True, the former federal bureaucrat is crystal clear about the spending cutbacks he wants to see. He argues that if the province is to eliminate its deficit by 2018, it will have to introduce a level of spending restraint that, as he told reporters Wednesday, would be “unprecedented in the post-war period in Canada.”
To achieve that, Drummond and the three others on his panel want the government to cut back everything — from health care to education to welfare to justice.
Their report says that over eight years this would amount to a 16.2 per cent cut in real per capita spending on the government-provided services Ontarians receive.
Nothing would be spared. Under the Drummond formula, even health spending, which the panel treats more leniently, would not be allowed to keep up with inflation and population growth.
So how exactly are these cutbacks arrived at?
Well, we know what Drummond doesn’t want. He argues against the usual nostrums of the right — such as freezing public sector wages or privatizing profitable government businesses.
Public sector jobs are to be eliminated, particularly in the regulatory area. But with a few notable exceptions (he wants about 10,000 non-teachers working in the school system fired) the report doesn’t exactly say where.
Instead it retreats into a litany of familiar nostrums.
In health care, for instance, it says that expensive physicians should be replaced, where possible, by cheaper nurses, nursing assistants and pharmacists.
Various governments have said that for years.
It says more health resources should be focused on preventing illness — a recommendation that has been made regularly, and with little effect, since 1975.
It talks up home care as a cheaper alternative to nursing homes and suggests, without ever being specific, that more medicare services should be delivered privately.
It calls on provincial governments to form a joint front against pharmaceutical manufacturers in order to reduce the price of drugs — another perennial recommendation.
And it says that Ontario is short-changed by federal transfer programs such as employment insurance, a complaint that Queen’s Park has been making fruitlessly since the 1990s.
Many of these suggestions have a faintly Quixotic flavour. Yet rarely in the 543-page report or its 125-page executive summary does the advisory panel specify precisely how much money they would save even if implemented.
Would Drummond’s proposed reforms for compensating physicians — a mixture of per-patient fees and piece-work payments — save a little? A lot? He doesn’t say.
What we do know is that he wants cutbacks. He calls for a moratorium on new nursing homes and cuts to public service pension benefits.
While told to stay away from taxes, the panel did wander briefly into that minefield. Drummond says electricity bills should go up as well as the education portion of property taxes.
As he explained to reporters, he expects the cuts he’s proposing will force the province to become more efficient without reducing the quality of public services. But will they? From this report, there is no way to tell.
Finance Minister Dwight Duncan has already nixed the panel’s recommendation to do away with full-day kindergarten. On Tuesday, he was coy about the others.
However, he appears to have bought Drummond’s premise that Ontario is headed for financial Armageddon.
We may not get the reformed public services that were advertised. But if this government has its way, it seems we will get far, far fewer.
Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Thomas Walkom
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