Health system needs help to fight COVID-19

They say numbers don’t lie. But sometimes, they do. We’ve seen that with the Ontario government’s partisan spin on the deficit. We’ve seen it from the federal government. And we’ve seen it from opposition parties seeking to score points.

But in Ottawa at least, there are numbers we can trust. They come from the Parliamentary Budget Office, the independent watchdog charged with checking the government’s financial plans against reality. The PBO was created in 2006 under the Harper government. Its job is to be “an independent Parliamentary Budget Authority to provide objective analysis directly to Parliament about the state of the nation’s finances and trends in the national economy” and “ensure truth in budgeting.”

In short, the PBO is set up, structurally and philosophically, to take the partisan spin out of numbers and tell the truth.

This week Parliamentary budget officer Yves Giroux said that based on current policies and programs, the government could permanently increase spending or reduce taxes by around $41 billion and maintain its current debt-to-GDP ratio. That’s good news for the Trudeau Liberals, and for Canadians.

Any time now, the coronavirus, now called COVID-19, will almost certainly be declared a pandemic. Hospitals and other parts of the health-care system, now scraping by with inadequate financial resources, are going to be overtaxed and in urgent need of new investment. More long-term care to free up acute care space, more hospital and community-based testing capacity. More resources for ERs and hospitals in general. There’s no reason for panic, but there is reason for deep concern, and for governments to declare their willingness to invest in health to fight the looming pandemic.