An election should be a time to discuss the serious issues that are facing Ontario. Pictured: Ontario’s political party leaders at the leaders’ debate. Photo Credit: National Post/X.
“An election is no time to discuss serious issues.”
That’s a quote former prime minister Kim Campbell will never be able to run away from, attributed to her during the disastrous 1993 election campaign.
Campbell was criticized for the comment at the time, but in reality, she was describing what the vast majority of modern election campaigns look like.
They’re about sound bites, slogans, and candidate controversies.
Consider the election campaign that’s happening in Ontario right now.
There are a lot of serious issues that Ontario as a province needs to address. But Ontario’s political leaders aren’t letting serious issues get in the way of electioneering.
Ontario’s debt, for example, should be the elephant in the room during this campaign.
Ontario now has a higher debt tab than any other non-national government in the world.
Let that sink in.
Taxpayers are on the hook for more than $425 billion of debt. Interest payments now amount to over $1 billion per month. And Ontario taxpayers are stuck paying more on debt interest than the province spends on post-secondary education.
What’s more, three successive governments have only managed to balance the budget twice in the past 20 years.
But is balancing the budget and paying down debt on the radar for Ontario’s political leaders? Hardly. They’re in a bidding war for Ontarians’ votes.
Then there’s education.
Yes, Ontario’s political leaders are talking about education. But they’re only talking about it in dollar terms. Each leader is trying to win the spendapalooza race, competing with each other in terms of who can throw the most money at the issue the fastest.
Yet no one is talking about the sorry state of public education in Ontario and the need to pivot to new solutions.
Today’s 15-year-old students are nearly two years behind their 2003 counterparts in math and more than half-a-year behind in reading, according to a Fraser Institute Report.
And yet year after year, the government of Ontario throws a record amount of money at the public education system.
No one is talking about pivoting to solutions like charter schools.
Alberta has pioneered the charter school movement in Canada. Charter schools still exist within the public system – they don’t charge tuition because they get per student funding. But these schools aren’t government-run and have more autonomy when it comes to catering to the unique needs of students and specializing in certain subject areas.
The results? Students in Alberta charter schools outperform students in regular public schools by a full letter grade on standardized testing.
How about health care?
Once again, the conversation is about which leader will throw money at the health-care system the fastest.
Yet no one is talking about the real issue – Ontario is spending a record amount of money on health care, but our outcomes keep declining.
In 1993, the typical Ontarian waited 9.2 weeks to see a family doctor and then get treated by a specialist. But by 2022, Ontarians were waiting an average of 20.3 weeks.
Yet during that same period, Ontario increased per person health-care spending by $2,500, after adjusting for inflation.
If throwing more money at the system without changing course were the solution, surely wait times would have turned around by now.
But the opposite is true.
What Ontario’s leaders should be talking about is how to shift present spending to front-line services.
Consider these two facts.
First, Canada has 10 times as many health-care bureaucrats as Germany, even though Germany has twice Canada’s population.
Second, Ontario will spend more than $6.5 billion on health costs not related to front-line services this year.
Clearly, the answer to our current woes can’t just be more money. We need to first look at how Ontario can get more value for money in our present health-care system. And that begins with a major shift toward prioritizing front-line services and away from bureaucracy.
Ontario’s election campaign is now in the final stretch. While politicians want to focus on gaining an edge in the polls and get bogged down in daily controversies, it’s time for Ontarians to demand better and call on our political leaders to talk about the daunting issues our province currently faces.
Jay Goldberg is the Ontario Director at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. He previously served as a policy fellow at the Munk School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. Jay holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Toronto.
