Liberal promises should cost less

Behind the glowing promises of all the goodies Ontario’s Liberals are going to give you lurks the less satisfying and highly costly reality of what the government delivers.

The latest annual report from Ontario Auditor-General Bonnie Lysyk shows this repeatedly and deserves close attention from voters before next spring’s provincial election.

To give just one egregious example, the auditor found this government could save $100 million a year if it purchased cheaper generic prescription drugs for people using the healthcare system.

Lysyk arrived at that staggering sum of money after concluding Ontario pays up to 70 per cent more per pill than New Zealand for 20 common prescription drugs.

“Opportunities exist for the province to get more discounts on generic drugs,” she said.

Some might say $100 million is a mere fraction of the $5.9 billion the province spent on drugs last year and a drop in the bucket of its $53-billion annual health budget. But that’s no excuse. Every health-care dollar is precious. This year’s provincial budget committed $35 million to increasing stem-cell treatments for Ontarians. It took eight years for the province to approve funds to expand this essential program.

Had it saved the $100 million in prescription drugs that Lysyk red-circled, there might have been more help more quickly for patients requiring stem-cell transplants — or for something else our hospitals so urgently need.

But the $100-million figure is even more arresting in light of one of Premier Kathleen Wynne’s more recent promises.

The Liberals’ spring budget pledged free prescription medicine to everyone 24 and under, regardless of their household income or whether they have access to private health insurance through their parents.

This is a massive commitment that starts Jan. 1 and is budgeted to cost $465 million a year.

There are strong arguments for expanding public health care this way.

But it is obvious that as the Ontario government dramatically increases drug coverage, it must get the best value possible for every buck it spends. Its record as a sound fiscal manager, however, is dismal. Having driven up the cost of electricity by offering ridiculously generous subsidies for wind and solar generation, the province is borrowing billions of dollars more to give Ontarians rebates on their energy bills.

But as all this is happening, the auditor found Ontario ratepayers had to pay more to help cover as much as $260 million in ineligible power generator expenses.

So as Ontario voters consider all the new policies the Liberals are promising, they should remember how hard the Liberals struggle with the policies they’ve already put in place.

The warts of every government loom large under an auditor’s magnifying glass.

Those of a Liberal government that has more than doubled Ontario’s debt seem particularly ugly.

However, considering that government advertising hit a 10-year high of $58 million in 2016-17 and the auditor said 30 per cent of the ads seemed intended to make the government look good, it’s likely the Liberals will find some makeup to hide those blemishes.