Growth won’t save Ontario this time. Only reform will – by Don Drummond (Globe and Mail – February 15, 2012)

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Don Drummond, former chief economist at TD Bank, is chair of the Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services.

Ontario faces two huge challenges – economic and fiscal.

The province has already slid below the average of the rest of Canada in terms of output and income per capita. Beyond the next few years of recovery, Ontario can look forward to only modest annual growth of around 2 per cent, well below historical norms.

This reality frames the fiscal problem. The province can’t simply adjust its fiscal parameters for a few years to eliminate a deficit caused by the recession and associated stimulus. Even with the restraint measures already taken, the provincial deficit would continue to rise in an environment of modest economic growth. The fiscal response must not only be strong and sustained, it must reform the way the government delivers virtually every service.

Last March’s provincial budget established the Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services to advise the government on how to return to a balanced budget no later than 2017-18 and how to get more value for taxpayers’ money. Early in its work, the commission concluded that the deficit, $14-billion in 2010-11, was on track to rise to just over $30-billion by then.

Revenue growth at existing tax rates would be insufficient to cover program spending, where existing cost pressures would drive spending much higher. “Existing” is the operative word here; our mandate precluded us from recommending tax increases, so we focused on changing the existing trajectory for spending.

Without vigorous fiscal action, the government’s debt-to-GDP ratio would rise from last year’s 35 per cent to more than 50 per cent. The danger is obvious. High-debt governments are vulnerable to the demands of financial markets, forced eventually to take draconian measures to keep their lenders happy.

Governments got out of similar fiscal holes in the 1990s, notably the federal government and provinces such as Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario itself. But they had strong economic growth to lend a helping hand; that, and a period of spending restraint brought them back to balance in relatively short order. Ontario even managed this feat while cutting taxes.

Once budgets were balanced, however, spending took off again, partly because it could (revenue growth remained strong) and partly because governments had missed an opportunity for thorough reform, a chance to really change the way they delivered public services for the better. This was particularly evident in health care, where the brakes were slammed on previous rapid spending growth, but reforms were partial. After a few years of restraint and growing perceptions that quality of care had slipped, all jurisdictions simply turned on the money taps again.

So we have to keep in mind two things. First, economic growth will not be a huge help this time around, either in the next few years or further down the road. Everything must be done to bolster the economy, but we can’t count on the type of growth to which Ontario has been so accustomed. Second, the government must focus on reforming programs, not on simple (even simple-minded) cost cutting.

For the rest of this column, please go to the Globe and Mail website: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/growth-wont-save-ontario-this-time-only-reform-will/article2339376/