Ontario asks public for policy pointers
Shortlisted ideas will be voted on and enjoy $5 million in funding in next year’s budget
Think of it as a $5-million suggestion box.
That’s how much cash is up for grabs in next spring’s pre-election budget as Finance Minister Charles Sousa earmarks money for ideas from the public.
It’s the fourth year the Ontario government has asked for submissions on a budget website, but the offer comes with a catch that’s designed, at least in part, to keep pranksters at bay.
Proposals must be aimed at encouraging healthy living, helping seniors avoid social isolation, supporting small businesses, helping students succeed and helping parents find local child chare information.
“We look forward to tapping into the skills and experiences of Ontario’s best and brightest,” Sousa said Thursday in launching the site, add- ing “innovation is the driver of good policy.”
Suggestions must be made online by midnight on Nov. 3.
Just a handful were made Thursday, including a proposal to use “grey water” from sinks and bathtubs to flush toilets, another to launch a ticket crackdown on smokers who throw butts on the street and one for more affordable housing for seniors.
No more than $1 million will be spent on each idea, on which it must be feasible to complete or show progress by spring 2019. A shortlist will be created and the public invited to cast online ballots for their favourites.
The money is a tiny fraction of the overall provincial budget, which last year clocked in at a record $141.1 billion. That budget incorporated a suggestion to develop a “supermarket recovery program” to get unsold perishable and prepared foods to Ontarians in need.
Other ideas involved improving digital services for rural, remote and Indigenous libraries, and improving access to children’s immunization records online. All three projects are slated to be completed by next spring.
In previous years, suggestions have ranged wildly, from ending public funding of Catholic schools, to taking guns away from police, scrapping front licence plates on vehicles, ending French-language services, tolling Hwy. 401 and working on improving the salting of roads in winter.
There was also an apparently prescient proposal to legalize and tax marijuana in early 2015 – now something the federal and provincial governments are working to with a deadline of next July 1.
Competition is typically steep. Last year, 404 ideas were submitted and just over 19,000 ballots cast.
A budget date for next spring has not yet been set. The fiscal blueprint is expected to be a roadmap for Premier Kathleen Wynne’s re-election campaign.
The Liberals launched a similar online suggestion box before their June 2014 election campaign. It was called “Common Ground,” but few proposals made it into the party’s platform of promises.