National commission needed to fix economy
The very words “Royal Commission” and “public inquiry” drive some Canadians crazy.
To critics, these official bodies are useless efforts at political buck-passing that take up far too much time and money only to see their findings wind up untouched on dusty shelves. For them, they’re a Canadian joke. Normally, Royal Commissions or public inquiries are held either to obtain advice on a major national or provincial problem or to investigate a specific issue or incident.
In recent years, such commissions and inquiries have looked into issues ranging from the future of the Toronto waterfront to national health care, missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, contaminated drinking water at Walkerton, the shooting death of Dudley George at Ipperwash Provincial Park, the SARS epidemic in Ontario and more.
While none of them likely lived up to the hopes of their main proponents, all of them provided important advice for governments on what can be done practically — and that’s the key point — to make improvements in a timely and cost-effective way.
Today, as we struggle with the COVID-19 crisis, we desperately need such a national commission.
It would serve Canadians by looking at two key issues: first, how best to get the economy up and running and, second, how best to provide help for struggling city governments.
Ideally, it would be separate from public inquiries into what went wrong and what went right in how governments prepared for and responded to the pandemic. It should also not duplicate the work of much-need inquiries, such as one into Ontario’s long-termcare system. Admittedly, in the midst of this pandemic, it’s hard to think beyond next week let alone what the future holds. But it’s time governments started to do just that.
That’s because time is critical. Already millions of workers have lost their jobs or have seen their wages cut. Thousands of businesses have closed or are on the brink of bankruptcy.
City governments, which deliver many of the critical public services for Canadians, are facing massive deficits that might force them to implement huge property tax increases or make draconian cuts to vital services.
One proposal to address these issues is for a National Commission for the Reconstruction of the Canadian Economy — and to have it up and running by early June. “The notion that governments will be able to flip a switch and ‘reboot’ the economy once the virus has subsided is increasingly a far-fetched fantasy,” according to Greg Sorbara, a former Ontario finance minister, and Michael Mendelson, a former deputy minister of the Ontario cabinet office, who are promoting the idea.
How are we going to climb out of this hole and what kind of economy do we want to emerge out of the devastation that now surrounds us, they ask.
As Sorbara and Mendelson see it, Ottawa provincial governments will struggle to cope with the massive additional debt obligations they are now incurring.
As well, cities’ and towns’ tax revenue will have cratered, leaving them unable to provide basic services without unsupportable increases in property tax.
That’s the dire warning that Toronto Mayor John Tory and other big city leaders are sounding as they work toward getting Ottawa and Queen’s Park to provide immediate financial aid in order to avoid drastic service cuts similar to what occurred in Windsor when it shut its public transit system.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ontario Premier Doug Ford and the other provincial leaders need to put aside their jurisdictional disputes over who is responsible for helping cities and just get the job done. It’s wrong to keep cities dangling in the wind as they have to date.
For Sorbara and Mendelsohn, Ottawa needs to assemble a small, nimble and diverse commission to take up the challenge of designing the architecture of the next Canadian economy. The commission would be empowered to recommend the broad design and detailed specifications to build a new market economy in Canada as well as a pathway to financing the public services we require, they add.
It’s a major job for a public commission, whatever official name it is given. Time is short and the stakes are high. But we need to act now.
In the midst of this pandemic, it’s hard to think beyond next week let alone what the future holds. But it’s time governments started to do just that