” stated Ford, who denied any election hyperlink. Unimpressed critics stated the transfer smacked of political gimmickry and would do little to deal with the affordability disaster many Ontarians are feeling.
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WHO GETS THE MONEY?
Basically, virtually each man, woman and baby in Ontario is getting a $200 cheque or the equal of it. To qualify, you have to be 18 or older, have lived in Ontario as of Dec. 31 and filed a 2023 tax return. Those that went bankrupt or had been incarcerated will not be eligible. Households who obtained the Canada Baby Profit will obtain separate cheques for every baby underneath age 18.
THE TIMING
When the funds had been introduced, there was hypothesis Ford would possibly set off an early 2025 election whereas Justin Trudeau was nonetheless heading a minority Liberal authorities in Ottawa. Two massive adjustments have since occurred. First, Donald Trump was elected and has now taken workplace as U.S. president. He’s vowing to slap hefty tariffs on Canadian imports that Ontario estimates might value it as much as 500,000 jobs. Second, Trudeau is on his means out as Liberal chief and prime minister, along with his substitute to be chosen in early March adopted quickly after by a federal election if, as broadly anticipated, the federal government both falls or the brand new prime minister sends voters to the polls. Not merely coy a few doable early election, Ford has since been brazenly mulling one. Earlier this week, he stated he wants a mandate to cope with the fallout for Ontario of 4 years of a second Trump presidency.
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THE POLITICS
From allegations the PCs are attempting to purchase voters, to ridicule that even the super-wealthy will pocket the cash as a result of the funds aren’t primarily based on earnings, the opposition events at Queen’s Park have attacked the $200 rebate program. “The premier is attempting to bribe Ontarians with their own money,” Liberal chief Bonnie Crombie stated final fall. Ford and his finance minister have defended the mass mail-out of cash as inexpensive reduction for Ontarians amid higher-than-expected provincial income.
DEJA VU
Ford’s authorities isn’t the primary to ship or attempt to ship a reimbursement to taxpayers in one-time funds. In November, Trudeau introduced a plan to ship working Canadians making as much as $150,000 a $250 cheque this spring. That may have value the feds $4.6 billion. NDP Chief Jagmeet Singh pushed to get this system expanded to retirees and others, however that did not win assist and the NDP wouldn’t again this system as proposed. In 2000, then-premier Mike Harris’s Progressive Conservative authorities despatched Ontarians $200 cheques. Then-premier Ralph Klein in Alberta did the identical in 2006, along with his Conservatives sending out $400 rebates from a funds surplus.
With recordsdata by the Canadian Press and
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