Tight Numbers

Budgets, aren't they awful contrivances? Attempts to ensure that finances remain in balance. Without which balance danger looms of bankruptcy; not a pleasant prospect, neither for an individual nor a business. Much less for a governing state, be it a city, a province, a nation. And here's Ontario, once the work-engine of Canadian Confederation, in dire financial straits. Having to pull in our gut, as it were. From lavish, unheedful, wasteful spending (hear that, Queen's Park?) to abstemiously careful management.

Let's face it, not fun. Needful - yes, practical - definitely, amusing - not in the least. A good steward of the public purse, one with foresight, not merely hindsight of regret, would, presumably, not have got us in this tight place to begin with. But this has been a spending government. And an extremely wasteful one, with one scandal of ill-gone taxpayer resources after another. Even with the squeeze we find ourselves in now, some social engineering of questionable value is being put in place. Does it really make sense to put kindergarten children in school for a full day?

We're a province that finds itself with a whopping $220-billion debt, representing 37.2% of GDP or, in more approachable terms that really hurt, $17,000 in debt for each and every warm body in the province. And with interest rates certain to rise sooner than later, it will represent an additionally soaring cost to the government (us!) of $500-million yearly, in annual servicing fees. Would you run your household like this? Could you?

Well the solution is at hand, and it's one that's seen the light of day in a previous incarnation when we had a New Democratic Party-led provincial government. Not so great a distance, after all, between the Liberals and the NDP in many instances then, is there? Nor, for that matter, when it comes to fiscal restraint and remedial re-structuring, the Conservatives, either. They're all the same, incautious with taxpayer-funded services. We need those services, but we need them to be efficiently operated, with useful oversights.

Our hospitals, which we hope are run sufficiently well to service our growing needs (growing population mostly through immigration and a growing cadre of the elderly) have been forewarned to find further 'efficiencies', internally. So, much-needed beds will be closed down, and perhaps operating rooms as well, and their budgets will be screaming for relief. Hospital operating costs rise at about 4% annually, and they've been granted a miserly 1.5% increase. We can only hope.

According to our provincial finance minister, with this well-honed budget, cutting where required to produce the least ill effects, (don't we hope) our deficit of $21.3-billion will be reduced to manageable levels within eight years' time. Of course, this lot will likely no longer be in office; who are they to offer us guarantees of balancing the books they've tipped off balance? Not entirely their fault that the province lost 158,000 jobs in the last year, true.

Which has helped push us over into the have-not status we've never enjoyed previously, entitling us to close to a billion dollars for this fiscal year, hurrah! Our GDP is expected to begin its climb out of abject misery toward 2.7%, and the economy certainly is beginning to turn around, grudgingly, grindingly, like a rusted-out ocean liner stuck in shallows.

Now public-sector workers - isn't that predictable, hello Bob Rae! - can expect to tighten their belts as far as wage increases are concerned for the next little while. Many of whom have been doing all right, however, while those in the private sector have been struggling. Teachers, as a class, tend to be extremely well remunerated, as are health professionals, and deservedly. Spreading the pain around, a little.

We're still on solid, sound ground though, and seen as great for investment from international sources looking to place their money where it'll be sound, safe, and grow. That cut in corporate income taxes that most taxpayers don't like, and the harmonized sales tax which they detest will, eventually, bring us out of the shoals, back into prosperity.

Settle in, Ontario. We're on our way ...