Wednesday will see the unveiling of Don Drummond’s
recommendations for the repairing of Ontario’s finances. Ontario
is not experiencing the best of times.
Along with its deficit and debt, its economic growth has stalled, its
population growth rate is slowing, its high electricity costs have been a
factor in the manufacturing sector’s demise, and Ontario is receiving equalization.
The Premier has promised a “relentless attack” on the
deficit. Yet, it is difficult to visualize Ontario’s education and health Premier
leading an attack on the spending programs he has invested so much of his reputation in. Given that he has
repeatedly stated he will not raise taxes, he is left with the options of
expenditure cuts or economies via transformation and restructuring of
government. In the end, there are really only three
options for Ontario’s government after Wednesday – raise taxes, cut spending
or some combination thereof. While
some of the recommendations Drummond makes may complement these courses
of action, there will be no miracles.
Of course, if the Premier is waiting for the Drummond
report to show him the way he is bound to be disappointed. Many of the recommendations and
suggestions have already been leaked and they make eminent sense.
The real question is how to go about implementing them. It will be
interesting to see what suggestions if any Don Drummond has here.
For example, universities can possibly save
money by having professors teach more and Drummond has said as much in the
media. Yet most Ontario
universities have collective agreements with their faculty that specify
teaching loads. Will the Ontario
government pass legislation suspending those agreements? Will the Ontario simply create new
“teaching only” universities but which entail spending more money now to save
money later? Or will the Ontario
government simply cut grants to universities with guidelines as to how the cuts
are to be distributed and to increase teaching loads? Yet, the grant stick has gotten weaker over the years. Ontario universities now only get about
forty percent of their revenues from government grants. Will they be allowed to raise tuition
more?
How about health care? Can we transform its delivery by implementing
electronic health records? Sadly,
it has already been tried once via the E-Health approach and look where that
got the government? How about more
private-public partnerships to create efficient and innovative new service
delivery? Have we not tried that
with ORNGE in the case of transport medicine – and where are we now? How about efficiencies via
regionalization in health care by dispersing more responsibilities to the Local
Health Integration Networks?
Interestingly enough, Alberta, one of the pioneers in regionalized
health care delivery has gone back to a centralized model. One suspects it is easier to cut global
budgets when they are centralized.
And what about Ontario's North? The recent Census numbers show a stagnant population in a slower growing province. In some sense, southern Ontario is becoming more like the North given the job losses, unemployment and slower income growth though that will not likely create any additional sympathy for the North. When the empire is in turmoil, the legions are called back first from the frontier. Any reductions in government services will have a major impact in our geographically dispersed and thinly populated region. And what about the Northern Growth Plan and the need for government infrastructure investments in the Ring of Fire? The government has been remarkably quiet on the Plan to Plan all Plans and one wonders if this means a shift in priorities when it comes to northern economic development policy - assuming that it ever actually was a priority. Will the Drummond Report deal at all with how to invest in the North's economy in a cost-effective manner? Will the Drummond Report urge an elimination of government economic development programs such as the Heritage Fund? Wednesday should be interesting.
