This type of "efficiency" bullshit pisses me off, because the people who yell the loudest about efficiencies are the ones who never address the budgetary elephant in the room (thread)
Ontario's 2017 budget expenditures were 126.384 billion dollars. Of that, 55.945 billion was spent on healthcare and 26.005 billion was spent on education. These are the two biggest line items in the budget and comprise just under 65% of all spending. (2)
Our per pupil education spending in 2017 was $12,872. That's below the OECD average for first world countries and about in the middle for Canadian provinces. (3)
Our healthcare spending per person in 2017 was $3,942. That's below average in Canada; we spend on healthcare more efficiently than most provinces. It's slightly above average for OECD countries, but we do have a big cost driver most other countries don't (4)
... namely, we have the USA next door, which drives up medical labour expenses via competition. Most other countries do not have this problem. Still, our healthcare spending overall is not bad. (5)
So the large majority of our budget is spent pretty damn efficiently on services we want to have (or at least which consistently poll as being voter priorities for government spending). So what's the elephant in the room?
Most places in Ontario can't pay for them. (6)
Most places in Ontario can't pay for them. (6)
This is honestly pretty easy to track, because StatsCan can give you average income per capita for most counties, cities, ridings, etc. in Canada. From there it's just doing some math and realizing that the overwhelming majority of localities in Ontario can't afford... (7)
... their education and healthcare, let alone anything else they get from the provincial government. Which is usually a hell of a lot. Direct subsidies to municipalities alone often comprise as much as half of their collected provincial tax revenue. (8)
In Ontario, only Toronto and a handful of other municipalities (mostly Toronto's edge cities) are net contributors to the provincial ledger. About ninety percent of this province is on the take.(9)
(I mean by geographic division, not population there, obviously) (10)
To be clear, I don't object to big rich Toronto helping out the rest of the province. That's how society works. That's fine.
What I object to is this bullshit where fucking Tories pretend that the REAL problem with Ontario's finances is welfare programs for poor people. (11)
What I object to is this bullshit where fucking Tories pretend that the REAL problem with Ontario's finances is welfare programs for poor people. (11)
Because the problem with Ontario's finances is really simple. Most of this province doesn't come close to paying for the services they say they prioritize, and objects to paying the necessary taxes for them. That's the problem. (fin)
