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Finance Minister Jim Flaherty made a deliberate decision to unfairly shortchange Ontario to the tune of $641 million in the federal budget, Premier Kathleen Wynne charged Wednesday.

“We’re seeing a pattern of the federal government getting out of, I would suggest, the business of nation building, and particularly in this case turning its back on Ontario,” Wynne said at a news conference with Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa. “We’re here today to demonstrate that yesterday’s budget is part of that pattern.”

The minority Liberal government claims funding cuts in the last eight years of federal Conservative budgets have cost the province billions of dollars.

Ontario will get 18% of its revenues this year from federal transfers, the same percentage it received in the mid-1990s, but Sousa said that’s still a cut.

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Kenney, the employment minister in charge of the file, said simply that the government continues to talk to the provinces on the signature national job training program. He insisted he won’t negotiate in public amid provincial griping about the April 1 deadline.

While Kenney has often suggested the federal government would go it alone on the job grant if necessary, he has insisted he far prefers a deal with the provinces.

He’s yet to respond to a counter-offer put forth by the provinces earlier this month, but provincial officials have reported Kenney has been conciliatory and open to new ideas throughout the negotiations.