Some ideas to help PCs save all that money
Now that Patrick Brown is in the Progressive Conservative leadership race, he’s already calling other candidates on their B.S.: that they can decide not to collect billions of dollars in carbon-tax money and still spend as if they are.
“Patrick Brown is the guy sticking to his guns and standing up for the only plan that wins us this election,” his surrogate, veteran MPP Toby Barrett, wrote in a fundraising pitch Thursday. Brown has a plan, Barrett told Tory members, and the others are just winging it.
Brown’s plan, the “People’s Guarantee” was the party’s election platform until Brown was accused of sexual misconduct and deposed a month ago. It includes a spending plan that more or less matches its revenue plan, which a budget should. Christine Elliott, Doug Ford and Caroline Mulroney want to keep the fun parts and ditch the hard stuff (the fifth candidate, social-conservative Tanya Granic Allen, wants to ditch it all). They’ll supposedly cover the gap by cutting waste none of them will identify. If that’s good enough for Progressive Conservatives, it shouldn’t be.
So here are some ideas for government programs the Tories could whack and promises now in the People’s Guarantee they could scrap to make their budgets balance, applying honest conservative principles of shrinking government, letting the free market work and restricting social benefits to people who need them. Assuming those are what the party believes in, rather than just subsidizing different things from what the Liberals or New Democrats would. The easiest cuts are to the province’s industrial subsidies, giveaways of public money to private companies to help pay for equipment, expansions and hiring.
The idea is that we’re giving boosts to employers hiring Ontarians for the jobs of the future, et cetera, and also everybody does it. The Liberals’ central program for this is the $250-million-a-year Jobs and Prosperity Fund, plus there’s another $40 million or so a year in related subsidies from the economic development ministry. How about in Ontario, we’ll grow businesses that can thrive on their own?
Those are far from the only subsidy programs, though: The Agriculture Ministry, in particular, has a bunch of its own. This year it has $137 million in its budget for economic development, including for horse racing, wineries and cideries. If you can’t make money growing food people need, or feeding their vices, why are we writing you cheques?
The same ministry is spending $239 million this year on “business risk management transfers,” because sometimes prices are low. You run a business? Manage your own risks.
Next up: health care. That’s a sacred cow, but it’s so huge that small changes can save a lot of money.
The Health Ministry covers most drug costs for large swaths of the population, including people on social assistance, anyone over 65 and now anyone under 25. Total cost: $4.4 billion.
The ministry doesn’t break out which groups cost how much, but government figures say we have about 450,000 people on Ontario Works benefits and 2.4 million Ontarians over age 65, so it’s probably mostly seniors.
Seniors are, collectively, far, far, far wealthier than younger people. Measured by average household wealth, people between 65 and 69 are the richest Canadians. Means-test the drug benefit for seniors and for youth, so people who need drug coverage get it and people who don’t, don’t. Let’s say we save 10 per cent on the program from doing that, or $440 million.
Onward to hydro, the haunted graveyard of political promises. The Progressive Conservatives have made such a fuss about how inexpensive electricity is every Ontarian’s birthright that they’re stuck with a bunch of left-wing policies to make it reality.
Having attacked the Liberals’ price-cutting “Fair Hydro Plan” as a shell game, they’re keeping it and then some, promising to have taxpayers cover electricity utilities’ $433-million annual expenditures on conservation programs instead of billing ratepayers for it. The cost is on hydro bills now because conservation reduces the need to build new generating stations and transmission lines, thereby benefiting power companies and consumers. That’s where it belongs. Leave it there.
The Fair Hydro Plan sinks $344 million into cutting “rural and remote” electricity prices in particular. The word “remote” is important here. Being at the end of 1,000 hydro poles means you’re expensive to serve, so pay what it costs. Also, kill a $100-million new People’s Guarantee pledge to subsidize broadband and cellphone coverage in places that haven’t yet made commercial sense to serve.
Finally, the school boards. Every corner of the province is covered by four: English and French, secular and Catholic. We have problems with half-empty schools in some places and bursting schools in others. It’s inefficient and wasteful, not to mention that in some places, like Ottawa, most kids in “English” boards are actually in French immersion. Surely we can do this better. The estimated savings from merging boards that you hear kicked around is more than $1.2 billion, though that’s probably optimistic. It comes from rough calculations by the Federation of Urban Neighbourhoods of Ontario, made in 2012, that included some bold assumptions. We’d preserve French and English divisions but roll smaller boards (Catholic ones in almost every case) into their larger counterparts and thereby save 100 per cent of the smaller boards’ administration budgets, for instance.
This was a nine-page document, not deep technical work, and it’s six years old. Still, it gives us an idea. Let’s cut the savings estimate in half, to $600 million.
These changes add up to $2.5 billion, mostly gained by ceasing to subsidize businesses, private lifestyle choices and historical anachronisms. Not all could be applied instantly, even given the political will, but many could. As it happens, the carbon tax revenue Patrick Brown’s plan expects is $2.4 billion by the end of the People’s Guarantee’s planning horizon, so that’s a pretty convenient amount.
If these ideas don’t appeal to Progressive Conservatives, maybe it’s time to think about why.