[LINK] "‘Gloomy’ Drummond report calls for major changes"

[rfmcdonald]

All I'll add to my link and quoting of the summary of the report by economist Don Drummond on Ontario's public finance are the notes that what happens in Ontario will echo across Canada, and that social democracy is dead.

A sweeping report on the financial health of Canada's largest province calls for a major rethink of an economy long regarded as the engine of the country's growth.

The highly anticipated report delivered Wednesday by economist Don Drummond warns that Ontario is in the midst of a sea change driven by the decline of its manufacturing sector and shifting demographics.

The prescription is a massive cost-cutting plan, a laundry list of austerity measures delivered in a 532-page report, "a brick," in Drummond's estimation. Its 362 recommendations range from broad reforms such as a culture shift in health care to focus on health promotion from the existing "after-the-problem treatment" model to nitty-gritty details, such as a call for commuters to pay for parking at GO Transit stations.

In total, the work of the four-person panel amounts to a wake-up call to the province and the politicians who govern it -- one it concedes could take some time to sink in.

"Our message will strike many as profoundly gloomy. It is one that Ontarians have not heard," the report cautions at the onset.

The days of relying on economic growth to solve the province's fiscal problems are over, Drummond warns. "We don't think the previous growth rates, unfortunately, will come back," he told reporters.

If left unchecked, Ontario's deficit will swell to $30.2 billion by 2018, or more than double last year's figure. In order to correct that course, the report says annual spending growth must be held at 0.8 percent over seven years -- a target that given population growth and inflation actually will require a 16.2-percent cut in program spending over that period for every man, woman and child in the province.

As well as its list of prescriptive measures, the report raises two key themes, the need to make policy decisions based on evidence and the need to integrate public services -- everything from social assistance to provincial real estate holdings.

This is not the first time a Canadian government has embarked on such a belt-tightening endeavor, Drummond said. But this time around the province has told indicated raising taxes is off the table and the report recommends that no cuts be made to social assistance rates, as they were under the Mike Harris government.

With those caveats, Drummond said his report would sent the province into largely uncharted waters. "I think it would be fair to say it would be unprecedented in the post war period in Canada," he said.