• Mississauga gas plant cancellation cost taxpayers $275 million
• Ontario’s debt totals $257 billion and is ticking up $22,342 per minute

MISSISSAUGA, ON: The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) brought its travelling Ontario Debt Clock to the site of the cancelled Mississauga gas plant, which was scrapped by Liberal backroom operatives in the midst of the 2011 provincial election.

“This is ground zero of government waste and incompetency in Ontario,” said Ontario Director Candice Malcolm. “It’s the perfect backdrop for our debt clock tour. It demonstrates just one of the many reasons we’re in such a big mess in Ontario.”

You can download a photo of the Ontario Debt Clock in front of the cancelled Mississauga gas plant here: http://taxpayer.com/media/CTFDebtClockPowerPlant.jpg

The CTF is in the middle of a 56-community, 28-day tour of Ontario with the provincial debt clock. The tour aims to draw public attention to the overspending and unsustainable debt at Queen’s Park.

“Ontario’s debt grows by $22,342 every minute,” said CTF’s Ontario Director Candice Malcolm. “It’s a shocking figure. Most people we meet have no idea the debt is this high.”

Ontario’s debt grows by:

• $372 per second, or about the average Ontario family’s monthly grocery bill;
• $22,342 per minute, or about the cost of a down payment for a starter home;
• $1.34 million per hour, or enough to hire five new doctors or 20 nurses;
• $32.2 million per day, or enough to build a hospital or upgrade a highway.

“There are consequences to holding such high levels of public debt,” said Malcolm. “We’re paying over $10 billion each year on interest alone. That’s money not going to hospitals and schools.”

Interest on the debt is the third largest expenditure in the budget.

The Ontario Debt Clock Tour will continue to visit communities across Ontario this summer to raise awareness of the debt and collect signatures for our balanced budget petition. Planned stops on the tour include:

• Thunder Bay
• Schreiber, Terrace Bay
• Marathon, Wawa
• Sault Ste. Marie, Echo Bay, Espanola
• Sudbury, North Bay, Hunstville
• Barrie, Newmarket, Aurora
• Richmond Hill, Markham, Vaughn
• Peterborough, Cobourg, Colborne
• Ottawa, Kanata, Cornwall, Hawkesbury
• Belleville, Kingston, Brockville
• Oshawa, Whitby, Ajax, Pickering, Toronto
• Brampton, Mississauga, Oakville
• Guelph, Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge
• Burlington, Hamilton, Brant, Brantford
• St. Catharines, Welland, Niagara
• London, Sarnia
• Windsor, Leamington, Chatham-Kent
• Toronto

You can follow the tour online. Malcolm and the CTF will post stories, photos and videos from the road on our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/taxpayerdotcom), Twitter feed (@CandiceMalcolm and @OntarioDebt), and the Ontario Debt Clock campaign site (www.OntarioDebtClock.com)

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