Where Are The Efficencies Promised by McGinty

And the unions? I agree with the The Star the only way to get efficiencies is to bite the bullet and when you consider that about 60% of every tax $$$ spent goes to wages it is obvious what has to be done.

Unhealthy calculations
May 26, 2007

If only the world were as simple as Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory makes it out to be.

All Queen's Park has to do, he insists, is eliminate waste and inefficiency and it can spend more money on health while at the same time eliminating the $2.6 billion health tax Premier Dalton McGuinty's government brought in three years ago.

Government waste and inefficiency seem to be the favourite boogeymen of parties that lean to the right when they are in opposition.

But when they form governments, the massive savings from eliminating waste never seem to materialize unless, of course, programs such as social assistance and environmental protection are suddenly reclassified as waste, as they were when Mike Harris was premier.

Still, Tory says he will use the savings from efficiencies and the growing surpluses projected by the McGuinty government to help him both boost funding on health and get rid of the health tax.

The only problem is that the medium-term surpluses that McGuinty is projecting, which amount to $1.3 billion in the 2008-09 fiscal year and $1.6 billion in 2009-10, are themselves predicated on maintaining the $2.6 billion tax.

Take the health tax out of the equation and those surpluses suddenly become deficits.

So Tory is clearly double counting when he claims he can do it all.

But assume for the moment that his pledge to eliminate the health tax and boost spending on health care by $8.5 billion over the next four years is written in stone.

That can only mean that other government programs will suffer.

Would Tory underfund education?

Would he dump more responsibility on hard-pressed cities such as Toronto, which is already paying the price for the last attempt by Queen's Park to shift spending pressures onto the cities?

Would he cut environmental spending, which has not yet recovered from the last round of Conservative "waste and inefficiency" cuts?

In his speech in Hamilton outlining this health-care plan, Tory said he won't tolerate mediocrity.

If that's the case, he should find some new policy advisers who understand you cannot both spend surpluses and wipe out the tax revenues on which those surpluses depend.