As a diversion from the endlessly negative pandemic news these days, we recently heard some other negative news about an iconic and archaic Ontario institution: The Beer Store. It appears that The Beer Store lost a whopping $50 million in 2020, which followed similarly large losses of $46.5 million in 2019 and $18.5 million in 2018.

Now that we have passed the one-year mark in our collective pandemic nightmare, more and more information is emerging regarding how very poorly the various government bureaucracies throughout Canada have handled the emergency. Politicians have understandably attracted most of the criticism, and they certainly deserve their share of the blame, but Canada would surely have had a much less drastic pandemic experience if more government bureaucrats had been doing their job.

Ever since Canadians started to finally receive Covid-19 vaccines – initially in dribs and drabs – back in December 2020, there has been an ongoing narrative placing the blame on provincial governments for the slow pace of Canada’s vaccination effort as they were supposedly keeping vaccines in freezers instead of putting them into people’s arms. This accusation has been mostly levelled at the Ontario government, which continues to be accused of keeping excessive quantities of vaccines on ice, supposedly due to the inefficiency of its distribution network.

It is no secret that government debt has increased dramatically over the past year because of the pandemic. And although most Canadians are understandably supportive of increasing our national debt at the present time because of the once-in-a-lifetime (we hope) crisis of COVID-19, we were heading for trouble before the virus hit. Typically when we see debt numbers for Canada in international comparisons, and things like debt/GDP ratios, it only refers to the federal government debt. But to get a true picture of our debt situation, the cumulative debt of all governments needs to be factored in. A recent Fraser Institute study looked at the total government debt situation in Canada, and the news is not good.

Last week, the Ontario government floated the idea of making online learning a permanent fixture in provincial public schools. Education Minister Stephen Lecce commented that the government was currently seeking input on the proposal, and that a decision would be made in the coming weeks.

It’s not surprising that the opposition parties really had to work hard to be critical of the Ford government’s annual budget presented this week. Even the usually big-spending NDP and Liberals would have had trouble outspending the Conservative government in this budget, prompting many to dub this a Liberal budget.

As if things weren’t already bad enough over the past year, the Ontario Sunshine List just came out to remind us how much better off those folks we pay to be “public servants” were in 2020 as compared to the rest of us.

This week the Manitoba government announced sweeping changes to their Kindergarten to Grade 12 public education system, including the elimination of elected school boards and the role of school trustees.

It’s that time of the year when most governments look to present a budget outlining their financial position and spending plans for the coming fiscal year. The pandemic and its dramatic impacts on government spending and revenues will make putting together a budget this year more challenging than ever before.

Following several months of delay and uncertainty as the Trudeau government failed to procure supply of the various COVID-19 vaccines in a timely manner, meaningful quantities of vaccine are finally beginning to flow to the provinces, who bear the responsibility for their administration.

Back in early 2018 when Doug Ford was in pre-election campaign mode, he vowed to end the per-vote subsidy of political parties if he was elected Premier. At that time, Ford even referred to the subsidy as “political welfare”. Yet just last week, he not only said he would reintroduce the subsidy as part of Bill 254, but would actually increase it. He was right the first time.

Maybe it’s that the number of the Highway is unlucky, but recent months have seen opposition grow to a proposed new 400 series highway, called the GTA West Transportation Corridor or Highway 413.

At a time like the current pandemic, you would think all governments were exclusively focused on how they could be most helpful and supportive to the voters that elect them and taxpayers that compensate them generously when many of those taxpayers are themselves in dire financial straits.

Most Ontarians are unaware of the major upheaval in Ontario’s school bus industry that has taken place over the past decade. This disruption, precipitated by bad Ontario Liberal government procurement policy, decimated many small family businesses, reduced service on school bus routes and created more unnecessary bureaucracy. The original intent of the policy change was supposedly to save money – something that the McGuinty/Wynne Liberals were rarely concerned about – yet ended up costing taxpayers more while wreaking havoc on the industry.

Discussion in recent months on the issue of government-imposed paid sick leave has been revived because of the pandemic and the dangers around sick people going to work because they cannot afford to take unpaid time off.

This was not a banner week in the Ontario Legislature for anyone. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath continued with her ongoing opposition to opening up the economy, even a little, to give small businesses and their employees, among others, a chance at survival. The left in general, including public sector unions, have consistently favoured ongoing shutdowns despite the damage they are doing. That is of course easy to do when their livelihoods are not affected by the lockdowns, and in fact many in government are working less for the same or better money.

Last week the Ontario government announced that March Break would be postponed until the week of April 12.  This makes sense for all kinds of reasons, including those that are health-related and in the interest of students receiving some minimal amount of education during this school year. The timing appears to be right for students […]

When Joe Biden was elected US President last November, much of Canada breathed a huge sigh of relief.
There were many media stories about how this development was great for Canada and that the US-Canada relationship could now be much more positive than it was during the Trump years. And although Biden, who has been in US politics for almost 50 years, will certainly be a more typical politician than the mercurial and unpredictable Trump, it is by no means clear that his presidency will work to the benefit of Canada.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its drastic economic impacts have revived debate around a number of policy issues, one of them being the Universal Basic Income (UBI).

Despite much evidence to the contrary, some people continue to believe that governments and government entities simply cannot go bankrupt.
In fact, there is a whole school of thought called Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) that promotes the view that governments can spend without constraint, and encounter virtually no downside. MMT has become increasingly popular during the pandemic, as government spending everywhere has skyrocketed and many public officials and others would like to believe that through some magical accounting tricks and governments creating infinite supplies of money, this will not create massive problems for future generations faced with gigantic government debts.

My old alma mater, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), has released its annual report on red tape, its negative impact on business, and how the various provincial governments are faring in getting a grip on this important component of economic competitiveness. Considering that 2020 was dominated by the pandemic, it is commendable that any province actually improved their red tape ranking in the CFIB analysis for that year. Ontario was one such province, with an A- grade overall, behind Manitoba, Alberta, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan which all received an A rank.

The ever-unhappy Ontario teachers’ unions have been consistently very vocal throughout the pandemic, complaining that school conditions were unsafe no matter how many mitigation measures were being taken by the government and school boards. It seemed that the unions would only be satisfied if all schools remained completely closed, with of course full pay for teachers who were working at reduced capacity and sometimes not at all. This week we obtained some more insight into one of the ways a teachers’ union was working toward this objective.

The city of Kingston, Ontario has become the most recent jurisdiction to fall prey to the siren song of the environmental activists as its municipal council just passed a motion to phase out natural gas-fired power plants “as soon as possible”. Other cities in Ontario that have passed similar motions include Kitchener, Hamilton, St. Catharines and Windsor. Kingston was apparently the first Ontario municipality to declare a climate emergency – whatever that means – in 2019, and has vowed that the city will become carbon neutral by 2040.

The online learning experiment in the Ontario public school system that has been necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic is having some unintended consequences for teachers and parents, and providing lessons that were not anticipated.

The best that can be said about this week’s “stay at home” order and the invocation of the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act by the Ontario government is that it could have been worse.

Labour Force data for December 2020 was released last Friday, and the news was not good for most Canadians.
For the first time since April, overall national employment dropped by 63,000 and the unemployment rate increased from 8.5 to 8.6 per cent. This was more than double the decline that was anticipated by analysts. The labour force participation rate (the number of people looking for work) declined as well, tempering somewhat the increase in the unemployment rate. The sectors hardest hit included accommodation, food services, culture and recreation – hardly a surprise as these sectors were some of the key targets of restrictive public health policies. The December data also showed that over 28 per cent of Canadians were working from home in the month, as compared to the previous peak of 41 per cent in April.

One of the aspects of the pandemic that has affected pretty much everyone to some extent is that we are all staying home more. In virtually all situations, this will mean that we are consuming more electricity than we otherwise would. And once again, it will come as no surprise to Ontario residents that they are being put at a disadvantage relative to their fellow citizens in other provinces as they continue to pay the highest hydro power rates in the country.

Undaunted by the inaccuracy of my forecasts for 2020 – most of which were thrown off by the immense dominance of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on pretty much all elements of our lives – I will nevertheless proceed with making a few predictions for the coming year. So here goes…..

Before the saga of Rod Phillips and his ill-timed tropical vacation took over the headlines, the Ford government was being criticized for temporarily pausing COVID-19 vaccinations for a couple of days over the Christmas holidays.

The end of a year is usually accompanied by celebrations and thoughts of resolutions for the year soon to come. But for 2020, the only celebration will be relief that this awful year is finally over, and hope that next year can at best return us to some semblance of normal.

In reacting to the shocking surprise announcement by the federal government recently that the carbon tax was going to increase by over 500 per cent during the next few years, Premier Doug Ford went on one of his classic rants. He was criticized by some in the media for saying such things as “this carbon tax is going to be the worst thing you could ever see” and “you don’t have to protect the environment on the backs of the hard-working people of this province and this country at a time that people are just holding on by their fingernails”.

There was very little attention paid to an interesting development that took place this week, a development which should augur well for future economic growth in Ontario.
The governments of Ontario and the US state of Maryland have signed a free trade agreement. Although country-to-country trade agreements are nothing new, this is the first time a Canadian province has reached such an accord with a US state.

Last week Ontario Premier Ford announced that he would no longer hold the daily briefings on Ontario’s COVID-19 situation that he had been conducting for the roughly nine months of the pandemic to date. Although Ford did not give any specific reason for the change, it did coincide with the adjournment of the Ontario legislature until Feb. 16, 2021. Ford also noted that he would now do briefings when there was new information to report, not just as a daily routine that took place whether or not anything had changed or if there was something different to discuss.

It has been said that perception is reality.
In addition to the actual facts of the COVID-19 pandemic, how it is progressing and how different governments are dealing with it, the perceptions of Canadians in different parts of the country have frequently had little to do with reality but are nevertheless having their impact.

Earlier this year, the Strategic Mandate Agreements between the Ontario government and public colleges and universities that had been operational since 2017 expired, and were recently replaced with agreements that had a new and welcome twist.
Going forward, funding for these institutions will be based to a greater extent than previously on their performance, measured by the success of their graduates to find employment in their field of study. In previous agreements, virtually all of the funding was tied to enrolment numbers. Under the new regime, it is anticipated that by 2025, 60 per cent of operating funding will be contingent upon meeting performance criteria.

These are indeed crazy times, but there is some craziness taking place these days that has nothing to do with the COVID-19 pandemic.
An example of this erupted recently in Alberta, over some fairly mild wording in a government document and the question of whether or not government employees actually pay taxes.

In examining how the various Canadian governments have handled the COVID-19 pandemic to date, it seems that provincial governments, and occasionally municipalities, have been getting the lion’s share of the blame.
Considering that the provinces have jurisdiction over health care, and municipalities have public health responsibilities, this is perhaps not surprising. That still should not let the federal government off the hook, however, as many mistakes they made early in the pandemic, and continue to make today, ensure that the provinces have faced a heavier burden than they would have otherwise.

Ontario Auditor General (AG) Bonnie Lysyk has done a terrific job for the province throughout her seven-year tenure to date (of a ten year total term) in the job. She has ably identified many areas of wasteful government spending over the years, and was especially scathing in her numerous reports on the mess made by the previous Liberal government of the hydro policy file, the many billions of tax dollars squandered for little progress on environmental issues, and the excessive burden of high hydro rates inflicted on Ontarians to this day because of that failed policy.

In the mishmash of COVID-19 measures taken by governments across Canada to attempt to stem the expansion of the virus, a disturbing trend is emerging.
More and more often, government policies that shut down the economy to varying degrees are having a disproportionately negative impact on small businesses. The new lockdown mandate for Toronto and Peel regions in Ontario, for example, permit big box stores to stay open while small businesses must close. Small firms are still permitted to do delivery and offer curbside pick-up, which is cold comfort at a time of year when many businesses do half or more of their entire annual business because of the Christmas shopping season.

The Ontario government has announced the creation of a new agency to centralize and streamline government procurement in the province. This new entity – Supply Ontario – is intended to oversee all procurement for the entire public sector, including the extended public sector such as schools, universities and hospitals.

Some recent changes the Ford government has proposed to the Conservation Authorities Act (CAA) and the Planning Act is causing consternation among some of those bodies and environmental groups around the province.
There are currently 36 conservation authorities across Ontario, which are responsible for protecting, restoring and effectively managing impacts on the province’s water resources such as lakes, rivers, streams and groundwater.

Like her or loathe her, Kathleen Wynne had a significant impact on Ontario that will last for some time to come. Her recent announcement that she would step away from politics after the end of her current term as MPP in mid-2022 brought the Wynne era to an end after a long run of what will be almost 20 years in provincial politics.

Last week’s Ontario budget contained several big and long overdue wins for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs). The most significant involves hydro rates, which have been a serious burden on SMEs since the early days of the McGuinty government’s Green Energy Act (GEA) in 2009. As hydro costs steadily increased in the years following the GEA’s introduction as subsidies were provided to inefficient and unreliable wind and solar energy generation, governments put in place some measures to help households and large businesses reduce their bills, while SMEs faced the worst impacts of the rate hikes. Many smaller firms went out of business, downsized or left Ontario as the excessive hydro rates made them uncompetitive with other jurisdictions in Canada and the US.

A number of Ontario municipalities have opted to make pronouncements regarding a ban on natural gas of late.
The first city involved was Kitchener, Ontario, whose city council last week called on the provincial government to phase out natural gas power generation by 2030. Kitchener was following the example of the town of Halton Hills, which previously made this demand.

Most Canadian governments have emphasized the importance of “buying local” and “buying Canadian” in recent months during the pandemic. This has been partly motivated by the fact that Canada endured shortages of many pandemic-related items such as personal protective equipment (PPE), which opened people’s eyes to the value of producing essential equipment domestically and not having to depend on imports that might not always be available at reasonable cost.

While most parts of society are attempting to be constructive during our current difficult times dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, labour unions continue to make life more difficult than necessary at a time when things are already plenty difficult enough.

The BC NDP won a strong majority government last week in Canada’s second provincial election taking place during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Premier John Horgan took a chance in calling a snap election only three years after the last election – in violation of the fixed election date provision in BC’s Constitution Act – with the hope of turning his minority government into a majority. That risk clearly paid off as his previous minority seat count of 41 was converted into a solid 55-seat majority.

Ontarians recently found out that they will be facing yet another increase in their already-inflated hydro rates, starting in November 2020.
This change will put an end to the fixed rate pricing that has been in place since June 1, when the provincial government suspended time-of-use pricing because of the pandemic. The increase is expected to amount to about two per cent on average – not a massive hike but still another cost increase when so many people are financially stressed because of pandemic-related economic factors. High hydro rates were causing problems for low- and middle-income Ontarians before the pandemic hit, and this recent price increase will worsen energy poverty in the province.

In the private sector, where most people work, if an employer said their goal was to hire the best person for the job they would probably be mocked for belabouring the obvious. 

Not so in the public sector, however, where union rules mean that employees with seniority are routinely given preference, whether or not they are the person best qualified for the job at hand.  This is especially true in Ontario’s public school system, where self-serving union rules often prevail over common sense and good employment policies.  A recent announcement by Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce aims to change this long-standing practice as it pertains to supply teachers, and it can’t come soon enough. 

The last week has seen some interesting developments in Canada’s labour market, although much uncertainty remains because of the unpredictability of the ongoing pandemic.
Statistics Canada Labour Market Survey Data for September showed that overall employment increased by 378,000 jobs nationally, bringing the unemployment rate down to nine per cent from its peak of 13.7 per cent in May 2020. The vast majority of new employment was full-time, as many jobs which had moved to part-time during the pandemic had once again assumed full-time status. There was also a slight decline in the number of people working from home in the month.

As cases of Covid-19 continue to soar in Toronto, Ottawa, and Peel Region, the Ford government recently made the difficult decision to retighten restrictions for certain establishments.

The return to modified-Stage 2 directives means that indoor dining, nightclubs, gyms, movie theatres and the like will be unavailable to residents in the highly-affected areas for a minimum of 28 days, with the possibility of extension.

The Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) recently launched a campaign to encourage Albertans to boycott businesses that support the United Conservative Party (UCP), which won the 2019 Alberta provincial election in a landslide.
The AFL has established a website which lists businesses who made political donations to the UCP, and is asking Albertans to avoid patronizing these businesses. The boycott campaign is predicated on the fact that the UCP government is looking for ways to streamline public spending at a time when the province is in serious financial difficulty. Considering that about 80 per cent of Albertans work in the private sector and would therefore benefit from more sensible budgetary policies, the unions are actually advocating against the interests of most workers in the province.

A big announcement took place with much fanfare this week, as the federal and Ontario governments committed a total of $590 million, divided equally between them, to the development of electric cars and batteries at the Ford plant in Oakville.

Ontario teachers marched on the Ontario Legislature during a one-day province-wide strike last February.

Last week the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) rejected an appeal from the province’s teachers’ unions that claimed health and safety measures taken by the Ontario government were insufficient and that teachers were being put at risk.
All four major teachers’ unions were involved in putting the case to the OLRB – elementary school (EFTO), secondary school (OSSTF), Catholic school (OETCA) and francophone school (AEFO).
The union complaints dealt with a number of issues, including class sizes, student and teacher cohort sizes, ventilation, masking and busing. In addition to asking for smaller class sizes, more physical distancing and some other more stringent measures, the unions also asked that measures taken in the schools be reviewed monthly by the Ministry of Labour.
In its rejection of the unions’ appeal, the OLRB noted that it was being done on jurisdictional grounds, and said that the unions needed to make their cases individually, not jointly. The Board noted that any complaints should pertain to situations faced by individual teachers and any specific health and safety concerns they may have.
It remains to be seen whether any individual teachers or their unions will file complaints of this nature in the weeks and months ahead, and whether or not they will be successful with the OLRB.
For its part, the Ontario government continues to contend that the health and safety measures it has put in place in schools are sufficient. Experience with public school reopenings to date would appear to back up the government’s position as there have been few significant outbreaks of COVID-19 in schools and those that did occur have been dealt with quickly and effectively.
Looking across all of the provinces, a number of teachers’ unions in various provinces have complained about safety issues regarding the reopening of schools, but the Ontario teachers’ unions have as usual been the most vocal and militant. When comparing the school reopening plans of the provinces, Ontario’s precautions are among the most stringent in the country, so the unions’ accusations that the Ontario government is being irresponsible don’t hold water. In fact, some parents in other jurisdictions have commented that they view Ontario’s plan as one to be emulated, not constantly criticized.
No one should be surprised to hear the teachers’ unions respond to the OLRB’s action by saying they will continue their actions against the government, and a press conference is apparently planned for this week to outline the unions’ next steps.
History has shown that the Ontario teachers’ unions like to fight with governments of all political stripes, even those who bend over backwards to appease them as the McGuinty/Wynne Liberals did at immense cost to taxpayers accompanied by deteriorating education quality despite all the additional money spent.
Even though the unions fought with the Liberals, they will always save their most potent vitriol for a Conservative government. In light of the immense amount of money the unions have to play with, receiving forced dues from every teacher in the province funded by tax dollars, one can only imagine what a positive impact they could have for teachers, students and public education in general if they chose to be constructive instead of constantly confrontational.
It doesn’t look like that will be happening anytime soon.

Amid all of the concerns about the increasing numbers of people contracting COVID-19 in recent weeks, there was some good news regarding what is taking place in the public school system.
After about a month of most schools having re-opened across the country, there appears to be very little worry among health officials that schools will become a hotbed for infections. Some cases of the virus have been experienced but, in the vast majority of cases, it has been only one or two cases in some schools which were rapidly and effectively dealt with, and the schools involved did not need to be closed.

The Ontario Divisional Court this week made a decision that will likely end up costing Ontario taxpayers more money for health care, at a time when the provincial health care budget is already under considerable stress.
The decision concerned a Ford government policy change announced last May which intended to cancel out-of-country traveller’s health insurance. The amount of money involved in this case is not massive – about $10-12 million in the multi-billion health care budget – but the principle is important. Should courts be able to make decisions that affect government finances – often significantly – without having to at least consider the question of whether taxpayers have the ability to pay?

After pressuring all provinces into imposing various forms of carbon taxes on their citizens, as well as policies to deal with greenhouse gas emissions from heavy industry, this week the federal government accepted Ontario’s plan to impose carbon pricing on industry.

Last week the Ford government reconvened the Ontario legislature and announced its fall legislative agenda, a plan for “growth, renewal and long-term recovery”.
The top priority cited was health preparedness, but there was also a focus on job creation, skills training, attracting investment, strengthening communities and fortifying the front lines of the health care system – all commendable and necessary objectives. In the intervening week, however, the rather sudden increase in recorded cases of COVID-19 has effectively wiped most other priorities off the table for the time being.

This week saw a big win for the Conservatives in New Brunswick.
Progressive Conservative Premier Blaine Higgs had been overseeing a minority government for the past two years, and opted to call a snap election to seek a majority mandate from voters. The four political parties in the province had been in the midst of negotiations about a proposal from Higgs that his minority government be permitted to stay in power until October 2022, or until the end of the pandemic, to provide continuity during the COVID-19 crisis. The provincial Liberals pulled out of these discussions in mid-August, providing the impetus for Higgs to trigger the snap election.

Last week in British Columbia, a BC Supreme Court judge rejected a request to reverse some provincial health care regulations – notably a ban on private health insurance for medically necessary procedures. 

The case was put forward by Dr. Brian Day, a physician who has long been an advocate for choice in health care options.  Although there are many complex legal arguments involved, the BC judge effectively concluded that although the current public health care monopoly imposes significant wait times on Canadian patients and consequently considerable suffering and even unnecessary death, this cost is not sufficient to permit private health insurance as in the judge’s opinion private insurance would undermine the feasibility of the public system. 

This week the Premiers of Ontario and Quebec convened their first-ever “summit” to discuss important matters of mutual interest.
Topics on the agenda included economic recovery and job creation in a post-pandemic environment, health care preparedness for a possible second COVID-19 wave, collaboration on trade issues and the safe opening of the Canada-US border and the promotion of domestically made products, as well as other issues of concern to both provinces.

As the opening of school gets closer in Ontario and has begun in some other provinces, and teacher union scare tactics escalate to reach even higher levels of desperation, some interesting trends are emerging.
It seems that a significant number of parents are opting out of sending their kids back to public school and are finding alternatives in private schools, tutors, home school variations, distance learning and “learning pods” of a few students, or some combination of these options. Surveys show that in Ontario and some other provinces, as many as one-quarter to one-third of parents will not send their kids to public school this September.

Anyone who has worked in the private sector for any period of time is likely familiar with the reality that things are not always rosy and difficult circumstances for any business usually creates a need for pay freezes, pay cuts, working longer hours for the same pay or, in the worst case scenario, job loss.
In the public sector, it used to be the case decades ago that workers earned lower pay than the private sector, which was offset by greater job security and better pensions.

Now that the worst of the pandemic is hopefully behind us, data are starting to come out measuring the impact of COVID-19 on the Canadian economy. It seems that the news is even worse than originally thought.
Statistics Canada data for the second quarter of 2020 registered the steepest decline in quarterly Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ever recorded since data were collected on this basis in the early 1960s, with an annualized drop of 38.7 per cent. Not surprisingly, consumer spending, investment and international trade all showed sharp declines. By way of comparison, the US economy shrunk by 31.7 per cent, significantly less than in Canada.

Earlier this week the Financial Accountability Office (FAO) for Ontario confirmed that the province’s credit rating by the four major credit rating agencies would remain at its current level of AA- or A+, and has not to date been downgraded because of the sharply increased government spending during the pandemic.
The FAO cautioned, however, that to avoid a downgrade in the near future the province would have to pursue a post-pandemic fiscal path of reducing annual deficits and overall provincial debt.

Canadian companies move to America and pay one-third the hydro costs. At the end of Part I of this two-part series, we left manufacturer Acme Inc. forced to make some difficult decisions as Ontario Liberal government policies on hydro rates, labour legislation, employment standards and taxes were making it increasingly difficult to do business in […]

Many debates about government economic policy – both good and bad – tend to take place in a theoretical and ideological context without consideration for the effects of those policies once they are implemented.
What really brings the impact home is the real-life experience of an individual business. This is the story of a business in Ontario which struggled for years to keep its head above water in the face of adversity. Some of the difficulties arose from the natural ebb and flow of the business cycle, which is challenging but fully expected by any sensible business owner. What was surprising is that most of the problems this business faced were created by the bad policies of the McGuinty and Wynne Liberal governments.

Ontario’s Environment Minister Jeff Yurek says the data gathered under the province’s first-ever climate change impact assessment will help the province and local communities plan their infrastructure to mitigate climate change risks.

Last Friday a rather unusual press release was issued from the Ontario Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, announcing that the province was launching the province’s first-ever climate change impact assessment, supposedly to “strengthen the province’s resilience to the impacts of climate change”.

This week Finance Minister Rod Phillips broke the bad fiscal news in an update on Ontario’s finances and it was grim indeed.
Citing all of the increased spending due to the COVID-19 crisis, the Minister stated that this year’s deficit would hit $38.5 billion, roughly a quadrupling of last year’s deficit of $9.2 billion. Expenditure increases were, not surprisingly, significant in health care where current year spending jumped to $7.7 billion from earlier forecasts of $3.3 billion. Billions more were directed to support for municipalities, transit projects and education.

It’s not the students that have the back to school blues this year, but the unions and some teachers are working hard to whip up fear among parents and others that Ontario’s plan is going to expose students and their families to unacceptably unsafe conditions when they return to the classroom in September.

The Ford government has now been in power for just over two years – the half way point in a four-year mandate.
Virtually every government of any political stripe tries to get the difficult stuff over with in the first half of its term, then spend the final two years with voter-friendly measures geared to getting them re-elected. The Ford government came into power with big plans in a number of areas to fix the many problems left by their Liberal predecessors, and put in place new elements of their own agenda. So how well have they done in accomplishing these goals in their first two years in power?

As the messy and complicated WE Charity scandal continues to unfold, a number of provincial governments have weighed in to question the involvement of WE with their province’s education systems.

Last week the Ontario legislature adjourned after a session that was unprecedented in many ways.
It began on February 17. At that time, the priority items on the agenda were teachers’ strikes, various blockades of key rail transportation corridors and the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Ford government announced plans to proceed with some previously-introduced legislation on issues such as health teams, justice, transportation and the budget that was upcoming at that time. As we now know, the rapid worsening of the pandemic quickly took precedence over other issues and became by far the top priority for government action.

In recent weeks most provinces across Canada have been focused on how they are opening up their economies again after months of COVID-19 lockdown. Most of the attention has been paid to exactly which businesses are permitted to reopen and under what conditions, what sizes of groups are allowed to congregate, whether or not masks will be mandatory in certain circumstances and how those rules are to be enforced by governments.

Most Ontarians are well aware that they are paying far too much for hydro – significantly more than pretty much any other jurisdiction in North America.
Most Ontarians also know that the reason for our outrageously high hydro costs is the ill-conceived Green Energy Act (GEA) of the previous Liberal government, which involved signing long-term contracts with solar and wind energy providers, guaranteeing them rates far in excess of any sensible market rates for electricity, while doing little if anything for the environment that would justify the massive added costs.

“Time is up” was a recent ultimatum declared by Ontario’s Mayors to other levels of government. The reason for this sabre rattling was that municipal governments are demanding more money from provincial and federal governments or they threaten to dramatically increase taxes or reduce services.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced yesterday that beginning Friday, the majority of the province’s businesses will be permitted to reopen as the province transitions to Stage 3 of Ontario’s reopening plan.
Unfortunately Niagara and the Greater Golden Horseshoe were not included in the announcement and will remain at Stage 2 at this time. No doubt Niagara business owners will be frustrated with another delay in proceeding to the next stage. Lambton and the Windsor-Essex public health units are also remaining in Stage 2

Following the Alberta NDP’s implementation of a number of very union-friendly policies during their tenure in government from 2015 to 2019, Premier Jason Kenney just introduced legislation to reverse many of those changes and restore some balance to labour relations in the province.

In somewhat of a surprise announcement, Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce stated this week that the Ontario public education system would be abandoning the practice of “streaming”, which entails separating students as they enter Grade 9 into two “streams” – an applied course of study or an academic course of study.

Ontario’s recent success in “flattening the curve” of new COVID-19 cases and to date preventing a second wave of infections means that the province can hopefully move to Stage 3 of its plans to further re-open the economy.

One of the key government policies conventionally deployed following a crisis is to undertake large scale infrastructure projects to create employment by building or repairing the roads, bridges, sewers systems, transit and other public works that underpin any successful economy. In our modern era we can add high-speed internet to the fundamental infrastructure list as all parts of Canada do not yet have this capability that is routinely enjoyed in urban centres yet still not in many rural areas. The current COVID-19 pandemic is no exception as governments are now looking to these types of projects as one means of helping Canadian workers and the economy recover from our current depressed circumstances.

You have to wonder if Stephen Lecce looks back and wonders if he did the right thing in accepting the appointment to Ontario Education Minister just over a year ago. As a rookie Member of Provincial Parliament for the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party and a first-time Cabinet Minister, it wasn’t exactly a light job to take on, although it certainly is one of the most important portfolios and the second-highest spending area after health care. It has also been the undoing of many Ministers of all political stripes over the years, so the stakes were high.

The Ontario government recently announced its plans to bring students back to school in September after the pandemic-driven school closure that has taken place over the past few months.  Premier Ford emphasized that student safety was the number one consideration, and that ongoing close consultations with health experts would continue to ensure students were not at risk. 

Canada broke the 100,000 mark in terms of COVID-19 cases this week, even as new cases of the virus have continued to trend downward in virtually all parts of the country. There have been many comparisons made among the various Canadian provinces as to how the different jurisdictions have fared in handling the Covid-19 pandemic to date, and Ontario and Quebec are regularly cited as the two provinces that have had the worst time dealing with the virus. But has Ontario really done so badly, considering that it is by far the most populous province and as such would be expected to have a very high number of cases?

For some time now, labour unions have been a source of increasing problems in Ontario and in fact across Canada, and this has become even more evident during the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent protests over racial issues. Police unions are an excellent example. In all too many of the high profile cases of police brutality over the years, including the current cases in the US that have sparked protests and riots in that country and Canada, the offending police officers were shown to be long time bad cops that had been protected time and again by their union until finally tragedy struck.

“Our team crunched the numbers. Our command table reviewed the data and provided the recommendation. On their advice I’m excited to announce today (yesterday) that as of this Friday the following Regions will be able to enter Stage 2…Niagara.” With those words from Premier Doug Ford business owners and employees from across Niagara who’ve been out of work for months felt hope and optimism for the first time in a long while.

The 25th anniversary of the election of Mike Harris in Ontario and his Common Sense Revolution just took place on June 8 with little fanfare. At that time in 1995, Harris’s majority victory came as a surprise to many political observers who believed there would be a return to Liberal rule in the province after Ontario’s brief and unfortunate experiment with the first – and only to date – NDP government that had ever been elected with a majority in the province. But something about Harris and his common sense platform appealed to voters after the big-spending days of the David Peterson Liberal government in the late 1980s and the even bigger-spending days of the Bob Rae NDP government in the early to mid-1990s.

Last week’s appointment of Jane Philpott, former federal Liberal Member of Parliament and Health Minister in the Trudeau government, as a Special Advisor to the Ontario Health Minister was seen by many as a smart move by the Ford government on a number of fronts. As a medical doctor with extensive relevant experience, Philpott is well suited to perform in an advisory capacity during the current COVID-19 crisis. She also stepped in as a volunteer at Participation House, a care home for people with disabilities, earlier during the crisis as that facility was left seriously short-staffed when many of the unionized employees walked out and left the vulnerable residents at considerable risk. From a completely objective standpoint, Dr. Philpott would seem to be a perfect fit for this position.

Premier Doug Ford’s decision this week to extend the emergency orders until the end of June attracted a great deal of criticism from many quarters. This decision meant that gatherings of more than five people would continue to be prohibited and many businesses such as restaurants and bars had to remain closed except for limited operations like take-out service for restaurants. Most criticisms were based on the fact that since the vast majority of deaths from COVID-19 had taken place in facilities such as long term care homes among highly vulnerable populations, there was little if any reason to continue to restrict the activities of others not in these situations. Other critics noted that as the biggest Covid-19 problems were concentrated in the Toronto area, other parts of the provinces should be permitted to open more extensively as they did not face the same circumstances.

Most schools in Canada have been closed over the past couple of months, but there have been some developments in education policy of late that are worthy of attention. In Alberta, the provincial government has introduced Bill 15, the Choice in Education Act, which facilitates the establishment of charter schools. Charter schools are independently-run, non-profit institutions within the public system which typically have a focus on a particular group of students – for example, children with learning disabilities, a particular vocational emphasis or an all-girls school.

What can be said about the horrible crisis in long term care (LTC) facilities that has been revealed by the COVID-19 crisis? That our society has been negligent regarding the care of our elderly population? Absolutely. That there was not sufficient attention being paid to conditions in LTC facilities for many years? Definitely.

Last week saw a worrisome development at the St. John’s Telegram in Newfoundland. The Telegram is a venerable Canadian publication, having been around since the late 1800s. It seems that one of their desk editors, Brian Jones, in a column entitled “Pandemic is an Extended Holiday for Public Sector Workers”, had the nerve to question why government workers were mostly sitting at home doing nothing at full pay and benefits, while those in the private sector who pay for the public sector were seeing their jobs annihilated and being asked to live on a paltry $2,000 a month.

The Ontario government is quickly moving forward with innovative research to prevent, detect and treat COVID-19. These projects, part of the government’s $20 million Ontario COVID-19 Rapid Research Fund, focus on areas of research such as vaccine development, diagnostics, drug trials and development, and social sciences. Additionally, Ontario is leading the country with 22 clinical trials investigating COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.

Ontarians have been spending a lot more time at home since the COVID-19 lockdown began, and have had much less ability than usual to manage the timing of their electricity consumption to use hydro at off-peak times and avoid peak usage pricing whenever possible. In response to this situation, back in March the Ontario government temporarily suspended time-of-use pricing for hydro so that all electricity consumed would be billed at the lowest rate, and this was recently extended until the end of May 2020.

It’s no secret that Alberta and to a lesser extent Saskatchewan have been seriously disadvantaged for years by policies pursued by the Trudeau government in the oil and gas sector. Those two provinces rewarded the Liberals’ approach by not electing one Liberal Member of Parliament in the October 2019 federal election, but that doesn’t seem to have changed the government’s approach one bit. If anything, the Trudeau Liberals are doubling down on policies that hurt the energy-producing provinces, to the detriment of all of Canada.

As would be expected with such a serious crisis such as the COVID-19 virus, there has been much handwringing, second guessing and criticism about what governments have done to contend with the emergency. The Canadian health care system has understandably been a focus of much commentary, positive and negative, and many different suggestions are being made regarding what changes should happen to better prepare Canada for such a crisis in future.

As all Canadian governments continue to monitor the number of new COVID-19 cases by the day – and thankfully see a fairly consistent reduction in new infections – stark differences among some of the provinces and their experiences with the pandemic have emerged. Many of these differences are easily explained by factors such as urban/rural population numbers, the location of international airports where most of the initial cases came into Canada and the prevalence of long term care facilities which have seen the most frequent outbreaks of the virus.

A number of provincial Premiers have come out guns blazing – figuratively of course – in response to the federal Liberal government’s announcement last week that it was banning a number of types of firearms. Ontario Premier Ford weighed in by emphasizing the need to focus on putting an end to smuggling and increasing border measures, as it is well known that the vast majority of guns used to commit crimes illegally enter Canada from the US.

There is a meme circulating that shows a two-lane highway through a flat wheat field with the caption, “Saskatchewan, social distancing since 1905.”

The date refers to when the province, more associated with wheat than people, joined confederation. And anyone who has driven through Saskatchewan recently can tell you there hasn’t been a population boom.

Last Sunday, Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce announced that there would be a further extension of school closures, with the government now planning to keep kids home until at least May 31 as opposed to the previously cited date of May 4, due to ongoing uncertainty with the COVID-19 pandemic. The Minister also assured Ontarians that students would not lose their school year, noting that three-quarters of the school year had been completed while classes were still taking place. He also said that graduating students would be able to move forward with whatever post-secondary education plans they had prior to the pandemic lockdown.

After many weeks of draconian measures to stem the spread of COVID-19, it is wonderful to see that Canada is making progress on “flattening the curve” and people are now starting to discuss when and how we will be planning to open up our economies in the future.

Ontario, it seems, is blessed with an NDP official opposition that has perfect 20-20 hindsight.
When the Ford government recently announced it was devoting $20 million for research into the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, the NDP responded that if cuts had not been made earlier then there would be no need to allocate further money now. In fact, the exact quote from NDP Research and Innovation Critic Catherine Fife was “Researchers could have been working on the global challenge of a COVID-19 vaccine earlier if Doug Ford hadn’t cut their funding and wound down their work a year ago.” Really? Perhaps seeing as the NDP has such perfect hindsight, they should have been recommending vaccine research months ago. Of course that statement is just as ridiculous as the NDP’s groundless criticism.

It was only a few weeks ago that the Ontario government launched its OntarioTogether.com website, established to receive proposals from businesses and others for goods and services to help deal with the COVID-19 crisis. The response from Ontarians has been spectacular. Since the website went live on March 21, 14,000 submissions have been received, resulting in 7,500 leads for various types of emergency supplies and services to date.

As the COVID-19 crisis has progressed in recent weeks, a number of provincial governments have stepped up to take charge of areas that are supposedly the responsibility of the federal government, but where the federal government has turned out not to be been sufficiently diligent or responsive. Although it is encouraging that some political leaders are undertaking positive, constructive action to fight the Covid19 menace, it does beg the question as to why the federal government is not implementing policies it claims to support in key areas of its jurisdiction.

As the duration of the COVID-19 crisis gets longer and health officials learn more about the virus, the issue of testing has gained increased importance. We see the daily numbers outlining how many people have been found to be infected with the virus, how many are under investigation, how many have recovered and how many have died. Understandably, people pay particular attention to the fatality data and it is generally believed at this time that the COVID-19 virus is more deadly than many other flu strains we have experienced in the past.

While all governments understandably are scrambling to keep up with the latest Covid19 developments, best practices and developing policies on the fly, some stark differences in the way governments are handling things are emerging. Last Friday, the Ontario government chose to make public the findings of the models the Ford government is using to forecast the impact the virus will have on the province in terms of confirmed, pending, recovered cases and deaths. Prior to this release, the Premier warned that the news would be stark, and it was.

I went for a bike ride to pick up some essentials on Tuesday and decided to take a spin through the Queen’s Park grounds.

As I was riding past the east entrance I saw Premier Doug Ford climbing into his ride. I didn’t get a chance to talk to the premier – I kind of wish I did – but I did do something many of us in Ontario are doing right now, I gave him a “thumbs up.”

While many Canadians are looking for ways to be constructive in the COVID-19 crisis gripping the country, many of our political opposition parties are being anything but helpful.
It is true that in normal circumstances the key job of any opposition party is to oppose the government of the day. But these are not normal times, and an opposition that behaves constructively and makes positive contributions to our current situation would be a refreshing development. Unfortunately, not many thus far have lived up to this goal.

Ontario’s Deputy Premier and Minister of Health Christine Elliott says if all Ontarians do their part the Province will come out of the COVID-19 global pandemic and life can return to normal.
In an interview today with The Niagara Independent the Minister said she along with her cabinet colleagues and medical experts are working around the clock, seven days a week receiving and analyzing the latest information so that the province can try and get ahead of the outbreak and flatten the curve as soon as possible.

As the initial shock starts to wear off regarding the COVID-19 crisis and life settles into a “new normal” of social distancing, working from home or not working at all, business closures, quarantine and other drastic but necessary measures, more energy is being devoted to making a positive contribution to lessening the impact of the virus. Governments in Canada and abroad have launched efforts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, test the viability of existing medications to prevent or reduce the severity of the virus and find ways to stretch essential health care resources that are in short supply. Some creative Canadian doctors, for example, have found a way to “MacGyver” a ventilator so that it can be used for more than one patient at a time.

As so many Canadians are extremely worried about their economic health as well as their physical health in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a privileged class that does not face the same economic anxieties. I refer, of course, to the vast majority of government employees who not only enjoy on average better salaries, benefits, pensions, much greater job security, shorter work weeks and earlier retirements than the rest of us in normal times, but who so far are mostly unaffected financially by the drastic shifts in our lives caused by this new virus.

At this time of crisis with the Covid19 pandemic, the major priority for Canadians is to get as much factual information as possible so we can do our best to protect ourselves and our loved ones. The reality that there are still many unknowns about this new virus doesn’t help the situation, but we do have many facts and can learn from the experience of other countries that faced the outbreak earlier than Canada.

After a very low key, rather boring leadership contest, Steven Del Duca easily prevailed over his rivals to become the new leader of the Ontario Liberal Party this past weekend. Del Duca won on the first ballot with an impressive 58.5 per cent of the vote, well ahead of the second-place finisher, Michael Coteau, with 17 per cent. Del Duca had done a very effective job of signing up Liberal party members throughout the course of the leadership campaign and had been the clear frontrunner for many weeks leading up to the vote.

This past Monday, the Ford government announced that it would be launching environmental and other studies for an infrastructure project to build a Northern Road Link to the Ring of Fire mining development in Northern Ontario. The announcement was made at the annual Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada conference, in conjunction with leaders from the Marten Falls and Webequie First Nations, who expressed their strong support for the initiative. The key objective of the project is to establish a permanent, all-season access route to mines in the Ring of Fire, and also connect a number of First Nations communities to Ontario’s highway network. Other benefits include the establishment of high speed internet and reliable cellular service for First Nations and other communities in the area.

If we were not painfully aware of the many fiascos that have taken place in the implementation of Ottawa’s new light rail transit (LRT) system, it would be difficult to believe that even government could screw things up so very badly. The new transit system in the Nation’s Capital was launched in September 2019, a year later than scheduled. Since then, it has been plagued by delays, mechanical problems, lack of co-ordination between the LRT and connecting buses and general dysfunction. And of course more public money is being thrown at the project over and above the initial budget to fix the many emerging problems.

While the country is grappling with the very serious issues of a potential corona virus pandemic and national gridlock as a result of various rail blockades and other protests causing major difficulties for the economy, there have also been some less critical but nevertheless odd and problematic political miscalculations in recent days. 

In an era when parents can’t get their kids to put down their electronic devices and get off the internet, observers could be forgiven for asking why the Ontario Government’s new requirement for two mandatory e-learning high school courses has become so controversial.
When you consider that the average student may take some 20-plus courses during their four years of high school, how is a requirement that two of them be on-line, a draconian reform? And the Globe and Mail has reported that 58,000 students already took an on-line course in 2017-18 and that enrolment is climbing by 17 per cent a year.

For those folks who seem to think that government deficits and debt don’t matter, a recent Fraser Institute report is an eye-opener. All too often taxpayers view government debt as an abstract concept that really doesn’t affect them very much, and short-term thinking encourages taxpayers to favour consuming more government services today and put off paying for them until sometime in the indefinite future. The study examined the growing amount of interest being paid on debts incurred by the federal and provincial governments in the fiscal year 2019-2020, and the findings ain’t pretty.
For Ontario, interest on the province’s debt comes in just under $13 billion, which is more than the province allocates for post-secondary education. $13 billion could buy a lot more help for autistic children, boost health care services and otherwise be used much more productively than merely covering debt interest.

Caught up amid all of the attention being paid to the protests paralysing many parts of Canada is a looming deadline for a very important Alberta oilsands project on the cusp of being approved – or not – by the federal Liberal government. The Teck Frontier project, located in northeastern Alberta, has been in the planning and approval stages since 2012. The project has successfully achieved all of the environmental and other regulatory requirements mandated by various levels of government, and has reached agreement with every one of the 14 indigenous communities in the affected area. It is estimated that the project will employ as many as 7,000 full time workers during its construction and about 2,500 workers on an ongoing basis. The project has a value of $20.6 billion and is expected to contribute $70 billion in tax revenues to governments during its 40-year lifespan. It’s fate currently stands to be determined by the federal Liberal Cabinet by the end of this month.

The term Third Sector is typically used to include a range of organizations that are neither private sector companies nor government departments or agencies, and whose goal is usually to promote a particular social objective or represent the interests of a specific group in society. Examples of third sector entities include not-for-profits, charities, various associations, social enterprises and co-operatives. Trade unions are sometimes also included in the third sector. In recent years, the third sector has been growing by leaps and bounds in Canada and around the world.

Most Ontarians know how badly under-capacity our vital health care system is at present, and how things like long waiting lists, hallway health care, patients having to stay in costly hospital beds due to the lack of long-term care beds, doctor shortages and other problems plague the system. Sadly, needed reform is being prevented by a slavish devotion to a monopoly public system that is not performing effectively for citizens yet is costing us a fortune. Although the Ford government is attempting some significant reforms, more fundamental structural change is needed if we are to see the system truly improve, and our aging population makes the need for major changes especially urgent.

In the never-ending war of words among the various factions in the ongoing Ontario teachers’ dispute, the NDP has just upped the ante by calling for the firing of Education Minister Stephen Lecce. According to the NDP, the hashtag #FireLecce is one of the top trending topics in Canada on twitter, which is not much of an accomplishment considering how easy it is to get lots of twitter bots and trolls on the left to click on one whacky topic or another. In the eyes of the NDP, however, Lecce’s real sin is doing his job properly, which means respecting the interests of taxpayers.

I don’t have a parent’s perspective on the last few months of teacher strikes and job actions, but as a conservative I am naturally frustrated. “Fire them all!” I shout at the television, invoking the memory of the blessed Ronald Reagan, though I know very well that neither education minister Stephen Lecce nor premier Doug Ford can fire teachers who are employed by school boards. “Lock them out in January!” was another refrain I would mutter into the void. Again, same problem: politicians can’t lock out people who work for different politicians.

Sadly, the prospect of teachers picketing through weeks of winter weather has probably receded into Wiarton Willie’s lair.

While the leadership contest for the Conservative Party of Canada is getting lots of headlines these days, another important leadership race is getting much less attention. In just over a month, the Ontario Liberals will be choosing their new leader. The Ontario Liberal race was not exactly knocked out of the headlines by the federal Conservative rivalry. There has been very little attention paid to the Ontario Liberal competition at all, probably because it has been, well, pretty boring. It seems that not many hot issues have entered the fray, no major disputes among the candidates have arisen so far, and it has generally been a rather dull affair.

For many years health professionals have warned about the possibility of a new pandemic that could be very destructive in terms of lives lost and other negative outcomes. The recent emergence of the corona virus – a viral relative to SARS – has many people asking if this could be the “big one”. At present, we know the disease originated in the Wuhan region of China, can be deadly, and has already migrated to many other parts of the world, including Canada. This has all happened in a very short time period, considering that the World Health Organization (WHO) first informed the public of the flu-like outbreak as recently as January 9.

Last week Premier Doug Ford announced the creation of a new post-secondary scholarship program to honour the memories of the 57 Canadian victims of the Ukrainian airliner shot down by the Iranian regime earlier this month. The provincial government will establish scholarships for 57 students annually beginning in the 2021-22 academic year. Although the details have yet to be fully worked out, the Premier announced that the secondary schools which lost students or teachers in the crash and families of the victims will have input into selecting recipients of the scholarships, which will also be based on financial need and academic results.

That wailing and gnashing of teeth you hear is the sound of unions, some politicians and others on the left bemoaning the exodus of well-paid manufacturing jobs from Ontario, and Canada for that matter, as detailed in a new study released this week.
Anyone paying attention for the last few years knows that the manufacturing sector in Ontario has shrunk significantly, and this phenomenon was quantified in a recent analysis by Statistics Canada. The study looked at the period from 2000-2015, and found that the share of the workforce represented by manufacturing declined over that period by 6.8 per cent in Toronto and 9.8 per cent in Oshawa. As men predominate as workers in manufacturing, they have been disproportionately affected, with men in Toronto not having experienced an increase in their wages since 2000. In Windsor, where the auto industry has shrunk dramatically, the average man’s wage has declined by 14 per cent over the 15-year period, while male workers in Chatham-Kent saw a 10 per cent drop. Results were similarly dire for other parts of the province. Overall, the Statscan study found significantly fewer men working full time over the period examined than in previous years.

As the new year gets into full swing, Ontario teachers are predictably back on the picket lines. Although many issues are supposedly on the bargaining table, there appear to be two major sticking points at present – the government’s offer of a one per cent per year wage increase and class sizes. On the former, several of the teachers’ unions involved have taken the provincial government to court, so that matter may well be decided outside of the bargaining table. On the question of class sizes, despite claims of some that smaller classes are always preferable for better student outcomes, it is worth a look at the results of research done on this contentious issue.

While news of the killing of Iranian Commander Qasem Soleimani and other senior Iranian officials was capturing the attention of many people around the world over the past few days, a strange Ontario angle to the story unfolded. Two NDP MPPs – Rima Berns-McGown and Marit Styles – attended an anti-American rally supportive of Soleimani in Toronto. In case there was any doubt as to who was behind the rally to show support for Soleimani and denounce the US, the flags of the terrorist group Hezbollah and the Iraqi paramilitary organization Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) were prominent at the event. There are many differing opinions on exactly what the US attack on senior Iranian figures will mean for the world and whether it was justified or not, but the notion of elected representatives in Ontario publicly supporting groups that have been classified as terrorist organizations by the Canadian government and many others is difficult to fathom or justify. When questioned, NDP officials claimed that the two MPPs were merely attending the rally as a gesture “in support of peace”. That’s quite a stretch.

In the year ahead, Ontario will face many similar challenges to other parts of Canada, plus a few unique to this province. As the next Ontario election is scheduled for June 2, 2022, the Ford government will be hitting the second half of its mandate in mid-2020. Typically, all governments try hard to get any tough medicine out of the way in the first half of their tenure so they can roll out the goodies in the last couple of years to encourage voters to re-elect them. The Ford government clearly followed this approach, with a jam-packed legislative agenda in their first year in power.

As we review the past year and look forward to the new, how to describe 2019 for Premier Doug Ford’s provincial government? Words from English author Charles Dickens come to mind – “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
It started with the government in full damage control mode because of the Premier’s former chief of staff, Dean French – giving relatives and cronies provincial appointments and creating a virtual reign of terror with his aggressive and bullying style.

Many people reacted with surprise to Economic Development Minister Vic Fedelli’s request to the federal Immigration Minister to double the number of economic immigrants allocated to Ontario. They shouldn’t have. For some time now, Ontario and other provinces have been talking about shortages of workers with a range of different skills, and these shortages are getting worse as the population ages and younger generations are not numerous enough or lack the appropriate training to fill the gaps.

The latest survey by two different polling firms – DART and Angus Reid – on the popularity of provincial premiers is out and – surprise! – the most unpopular premiers are those who are trying to do the right thing for taxpayers and their province’s finances. The most popular Premiers – Quebec’s Francois Legault and Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe are both in the rather enviable position of having their predecessors do most of the heavy lifting to get provincial finances in order, and are enjoying the results in their own personal popularity. At the other end of the spectrum, approval ratings have fallen for Alberta’s Jason Kenney and Ontario’s Doug Ford, both of whom have been trying to reverse course following the very big-spending, high deficit and debt governments that preceded them. There are factors at play other than provincial finances; especially in the case of Ford whose first year in power was marred by a number of missteps and policy reversals, but there is no doubt that the perception of “government cuts” is affecting the political popularity sweepstakes.

As the war of words and competing narratives escalates between the Ontario government and the various teachers’ unions, yet another Fraser Institute report has come out to reinforce the fact that spending in the Ontario public school system has outpaced the national average for the past few years. This is in direct contradiction to the unions’ ongoing claims that education spending is being cut. The Fraser report found instead that Ontario’s per student spending had increased by 3.1 per cent annually in recent years, as compared to a national average of 2.9 per cent. This is also well in excess of the rate of inflation during the period. Not surprisingly, the main driver behind the spending increases was the compensation of teachers and other education workers, especially with respect to the very generous pension component of compensation.

From 2008 to 2015 Ontarians paid $37 billion more than the market price for electricity according to Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk.

The December 2015 AG report also found the then Liberal Government overruled expert advice, tearing up two long-term Ontario Power Authority plans for the electricity system. The AG called the decisions politically motivated actions driving up prices for consumers.

Yesterday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that they will work collaboratively to develop new energy producing technology. Canada’s provincial leaders are currently gathered in Mississauga for meetings.
“Ontario, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick agreed today to work together to explore new, cutting-edge technology in nuclear power generation to provide carbon-free, affordable, reliable, and safe energy, while helping us unlock economic potential across Canada, including rural and remote regions,” read the statement released by the three premiers.

The Fraser Institute has come out with its latest report on the differential between wages in the public sector compared to the private sector in 2018 and – surprise! – once again government employees come out on top. The study included employees from all levels of government, municipal, provincial and federal, and found that the wage advantage alone for government workers was 10.3 per cent. This does not include the differences in other elements of overall compensation – things like pensions, early retirement, job security etc. When these elements are added in, they significantly worsen the public/private sector differential.

Last week the dominant Ontario headline was the revelation that the Ford government had, over a year ago, cancelled over 700 renewable energy contracts at a cost of $230 million. This old news was revealed only recently because apparently the government had included this expenditure under “other transactions” in government documents outlining 2018-2019 fiscal year spending, instead of citing it as a separate line item. NDP Opposition leader Andrea Horwath is now asking the Auditor-General to launch an inquiry into the cancellation of these contracts and the cost incurred. Unfortunately, Ms. Horwath was not at all critical of the former Liberal government when they entered into these contracts which guaranteed excessively high payments to green energy companies at great expense to Ontario ratepayers. The Ford government claims that cancelling these contracts will end up saving taxpayers just under $800 million, and was well worth doing to get a grip on the sky-high hydro rates in Ontario. Some industry sources disputed that number, but many of those very same sources were beneficiaries of the contracts so naturally opposed their cancellation.

I spent last weekend in Red Deer, Alberta where I was speaking at a conference put on by the Freedom Talk group (freedomtalk.ca) – a small “c” conservative gathering of businesspeople, politicians, journalists and citizens concerned about the future of Western Canada within the Canadian federation. Having dealt with years of sluggish prices for the commodities that drive the Alberta and Saskatchewan economies, policies like equalization that continue to punish the West to the benefit of other provinces and uncooperative governments in Ottawa, Quebec and some other provinces, Western Canadians are justifiably unhappy with the current state of affairs. The results of the recent federal election, with the West’s nemesis Justin Trudeau being awarded a second term – albeit with a minority – served only to heighten tensions. Some arrogant comments from Bloc Quebecois leader Yves-Francois Blanchet also added fuel to the fire.

Since their election, the Ford government has made many changes to health care in the province, most of which have involved targeted measures within the existing health care system structure. For example, there have been additions to existing hospitals and other facilities, investments in new hospitals and new equipment, all with the goal of increasing system capacity to reduce “hallway health care”, cut down on wait times and generally make the system more responsive to patient needs. All of these changes were needed, but did not deal with the flaws in the overall structure of the system. Last week, the government announced its plans to comprehensively restructure Ontario health care, significantly downsize the existing health care bureaucracy and redirect the savings achieved into frontline health services.

The only news we seem to hear lately about the public school system concerns the terrible things the Ford government is supposedly inflicting on students and the never-ending strike threats from the various teachers’ unions. But in a much less headline-grabbing way, the Ontario government is implementing a number of positive changes to the system that should be welcomed by students, teachers and taxpayers alike. These changes are largely geared to better prepare students for the future job market and the wave of technological change that is eliminating the need for many existing skills while creating demand for new ones.

Although not a great deal of attention was paid to it, Ontario taxpayers recently dodged a potentially very costly bullet that involved the so-called Sidewalk Labs experiment. This project, initially announced in 2017, was to be a revolutionary “futuristic neighbourhood” project on the Toronto waterfront, complete with technology-enabled infrastructure including self-driving vehicles, artificial intelligence controlling heating and cooling with omnipresent sensors recording and storing massive amounts of data on all of the goings-on in the neighbourhood. Google’s subsidiary Sidewalk Labs had grandiose intentions, originally seeking a large parcel of 190 acres of undeveloped waterfront property on which to conduct this experiment, with the expectation that this very valuable land would be effectively handed over to Google at nominal cost.

Ontario electricity consumers are well aware that their hydro bills keep going up despite attempts by the Conservative government to fulfill their election promise to reduce electricity costs by 12 per cent. It would be easy to blame the current government for not meeting this goal, but the reality is that the Green Energy Act implemented by the previous Liberal government a decade ago continues to haunt Ontario hydro consumers and impose stiff price increases every year.

After a period of almost 5 months under the cone of silence believed to be requested by the federal Conservatives prior to the national election, Doug Ford reemerged this week to lead off the fall session of the Ontario Legislature. Reacting to the election results, one of Ford’s first statements was a call for national unity, noting that Ontario should step up and help unite Canada, and do what it can to help heal the regional divisions that have arisen largely because of federal policies that pit one part of the country against another. Given the white-hot anger in Alberta and Saskatchewan at present, this will be a very tall order and it could be seen as presumptuous for the Ontario Premier to assume such a role, but there are some ways in which Ontario politicians can be a positive force in calming regional rifts.

When the Ontario government announced late last week they would not be pursuing the ambitious municipal reform they had previously championed, virtually all existing municipal politicians breathed a big sigh of relief. This should worry Ontarians as there is ample evidence that municipalities in the province are inefficient with much overlap and duplication among services provided and contain far too many municipal politicians. Instead of placing some sensible demands on municipalities to clean up their act, the province is instead going to give them even more money – $143 million or so – as part of a Municipal Modernization initiative to find efficiencies and improve services. In the Niagara area, Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati has long been on the record as saying the region has far too many politicians. He also commented that this was not a matter of saving money, but a problem with having too many cooks in the kitchen. Although the too many cooks comment is accurate, it is also a matter of saving money as the more politicians there are, the higher the cost to ratepayers for their compensation and that of the bureaucracies that support them.

It now might sound quaint, but there was a time when government employees prided themselves on being non-partisan and the pursuit of a career in the public service was focused on actually serving the public and not engaging in overtly partisan political activity. I can still remember when someone working for the government would be loath to tell anyone how they voted in an election as they believed it would affect the perception of them being able to do their job professionally and without bias. Unfortunately, those days are long gone. The last couple of decades have seen increased partisanship within the public sector and much more vocal expression of support or opposition to political parties than in the past.

After years of dithering, changes in government at various levels and changes in plans, this week saw agreement between the province and the city of Toronto on yet another approach to improve mass transit in Canada’s biggest city. During last year’s provincial election campaign, one of the Conservative promises was a plan to “upload” the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) to the provincial level, with the Ontario government taking over responsibility for funding and planning the transit system. This concept was strongly opposed by the city of Toronto, the TTC and the opposition NDP party, among others. After being elected, the Ford government also floated the concept of the Ontario Line – running from the CNE to the Ontario Science Centre – as preferable to the previously-planned downtown relief line on which some work had already begun.

The recent horrific bullying incident involving a young student stabbed to death in Hamilton in the presence of his mother has to give every parent pause about what is going on in schools today. The fact that the perpetrators were well known to be bullies prior to this tragic event, and that the school was apparently incapable of doing anything about it, is especially worrisome. Of course bullying has always been an issue, and will continue to be, but it seems that these days there are more high-profile incidents in schools and more serious outcomes for the victims.
The bullying problem is complex and has many causes and potential solutions. The prevalence of social media has added a new angle to bullying which didn’t exist a generation ago. The structure of the average family has changed significantly as well, as typically both parents are now employed outside the home, leaving kids to their own devices more so than in the past, and with many single-parent families in the mix as well. But the environment in schools has also changed dramatically over the past few decades, and bears examination as it impacts the behaviour and attitudes of young people.

The loud sigh of relief coming from Ontario parents could be heard across the province early this week, as news circulated that Education Minister Stephen Lecce was successful in reaching a tentative deal (subject to ratification by union members) with CUPE school support workers and that a strike had been averted. Federal Conservatives also likely were relieved as the federal Liberals were trying very hard to make the Ontario government’s potential inability to reach such a deal into an election issue and attempt to have that rub off negatively on federal Conservative leader Andrew Scheer. Whatever your perspective, it was certainly good news a deal was reached at the 11th hour, avoiding a disruptive strike. But is it a good deal for taxpayers?

By the time you read this, things may well have changed yet again. At the time of writing, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), whose members work in various support capacities in the Ontario public school system, were planning to go back to the bargaining table. In the past few days, the union first instructed its members to work to rule, then after just 48 hours of that said workers would be on strike as of Monday Oct. 7, then a day later retracted that to agree to go back to bargaining with the provincial government. It’s been a whirlwind of unpredictability, with nervous parents wondering whether their children will be in school next week and if they must disrupt their lives and plan for a strike. York and Peel school boards have already said that if these support staff employees do go on strike next Monday, they plan to close the schools.

A recent national opinion poll conducted by Angus Reid/Postmedia looked at the impact the current provincial government in the various provinces could have on voters’ intentions in the federal election. The results varied across provinces, but Ontario stood out as the province in which the highest percentage – about half – of all respondents said their federal voting plans would be affected by the provincial government, and primarily in a way that would make them less likely to support the federal Conservatives under Andrew Scheer. This was deemed to be a result of the so-called “Ford” Factor, and a reflection of how Doug Ford’s popularity has declined as his government has committed a number of missteps in their haste to cope with the mess left to them by the previous Liberal government.

A judge recently imposed a significant fine on officials of Unifor, the auto industry union, for engaging in a prolonged illegal strike. The matter involved auto parts company Nemak, a supplier to General Motors. The dispute arose when Nemak announced that it was planning to close the Windsor plant in 2020, two years earlier than when the current collective agreement expires in 2022. Nemak stated that the plant was operating at very low capacity and was too small and inefficient to be competitive in today’s market environment, leading to the accelerated plant closing timeline.

It was recently revealed that the Ontario deficit for the 2018-2019 fiscal year came in at $7.4 billion – much lower than the $11.7 billion the Ford government had predicted it would be back in the spring. This new and improved deficit number immediately elicited cries from the opposition parties that this was proof the government had exaggerated the deficit in the first place to score political points, and that the fabled Liberal spending spree of the last few years before the June 2018 election had not been as bad as advertised. As usual, the truth is a bit more complicated.

Difficult as it is to avert my eyes from the ongoing gong show that is federal Liberal politics, it is nevertheless worth looking at the interesting investigation currently underway in Alberta into foreign-funded environmental groups. Shortly after being elected this past spring, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney initiated an inquiry into the activities of a number of charities with an environmental focus which have been working vociferously for some time to shut down Alberta’s energy industry.

Two major Ontario public school unions – the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (EFTO) and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) are currently seeking a mandate to strike from their members. Although this didn’t take long as their contracts just recently expired, this is not surprising given that all unions reflexively oppose Conservative governments as they are much less willing than Liberals and other parties on the left to endlessly fleece average taxpayers for the unions’ benefit. In the case of EFTO, they claim they are looking to consult their members over the next couple of months to determine their appetite for strike action. The CUPE workers, which include janitorial and other support staff, could be out on strike as early as September 23.

Last week Ontario Treasury Board President Peter Bethlenfalvy announced that by implementing a few simple administrative measures, the government saved $153 million over a couple of months earlier this year. This is of course not a princely sum in light of realities such as the fact that the government pays $34 million per day in interest on its massive debt. But it’s a start and shows that over time serious money can be saved by changes that are merely sensible and should have been done long ago.

Another year, another bad report card on the performance of Ontario’s students in math. This was illustrated by the most recent Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) test results, which was made public this week. The data show that 58 per cent of grade three students met basic math standards, which is a four per cent decline from 2016. Only 48 per cent of grade six students met the math standards, down one per cent from 2016. These declines have been happening for over a decade, and tend to coincide with the introduction of so-called “discovery” math which moves away from teaching basic math principles to a supposedly more “problem-solving” oriented approach. However, other studies have found Ontario students problem solving capabilities have also declined, so this version of math teaching has seemingly failed on that front as well. What is especially painful about the long decline in student math achievement is that under the former Liberal government the overall budget for education roughly doubled at a time when the number of students declined. Many analyses have revealed that virtually all of the spending increases went to teachers’ unions and teacher salaries, pensions and other benefits. Basically, Ontarians are paying more and more for less and less in our public education system, and our children are being seriously short-changed in the process.

The nature of the “welfare trap” is well understood as the situation that arises when a person is discouraged from seeking work or better-paid work because they will face higher tax levels for any additional income and/or lose benefits that only accrue to lower income citizens. As a result, people in these circumstances opt to remain unemployed or in a low income job. A new study from the CD Howe Institute entitled “The Paycheck Blues” has provided some pretty shocking measurements of the extent of the welfare trap in Canada and the many problems it creates for both the individuals and families stuck in low income lives, as well as the economy overall.

The Ford government is undertaking a review of the self-serving so-called “news” video service called Ontario News Now (ONN). Good. This faux news entity is financed by taxpayer dollars, and produces puff pieces on various policy announcements and other activities of Premier Ford and his colleagues. The justification for creating this service in the first place was that much of the regular media is so anti-conservative that Ontario’s government would not be able to get a fair shake in the press so needed to take matters into its own hands and oversee its own coverage of events. Although there is certainly a fair amount of truth to the fact that the majority of conventional media tends to be left-leaning, that does not mean that the creation of ONN was necessary or a good use of tax dollars.

There have been quite a number of disturbing things in the crime department happening over the past few months in Ontario. We have seen far too many incidents involving guns, and over the Simcoe Day long weekend alone there were 17 people that suffered gunshot wounds in Toronto. Although it may be tempting to explain this away as being a Toronto problem, there have also been numerous incidents of gun-related violence in the GTA and beyond. We have seen an absurd number of dangerous people wandering away from a supposedly secure mental health facility, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), to the point that you have to wonder if this facility has any security procedures at all. Another disturbing event was the case of Elizabeth Wettlaufer, the killer nurse who managed to murder eight vulnerable seniors and attempted to kill four more before she was finally caught, which apparently happened only because she confessed and not because anyone in authority bothered to act on the many red flags that surrounded her for years. In July, an Ontario judge refused to convict an aboriginal woman who was driving with three times the legal limit of alcohol in her bloodstream because of “colonialism and racism”. The sum total of these events presents a disturbing picture that should very much concern average Ontarians.

Most Ontarians are rightly concerned about environmental issues, and are more than willing to actively contribute to initiatives that have positive impacts on the environment. Unfortunately, much of the discussion about “green” policies of late have revolved around carbon taxation or cap and trade systems (another form of putting a price on carbon). But these policies have come into disrepute as experience with them has not lived up to initial expectations. For instance, it has become evident that revenues from carbon taxes very often do not end up being spent on environmental matters but just become slush funds for government.

In recent weeks we have yet again seen politicians of all partisan stripes and others promote the fallacy that more government spending results in more or better public services. In response to dishonest claims by federal Liberals that Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer would cut health care spending “just like Doug Ford” (who by the way has not cut health care spending), Scheer rose to the bait and made a commitment that he would guarantee an annual increase of three per cent in health care transfers to the provinces. Great, right? Turns out, not so much.

Despite being in the summer doldrums when most folks are more concerned about hanging out on the dock with a cool beverage than paying attention to the news, there was a bozo eruption from the left this week that got some undeserved media play. The whole thing started with a story from an online so-called news service called Queen’s Park Today, concerning a story on the Ontario Conservatives’ online Ontario News Now outlet about Premier Ford having paid a visit to an Ontario winery, namely Pelee Island Winery, and saying good things about the Ontario business. Another politician visiting a business during the summer months when legislatures are not sitting and making some complimentary public statements about it is something unremarkable that happens every day. That should have been the end of it and, if it had been a Liberal or other non-Conservative government in power, it likely would have been.

Most people who have dealt with the Ontario health care system in recent years have been disappointed. Long delays, bureaucratic snafus, so-called “hallway healthcare”, shortage of family doctors and administrative incompetence seem to be the norm. Yet despite all of the evident problems, there is still an enormous amount of resistance to change it, and there remain a significant number of Canadians who mistakenly believe that we have “the best health care system in the world”.

It has been many years since Ontario had a serious look at the massive bureaucracy in the public education system, and it is high time it was revisited. The current system has a structure designed for an era when most families were Christian and spoke either English or French. Needless to say, our current reality is very different and has been for some time. We also maintain an educational structure designed for many more students, yet enrollment in Ontario has been declining for years. From 2009 to 2019, for example, education spending increased by over 30 per cent while enrollment declined by 110,000 students. If student performance had improved over the same period, perhaps there could be some justification for the higher spending but performance actually worsened in those years, causing even more questions around whether any value at all was achieved for all those extra dollars spent. Another issue arising from declining student numbers is the reality of many half-empty schools in the province. There has been considerable discussion around the fact that many existing schools need repair and upgrading, and it would seem to make the most sense to focus that spending on schools that are already near capacity and consolidate the schools that are mostly empty, not waste funds on facilities that have no prospect of being fully utilized for the foreseeable future. Clearly, something’s gotta give.

Someone recently asked me why suddenly there seems to be so much negative media piling on the criticism of Ontario Premier Doug Ford. The Toronto Star alone – well known as a rabid supporter of all things Liberal – seems to have some kind of poll coming out every few days with some new angle on how a majority of Ontarians have a dim view of Ford and his government. Most of these polls are done online and not scientifically conducted, so their findings are questionable, but they still make some pretty good headlines. And Ford has had his challenges lately as well, mostly around a botched appointment process linked to the Premier’s former Chief of Staff, Dean French. French is now gone from that position and measures have been put in place to clean up any issues in the appointment process, so all things being equal that should put this issue to bed for the time being.

A couple of recent incidents in Ontario underlined yet again how tax dollars are regularly abused by government employees. One incident involved teachers, who, as the data trickles in following the end of another school year, were found to once again be taking an inordinate number of sick days. The Toronto Sun’s Sue-Ann Levy called it a “June flu epidemic”, noting that up to 21 per cent of Toronto’s Catholic teachers and 15 per cent of public school elementary teachers were “off sick” for the last few Fridays before school ended. Most of these “illnesses” fell on a Friday or Monday. Frequently, the same teachers were off “sick” both Friday and Monday in a given week. Imagine running a private business when 15 to 20 per cent of your workforce is often absent on any given day? It should also be noted that teachers in the province have a very generous sick leave allotment of 11 fully paid sick days per year, plus another five miscellaneous days to be used however the teacher wants. Some apologists for the teachers’ behavior stated that they might have had some sick days left over to “use up” before the end of the year. But sick days are not holidays, and are to be used when actually sick. Any other use of this time is pure and simple abuse of tax dollars.

I would love to be a fly on the wall at the meetings currently underway among Canada’s provincial Premiers, the so-called Council of the Federation. The meeting is taking place in Saskatoon but most of the Premiers took the opportunity to stop off briefly in Alberta the night before and, with the Calgary Stampede underway, the obligatory awkward photos of politicians in cowboy hats flipping pancakes were part of the proceedings. But the real action will be taking place out of the public eye once the closed-door meetings are underway. The usual issues of interprovincial trade barriers, accreditation for workers from different provinces, energy matters, the carbon tax, etc. will undoubtedly be on the agenda. Most of the liveliest discussions, however, will surely be around activities the Premiers will be planning in the few months remaining before October’s federal election.

The latest development in the ongoing dust-up over appointments under the Doug Ford government occurred last week, with Ontario Liberal Leader John Fraser asking the Integrity Commissioner to review all government appointments since the Conservatives came into power in June 2018. There is no doubt there were a few botched appointments, notably two Agent General appointees who turned out to be closely connected to former Ford Chief of Staff Dean French, and who did not possess appropriate qualifications for the positions. Once this came to light, the appointments were quickly rescinded and a few other appointments withdrawn because they had connections to French, even though most of the people involved were well-qualified for the posts. Dean French also walked the plank over this issue and is no longer Ford’s Chief of Staff. This is not the first time this type of situation has happened with governments of all political stripes, and it’s unlikely to be the last. The departure of French and the rescinding of the offending appointments should be the end of it, especially as the Ford government has launched a review of the overall appointment process. But as this situation involves a Conservative government, the usual rules do not apply.

Newly-minted Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce has his work cut out for him. With contracts for teachers and other education workers expiring at the end of August, there is not a great deal of time to negotiate new agreements before the start of the next school year. This is not by accident of course, as unions always contrive to have their collective agreements expire at the most difficult time for the employer so that maximum pressure can be applied. For teachers’ unions, this means that contracts expiring just before the school year starts is perfect for them, and disastrous for taxpayers, parents and the students themselves. It’s hard to believe that we Ontarians tolerate this abuse year after year.

Recent tensions between the Ontario provincial government and the City of Toronto have once again revived interest in Toronto seeking to become a Charter City. Charter status would mean that Toronto – and possibly other cities – would have constitutionally protected authority to exercise much more autonomy that it can currently in its position of being a “creature of the province”, subject to provincial oversight on most issues of importance.
The establishment of a Charter City would be a first for Canada. All Canadian cities currently have the same status of being under the jurisdiction of the relevant province, with limited autonomy. The concept is far more established in the US, where 10 states have adopted the model. Toronto has broached the idea of becoming a Charter City a number of times in the past few decades, usually motivated by a desire for more money or the perception of an unfriendly provincial government that won’t go along with initiatives the city favours. In this latest iteration of Charter fever, there has been an organization established – Charter City Toronto – founded in part by former leftist Toronto Mayor John Sewell. The Charter concept in general has been primarily supported by politicians and others on the left, with the common goal of extracting more tax dollars from city residents, businesses and other levels of government.

Following a seismic cabinet shuffle last Thursday, the government of Doug Ford saw another significant development on Friday with the resignation of the Premier’s Chief of Staff, Dean French. French had been under criticism for some time because of an autocratic style that many elected Conservatives resented. This is a fairly common criticism of Chiefs of Staff to political leaders, who frequently have to perform the thankless task of being gatekeeper to the leader, limiting access to others and acting as a go-between. At the federal level, Justin Trudeau famously said to his caucus members that if his Chief of Staff, Gerald Butts, spoke on an issue the caucus could take it as coming from Trudeau himself. Interestingly, Butts himself resigned a few months ago in the wake of the SNC Lavalin scandal. Overall, it is a rare Chief of Staff that is appreciated by those elected to a legislature.

After almost exactly one year in office, Premier Doug Ford announced a major Cabinet shuffle this week. And it was indeed major. Almost all of the most important portfolios saw a change in the responsible Minister. Some of the key moves include Vic Fedelli leaving Finance for Economic Development with Rod Phillips moving into the Finance role and Lisa MacLeod exiting Children and Social Services and being replaced by former economic development Minister Todd Smith. Also significant was the departure of Lisa Thompson from the education portfolio, replaced by Stephen Lecce, a first-time MPP who has performed well as Deputy Government House Leader and Parliamentary Assistant to the Premier. Caroline Mulroney is out as Attorney General, with Doug Downey stepping into that important post. Christine Elliot remains as Health Minister, but elements of the health ministry are to be split off with Merrilee Fullerton now responsible for long-term care and Michael Tibollo for mental health. Laurie Scott switched places with Monte MacNaughton with the former moving to Infrastructure and the latter to Labour. All in all, a very significant shuffle.

If you watched any of the NBA finals featuring the Toronto Raptors and the Golden State Warriors – and let’s face it, who didn’t – you would have been treated to ads that are the first major salvo in the left wing’s campaign to do everything they can to prevent the Conservative party from being elected in this October’s federal election. The ads were funded by a third party group called Engage Canada, and attempted to portray Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer as weak, and a pawn of Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Third parties are entities which are not political parties, unions or businesses, and their presence has grown like crazy in Canada in recent years. Although there have for many years been limits on how much unions and corporations can spend in an election period, similar limits on third party spending are a relatively recent phenomenon.

The government of Premier Doug Ford has now been in power for just over a year, and what a busy and tumultuous time it has been. After being out of power for almost 15 years in Ontario, the Progressive Conservative party had much pent-up energy for policies they now want to act upon as quickly as possible. Former Premier Mike Harris, when asked if he had any regrets from the time he was Ontario Premier, famously said he was sorry he didn’t do more things early in his tenure. Judging from the past 12 months, it seems the Ford government has taken that advice to heart.

Mark July 3, 2019 in your calendars, Ontario taxpayers. That is the date when we will know exactly how much our municipal governments, school boards and other provincial institutions such as colleges and universities are telling the truth when they repeatedly claim to really care about saving taxpayers money. These various government entities have been presented with a very important choice courtesy of Bill 66, the “Restoring Ontario’s Competitiveness Act”, which was passed a couple of months ago.

Members of the Sheet Metal Workers’ International Association walked off the job earlier this month when contract negations with Ontario General Contractors Association broke down. This week bus loads of sheet metal union members made the trek to picket in Niagara as part of what the union is calling their “solidarity bus tour”. About 4,000 sheet metal workers are on strike across Ontario.
Also on strike province-wide are Ontario’s plumbers and pipefitters. It’s the first time in 30 years that the sector has walked off the job. They’ve been on strike for a week while the sheet metal workers walked off the job more than a month ago.

Many Ontarians would be surprised to find that the province got some good financial news last week. As is often the case when good news is in the offing for a conservative government, there was minimal media coverage of the fact that a key credit rating agency, Fitch Ratings Inc., upgraded the province’s credit rating from negative to stable. Fitch is one of the so-called “Big Three” nationally recognized credit rating agencies, along with Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s, so this development is important and a positive endorsement of the financial direction the Ford government is pursuing. And when one major credit rating agency makes changes, whether positive or negative, the rest are usually not far behind.

It’s a disconnected, inconsistent and complicated system for patients and family members to navigate and understand. That is the reason the provincial government announced this week their intention to create a mental health and addictions centre of excellence for Ontario.
Called the Foundations for Promoting and Protecting Mental Health and Addictions Services Act, the legislation, if passed, will set up a provincial body that will coordinate mental health and addiction services, set care standards and deliver a better and more consistent patient experience.

One of last week’s big news stories concerned a letter written by 10 former Ministers of Health in Ontario recommending the Ford government reverse planned cuts to public health spending. Much was made of the fact that one of these former Ministers was a Conservative, albeit from about 40 years ago when things were rather different in the province’s health care system. The true irony was that six of the 10 were Liberal ex-Ministers – in other words, the very people responsible for creating the spending crisis in the health care system that the current government is trying to correct. In addition, it is a customary practice in governments that previous ministers, Premiers or Prime Ministers refrain from openly criticizing the policies of their successors. It is actually very inappropriate and borderline rude for these letter writers not to extend this same courtesy to the Ford government, but these days it seems all bets are off and it’s open season on anything this government does.

This week Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office (FAO) published its customary report on the recent provincial budget and its implications for government finances and the economy. As has become the norm for anything the Ford government does these days, much of the media coverage appeared negative. Some of the headlines included “Fiscal Restraint Could Carry Economic Risks”, “Ontario Spending Growth Slowest in 30 Years” and “More Cuts Needed to Balance Ontario Budget”. An actual objective reading of the FAO report, however, reveals that the news was actually quite positive for Ontario’s fiscal outlook.

The last time the abortion issue was prominent in national policy discussions was back in the federal election campaign of 2006, the eventual result of which was a minority Conservative government led by Stephen Harper. At that time, a main focus of anti-conservative forces was endless speculation about the so-called Harper “hidden agenda” which, although never specifically defined, was presumed to include draconian restrictions on abortion rights, among other social conservative things. None of that ever came to pass, but that of course doesn’t stop the same parties from once again trotting out the old abortion scare shibboleth.
This scare was briefly resuscitated prior to the 2018 Ontario election when the provincial Progressive Conservatives were again serious contenders and, ultimately, victors. And once more, nothing happened to change anyone’s access to abortion. Of course facts have never stood in the way of some good old leftist scaremongering, and considering past experience, likely never will.

In their continuing vendetta to oppose absolutely everything the Ford government tries to do, the Toronto Star, the NDP opposition and other forces of the left launched their latest salvo this week, claiming to possess leaked cabinet documents that supposedly contemplated such things as draconian cuts to social services and the privatization of some health-related services in Ontario. The documents apparently contained the warnings of various government employees who stated that lives would be at risk if some of the changes that were reportedly being considered were ever implemented.
It’s worth keeping in mind that government employees will always stand in the way of spending cuts, partly because of their instincts for self-preservation and partly because the culture of government is to always get larger and spend more. In government, there are few if any incentives to be thrifty with tax dollars. And let’s face it – there are not too many things that are as much fun as spending someone else’s money. The current Ontario public service has been marinating in the warm bath of the McGuinty and Wynne big spenders for 15 years now, and old habits are hard to break. Accordingly, much of their advice should be taken with many grains of salt.

The ongoing battle between the Beer Store and the Ontario government ramped up another notch this week with the Beer Store launching an advertising campaign featuring the Canadian curling champion, Glenn Howard, as spokesperson. The Beer Store, having had a monopoly over beer sales in Ontario since 1927 when the province ended prohibition, understandably doesn’t want to give up this immense and profitable privilege. To try to win over the hearts and minds of Ontario consumers, they are predicting all manner of disastrous outcomes for beer drinkers and the Ontario economy should their monopoly end. They have even set up special social media accounts to apprise Ontarians of the so-called “Beer Facts”.

It is no secret that there is no love lost between Premier Doug Ford and Toronto Mayor John Tory. Their first serious bout in the ring took place in 2014 when Doug Ford replaced his brother Rob in the race for Mayor of Toronto when Rob’s health challenges prevented him from continuing his campaign. John Tory won that round, garnering just over 40 per cent of the popular vote as compared to Doug Ford’s 34 per cent. However, likely unbeknownst to both men at the time, the real war had not yet begun.

Last week Premier Doug Ford spent a couple of days in New York City promoting Ontario within the context of his theme that the province is now “Open for Business”. Along with Finance Minister Vic Fedelli, the Premier spent a couple of days meeting with various industry leaders, trade representatives and US business media to emphasize the importance of the trading relationship between the province and many US states as well as the focus of this Ontario government on policies such as cutting red tape and reducing excess regulation. It never hurts to remind our American friends of the importance of our economic relationship, considering that two-way trade between Ontario and the US reached almost $400 billion in 2018 and that, if Ontario was a country, it would be the US’s third largest trading partner. Indeed, such promotional pilgrimages to our neighbour to the south are quite common by provincial and federal government leaders of all political stripes.

In the past few weeks we have been inundated with advertising from the various Ontario teachers’ unions telling us what a top-notch education system we have here in Ontario and that any attempt to touch it by the Ford government will surely result in a reduction of the quality of education and a downgrading of student achievement. Teachers’ unions in Ontario have a long history of self-promotion, paid for with large quantities of our tax dollars, but a growing body of research disputes their claim to educational excellence in the province’s public school system. We have already seen repeated results from the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) that show about half of primary school students are not meeting basic standards in math and literacy. To add to the research, a new study recently made public focuses on the skill sets of graduating high school students and their preparedness for university. The results are not encouraging.

As the cacophony of opposition continues to pretty much any changes the Ford government makes to bring the province’s books back into solvent territory, some relatively small changes are underway which could cumulatively make a big and positive difference.
A good example of this was a recent announcement that the government had sold a small chunk of land – just under an acre – in downtown Toronto to a developer to be repurposed as rental housing, with about a third of the rental housing constructed slated to be affordable housing. This transaction netted the government $36 million and will save annual maintenance costs of about $260,000 annually. This announcement will not attract much media attention while the larger and louder battles are being fought with teachers unions and others, but this is exactly the type of change that we need more of to reduce government spending obligations in a way that also achieves social policy goals such as, in this case, expanding the stock of affordable places to live. The Ontario government plans to undertake other transactions of this nature in future, having identified almost 500 properties that can be sold and put into more productive use over the next few years.

A recent report by Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office (FAO) assessed the Conservative government’s so-called LIFT program (Low Income Individuals and Families Tax Credit), which eliminated provincial income tax for people earning less than $30,000 annually. It concluded that although the LIFT initiative certainly did benefit low income earners, it did not put as much money in their pocket as the previous Liberals government’s plan to further increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour, which the LIFT program was intended to replace. The FAO estimated that workers would on average receive $400 per year less under LIFT than if the planned minimum wage hike had proceeded. But this is only part of the story.

Over the last few years we have witnessed significant growth in government deficits in many provinces and federally even as the economy has been growing. Accordingly, there has been speculation in the media and elsewhere over whether deficits really matter. Perhaps we should refer that question to Paul Martin and Jean Chretien who, not so very long ago in the mid-1990s, were faced with the stark reality that a sharp increase in public debt meant that Canada would not be able to borrow any more in international financial markets except at exorbitant interest rates that would hobble our economy. They were forced to slash government spending, sharply reduce transfers to the provinces for health and education, drain the $57 billion surplus built up in the Employment Insurance fund over many years and use a $28 billion surplus in a public sector pension plan, among other things, to pay off the deficit. Through all of these efforts they did manage to get Canada’s finances back on track but disaster was close. Within the last 20 years we have also seen various jurisdictions effectively go bankrupt, including Detroit and Greece among others. In all cases the cause was government spending growth that far outstripped the private sector’s ability to pay for it.

On April 16, the Alberta electorate gave Jason Kenney, United Conservative Party (UCP) leader, a resounding victory over the incumbent NDP government led by Rachel Notley. The numbers were truly impressive. Voter turnout was an amazing 70 per cent, and the UCP garnered 55.2 per cent of the popular vote and 63 seats in an 87 seat legislature. Whenever a conservative-leaning government is elected these days, leftists typically trot out the old chestnut that “he/she wasn’t elected by a majority of the popular vote”. They certainly won’t be able to make that case with Kenney’s landslide win. Of course this argument never seems to apply equally to left-leaning governments that are also usually elected with less than 50 per cent of the popular vote in our first-past-the-post electoral system.

For the last week or two it seems that we are being fed an even larger dosage of “fake news” than usual. Which is saying something. Much of this misinformation has revolved around politics, as it often does. Reaction to last week’s first Ford government budget was a good example. Confounding many who were poised to pounce on the budget for slash and burn spending cuts, the document was actually a disappointment to fiscal conservatives in that it indicated the government plans to take a leisurely approach to balancing the budget and has projected expenditure levels quite comparable to those planned by the former Liberal government. Despite that reality, opposition parties – and the many groups that would deny the sun rose in the east if they thought it would harm the Ford government – still claimed that there were spending cuts in the budget in such key areas as health and education, when in reality spending was increased in both of these areas. In fact, other than some unnecessary silliness about revamping the design of license plates in the province, the first Ford government budget was very much a middle-of-the-road type of document.

In the weeks leading up to the first budget of the Ford government, Finance Minister Vic Fedelli characterized his plans as a “Goldilocks” budget – not too hot, not too cold, but just right. At first blush, an analysis of the main budget themes and spending priorities suggests that he may indeed have achieved that balance, albeit with some important caveats.
There were calls from some quarters to bring Ontario finances back into balance in this budget, but considering the massive deficits and debt accumulated by the previous Liberal government over 15 years, it was a very unrealistic expectation that a government in power for less than a year could eliminate a deficit of $15 billion in such short order. Instead, Finance Minister Fedelli took the more incremental approach of bringing the deficit down to $11.7 billion in this fiscal year, with a plan to continue to reduce deficits in stages over the next few years by constraining expenditures to a growth rate of one per cent annually, with the ultimate goal being a balanced budget in fiscal 2023-24. This means the Ford government has no plans to balance the budget in its first term.

The latest installment of the Ontario government’s ongoing work on the red tape/regulatory issue dropped last week with passage into law of Bill 66, the Restoring Ontario’s Competitiveness Act by Minister of Economic Development Todd Smith. This is an omnibus bill that was first introduced in December 2018 and contains changes to a number of different laws and regulations. Going beyond the cutesy name for this piece of legislation – something that all governments of any political stripe seem compelled to do these days with any new law – the Bill undertakes to reduce the regulatory burden in a number of sectors within the agrifood, manufacturing, automobile and construction industries, harmonize regulatory requirements with other jurisdictions, end duplication and reduce barriers to investment in the province.

Earlier this week – on April 1 in fact – the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation published a press release on what the Ford government had done with the so-called Jobs and Prosperity Fund created by the previous Liberal government. But this was no April Fools joke. During the run-up to the 2018 election, Ford and a number of his colleagues had gone as far to call this fund “corrupt” and described it as “corporate welfare”, all of which was true. Past Auditor General reports had criticized this fund as a waste as it handed out tens of millions of taxpayer dollars with no accountability, no tracking and no measurement of results to determine if indeed this spending had any effect on jobs or prosperity. Simply put, this fund is a pork barrel; money to be doled out with no good rationale and no accountability for results, usually on the basis of political favouritism rather than any substantive and worthwhile policy objectives.

One of the many interesting sessions at the recent Manning Centre Conference in Ottawa concerned how to bring governments into the digital age. Governments tend to be late adapters of technology for many reasons. As they don’t operate in competitive markets, governments are not driven to be up-to-date or productive as a private sector company would be to keep up with competitors. In fact, they are often decades behind technological trends that businesses are forced to adopt to remain in business. In addition, as governments are highly unionized environments – and Canadian governments are some of the most unionized in the world – they face union opposition to any use of technology that will replace a job, and therefore reduce the dues paid to unions. For all of the union attacks on capitalism, it is always amusing to see how unions react so very negatively to any of their sources of funds being reduced.

Another year, another Sunshine List from the Ontario government documenting the very large number of government workers who make $100, 000 or more annually. Ontario is one of the few jurisdictions that publishes this kind of information, and their example should be followed by all levels of government. These are our tax dollars after all, paying the people that are supposed to be serving the public considerably more than the identical job in the private sector would earn.
The Sunshine List was originally set up in Ontario by the Mike Harris government in the mid-1990s with the salary benchmark of $100,000. Many people have argued that it should be indexed to inflation, which would mean a threshold of about $150,000 today. Considering that the average Canadian worker earned about $60,000 in 2018, it would seem that continuing to use the $100,000 number makes a lot of sense as that is still much more than the average worker earns.

Two words. Public procurement.
While eyes glaze over for some when the words public procurement are uttered – for citizens and companies interacting with government – it is widely agreed that public procurement can be fraught with inefficiency, waste and perhaps even widespread fraud in government.
This is not just an Ontario phenomenon.

The federal budget was announced this week, and fully lived down to expectations that it would be a spend-fest of taxpayer dollars aimed exclusively at the goal of winning Liberal votes in this October’s election. There was very little if any good news for Ontario in the budget, and much to be concerned about. One of the most negative aspects of the budget was the fact that despite some revenue windfalls, the Liberals chose to spend these funds instead of paying down even a part of the deficit to prepare for a rainy day. Heavily indebted governments at both provincial and federal levels is bad news for Ontarians and all Canadians as it leaves us very vulnerable to the next recession, which is looking increasingly imminent.

The next Ontario election may be over three years away, but last Friday’s policy announcement by Education Minister Lisa Thompson is being viewed by the province’s teachers unions and school boards as a declaration of war. As these players have effectively been at war with the Conservative government since last year’s election – and were often at war with the previous Liberal government as well – people can be forgiven for asking if anything has changed. There is no question, however, that this latest government move has hit the unions where they live. Many Ontarians would say it’s high time.