What are Ontario voters to think of a premier who does not respect the limitations his office, and who behaves in a way to suggest he believes his personal interests are greater than those of the government he has been asked to administer

Recent months have not been kind to Premier Ernie Eves. Yet the deep hole his government now finds itself in is one he mined himself. The heavy digging began with the Premier's rash decision to close parliament and present the so-called budget in a corporate training facility, away from the scrutiny of Opposition MPPs. The Tories were startled by the bad press, loud public outcry - particularly among Tory voters - and the Speaker's ruling that the government was in contempt for bypassing Queen's Park. And it didn't help any when an angry government MPP became the poster-boy for his government's contempt of parliament charge by flipping the bird ("the finger") to Opposition members while debating a motion to prevent future infomercial-budgets. But as bad as all this is, there's more.

This week it was discovered that one day before the "budget" was announced, the Cabinet secretly gave itself authority in a special warrant to spend $36-billion with-out the scrutiny of the legislature. This amounts to enough tax money to govern for about 6 months.

This decision underscored the belief that the Tories had no intention of returning to parliament to debate the budget before an election, despite the premier's public assurances it would be given a proper legislative hearing. Moreover, it is another broken pledge the government made in the 2002 Throne Speech to have the budget delivered in the legislature before the end of the fiscal year. As it currently stands, a budget bill has still not been tabled.

Governments of all political stripes use warrants to ensure its employees are paid and services are delivered when parliament is not sitting. There is nothing wrong with using warrants as a stopgap measure to keep government open before money bills can be passed. Yet they should only be used when lawmakers cannot or will not meet anytime soon. They are not to be used for political convenience, as is the case with the Eves' warrant.

House leader Chris Stockwell defended the use of warrants, saying his government is operating no differently than others and that the previous NDP government used them all the time too. Mr. Eves said it was bureaucrats who made the decision and they are to blame for asking for the $36-B. Besides, the only alternative, he said, was to put the government in a position where it could not fund services. But what about getting the spending authority by passing a real budget in the legislative assembly Was that not an option too Taxpayers deserve better.

Rather than govern responsibly, the premier is willing to run roughshod over parliament and its elected members by using the budgetary process as a massive taxpayer funded political backdrop. This is a cynical, not to mention fiscally irresponsible, way to run a government.

What is deeply troubling is that the people who came to power in 1995 to fix government and who call themselves sound fiscal managers are suddenly saying NDP bookkeeping is good enough for them. Yet the NDP are the rascals voters threw out of office en masse because they could not be trusted to govern responsibility. It is not surprising that voters no longer view the Tories as responsible fiscal managers, Premier Eves doesn't seem to care anymore.