Only a few of Drummond’s suggested cutbacks — mostly related to education — are being disregarded outright, Finance Minister Dwight Duncan said Wednesday.
“We have rejected 16 of Drummond’s recommendations. You will find in the budget that we’re moving on a little more than half of them. And on the balance, they require more study,” he said in an interview.
That means almost 96 per cent of Drummond’s landmark Feb. 15 report on reforming public services will be enacted or remains under active consideration.
Duncan stressed the government would not be proceeding with the former TD bank economist’s recommendation to eliminate 70 per cent of the 13,800 non-teaching positions — 9,660 jobs — created in Ontario since 2002-03.
He has previously said the Liberals would also be preserving all-day kindergarten and won’t increase elementary class sizes despite Drummond’s conclusion such measures are too costly.
“Most of them are in education,” the treasurer said of what is being spared the axe.
With a $16 billion deficit this year, Duncan has little choice but to move forward with a cost-saving revamp of government, one that he predicts will spark protests at Queen’s Park.
“I think you’ll see the front lawn full, I do,” he said, seated in his seventh-floor office overlooking the Legislature.
“Among those who don’t like the budget, their response will be very vociferous. I don’t think it will represent public opinion,” said Duncan, adding Ontarians “get it” that restraint is needed.
“There are difficult decisions and it’s going to be uncomfortable for everybody.”
There are so many cuts in spending and services in next week’s budget that the treasurer ordered a separate “transparency” addendum book to outline them all.
“This year you’re going to get a book that will show program-by-program where we’ve made reductions,” he said.
Duncan said he got the idea from aides to U.S. President Barack Obama during meetings with the White House’s Office of Management and Budget earlier this year.
“They showed me this book. This will show you line-by-line which programs have been affected and why. That’s just better accountability and transparency,” the minister said, referring to Washington’s annual “cuts, consolidations, and savings” book highlighting proposed reductions and justifications for them.
“When you see some of them, you’re going to go: ‘Yeah, that makes sense.’ What Obama’s guys advised me was that transparency is your friend — especially when you’re making difficult choices,” he said.
Drummond was not available Wednesday, but last month he warned the Liberals to act upon all of his 362 recommendations or face a crippling $30.2 billion deficit by 2017-18.
“This is not a smorgasbord from which the government can choose only the tastiest morsels and ignore the less palatable,” he said five weeks ago.
The economist called for higher hydro bills — by killing the Ontario “clean air benefit,” a 10 per cent rebate for home-electricity consumers that costs the treasury $1 billion a year — a streamlined health-care system with possibly fewer hospitals, increased user fees, and college and university tuition fee hikes.
He emphasized overall budget increases must be capped at 0.8 per cent per year through 2017-18 with health spending growth, increasing an average of 6.3 per cent annually the past five years, held to 2.5 per cent.
His two-volume, 668-page report five weeks ago urged sweeping reforms — some of which the government has already embraced, such as ending Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation’s annual $345 million slots deal with 17 horse-racing tracks.
Last week, OLG announced 560 job cuts at racetracks in Fort Erie, Sarnia and Windsor. As many as a dozen tracks are expected to be forced out of business due to the change.
The horse-racing payout was a motivation to Duncan to improve budget transparency. The Liberals deride it as a subsidy while the Progressive Conservatives, who created it in 1998, maintain is a revenue-sharing agreement.
“When people hear about the $345 million in horse racing, it was hidden. It was an offset against revenue. It was a reduction in the transfer from OLG,” the minister said, pointing to other items on the books.
“The sick day gratuity for teachers … people don’t realize that’s a huge liability,” he said, referring to the 200 days teachers can bank over their career and cash in when they retire for an average windfall of $46,000.
Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Robert Benzie
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