Finding the money to make mental health care a priority has been a long-standing problem in Ontario and throughout Canada.  Despite increased awareness to reduce the stigma, such as this month’s corporate initiative driven by Bell Let’s Talk, the realities of financing health care delivery make it difficult to turn awareness into concrete public action.

The release of the latest Financial Accountability Office’s report paints a bleak picture for changing this course.  It clearly states that in order for the province to meet its commitments to balancing the budget, $2.8 billion in cuts to the health care budget need to be made.  Thus, in order to fund mental health or any other new priority, money would have to come at the expense of another part of the already strained health budget.

The FAO report makes clear that when Ontario’s health minister and finance minister are arguing for more federal cash, what they’re really saying is not only a plea for help to fund health priorities but also help to balance the Ontario provincial budget.  Anything less than the 6% increase they had been used to since 2004 is simply insufficient.

The Trudeau government, for their part, have basically maintained the Harper government’s line on health spending increases, which was to hold it at about 3% annual increase.  However, in addition, the Trudeau government has also earmarked money for home care and children’s mental health.

At first blush, the federal offer contained a $5 billion commitment aimed at reducing wait times for children’s mental health, much of which would have gone to reducing wait times for psychotherapy that Children’s Mental Health Ontario says is up to 1.5 years in some parts of the province.  However, it was a $5 billion commitment over 10 years, meaning the annual increase was going to be $500 million across Canada, with Ontario qualifying for approximately one third of that amount.  That’s still a fair chunk of change, but hardly transformative. Moreover, without a pre-holiday federal-provincial health accord, the federal government took that offer off the table.

What is most concerning about the whole ordeal is the symbolism.  Think about it.  The federal government is essentially telling the province ‘accept our insufficient 3% offer or we won’t give you new mental health money.’ In other words, the mental health of our children is being used as a pawn in this trifecta of growing health care costs, an Ontario budget balancing act, and a heavy-handed federal government that’s trying to assert control in provincial jurisdiction. The new money for mental health will only arrive if the provinces accept a lower increase to health transfer payments that starve other health programs.

To put that in perspective, almost 1000 Ontarians die of suicide each year.  Suicide remains among the leading causes of death among children and adolescents, and they are preventable.  In the first half of 2016, five young people committed suicide in the town of Woodstock.  Local officials suggested that many more attempts were made.  So dire was the situation that the Canadian Mental Health Association declared the situation in Woodstock to be a crisis.

No matter.  The feds will invest in mental health, but only if the province accepts even less money in the form of transfers.  It is an evil false dichotomy.  The provinces don’t have to agree to the lower increase since the federal government can unilaterally allocate whatever money it wants.  And yet, in failing to agree to something that isn’t necessary, the federal government revoked its offer of cash for children’s mental health.  The proposal for new mental health dollars is a carrot without a stick.

When the E. Coli contamination happened in Walkerton, seven people had died and hundreds of others fell ill.  The policy response was swift and sustained.  This is not so with mental health – quite the opposite.

So on Bell Let’s Talk day, our politicians will be tweeting and texting about ending the stigma.  And yet, there would be no more powerful message to ending the stigma than for the government to treat mental health like most other aspects of health care.  As this latest federal-provincial faux squabble shows, we are nowhere close to ending the policy stigma.

This article appeared in Queen’s Park Briefing.  Visit QPBriefing.com to subscribe to this publication and stay on top of all things related to Ontario government and politics!

The Auditor-General of Ontario released her report on the province’s public accounts and it is a bloody big deal.  This fall, the government was late releasing its Consolidated Financial Statements because there was an ongoing difference of opinion between the Treasury Board Secretariat and the auditor regarding the treatment of pension assets.

The A-G kicks off her report by stating the following: “For the first time in the 23 years since the Province adopted Canadian generally accepted accounting standards for governments, the government received a qualified audit opinion on the Province’s consolidated financial statements.”  I thought to myself, ‘time to pop some popcorn, because this is going to be entertaining.’

But rather than be entertained, I am frightened.  As an academic who specializes in accountability and transparency, I have long held the view that audits should be used for improvements to public services rather than exacting a political toll on government.  Audits, in my view, ought to be written and used in ways that are seen as not political.  The language used ought to be judiciously selected and that audits should stick to the facts.

There will be no doubt that the government will view this audit as crossing that line, and they will attempt to discredit the auditor as acting beyond her role.  The report clearly states that this is a top-of-mind interpretation of the public spat: “The actions taken by the Government in releasing the consolidated financial statements late and without the audit opinion of the Auditor General, while also publicly disagreeing with an accounting issue before providing the Auditor General with information needed for her to issue an audit opinion, could be perceived by some as an attempt to undermine the role of the Office of the Auditor General.” As far as foreshadowing goes, it can’t get more ominous.

This blatant attempt to release the statements without an audit opinion is serious. The report states: “Going forward, our Office will need to approach the audit of the consolidated financial statements with increased professional skepticism and will assess the need for expanded audit procedures.” This issue isn’t going away.

The lack of audit opinion means that the public cannot have confidence in the Consolidated Financial Statements.  While the government used the auditor’s opinion on recording assets in this fiscal year, the issue is that the government did not restate its fiscal position for the previous year, which means that you cannot compare apples to apples in the data, which is important when you make claims of meeting or beating targets.

In addition, there are major issues in accounting practices that need to be carefully watched.  The Auditor bases her assessment using the PSAB standard, but she questions why the government legislated certain accounting practices that were different than PSAB.

The report states: “We continue to caution that the use of legislated accounting treatments by the government on future transactions, or the introduction of further legislated accounting treatments, could increase the risk that the future financial results of the province may not be fairly stated.”  The problem that arises is that the government has given itself a legislative ability to pass a regulation detailing how an asset can be recorded.  Via regulation, if a government wishes to record an asset/liability that is worth several billion, as having no value, it has the ability to do so, which are contrary to PSAB principles used by governments across Canada.  In other words, legislating its own accounting standards allows the government to possibly cook the numbers.

More evidence on inconsistent accounting standards can be found in the government’s treatment of hydro assets.  The government included financial statements for Hydro One and Ontario Power Generation using the American GAAP standard instead of the internationally accepted PSAB.  The report states: ”We believe that the differences between the two standards could lead to material accounting differences, potentially as early as the 2016/17 fiscal year.” Wait a second… that’s this year!

The government may take exception to some of the language used in the audit as being overtly political, the auditor isn’t saying what appears to be the underlying theme of this year’s report: namely, that the government is shirking on its accounting responsibility (discussed in the management vs. auditor in Chapter 2 Section 3.2 of the report) but doesn’t go on to say the reason she thinks this might be the case.  We are left to speculate that the government is doing so for politically motivated reasons, and there is ample support to draw that conclusion.

In the world of auditing, using consistent standards ensures that comparisons can be made and benchmarks established.  By switching accounting standards, the government can basically use whatever number best suits its narrative.  Worse still, it has given itself unfettered legislative ability to write off assets and liabilities through regulation instead of accounting standards.  This is what post-truth looks like.

This is happening far more than it should.  Take a look at the following chart (see attached) related to the deficit projections.  If you read footnote 2, it’s a confusing mess where the government is picking and choosing numbers so that it can make the claim that it has beaten its fiscal forecast for 7 straight years.  It’s a comms job and a con job.  If the government is not going to beat its target, it just sets up a new one so their election ads can say they beat their projections for almost a decade.

The political implications of this are obvious.  In 2004, the government passed the Fiscal Transparency and Accountability Act, which means that in advance of an election, the Auditor is asked to look over the books and state whether the assumptions in the fiscal plan are sound and accurate.  I have written about the flaws in that document elsewhere (https://www.robleone.com/is-ontario-ignoring-its-own-fiscal-transparency-law/), but it is important to note that the Auditor is also fixated on loopholes in the legislation (see page 96 of the report).  The Ministry of Finance Response to Recommendation 10 was that they are not changing the law.

What voters are left with is a squabble they very well won’t understand.  The government in using different accounting standards so it can claim its following sound accounting principles which will be contrasted by an apolitical auditor saying the government needs to use the same one everyone else uses.  Voters will be too confused so they’ll move on to the next shiny object such as, say, the invasion of the so-cons. Oh, that sounds so much more interesting, doesn’t it?

Bait. Switch. Win. It’s the obvious Liberal playbook.  #WhatPostTruthIs

This article appeared in Queen’s Park Briefing.  Visit QPBriefing.com to subscribe to this publication and stay on top of all things related to Ontario government and politics!

Recently, I tweeted the following prediction: That the government will table a ‘balanced budget’ only for public accounts to report back and say that there was an actual deficit.  The Liberal spin trust responded by saying something like ‘after the Tories left a $4.7 billion deficit, the Liberals introduced the Fiscal Transparency and Accountability Act so the auditor looks at the books before an election.’  Fair enough. I expected such a response.

It’s a response we’ve heard before.  Tories hate the response because of the sheer lie it tells, which is that the $4.7 billion is not a Tory deficit but a Liberal one.  I’m not going to rehash what is right or wrong here.  The ship has sailed on that one.

However, what remains is the bill itself. Has anybody looked at this thing?

S. 3 Ontario’s fiscal policy must seek to maintain a prudent ratio of provincial debt to Ontario’s gross domestic product.  

Right, prudent. What does this mean? Hopefully, it doesn’t mean a 10 consecutive year increase in debt-to-GDP ratio. Oops, that’s what we have. Hopefully, it doesn’t mean a 50% growth in debt-to-GDP. Oops, that’s what we have.  Looks like the government is missing out on most measures of prudent here.

S. 4. (1) For each fiscal year, the Executive Council shall plan for a balanced budget unless, as a result of extraordinary circumstances, the Executive Council determines that it is consistent with prudent fiscal policy for the Province to have a deficit for a fiscal year.

So, yeah. Oops, forgot about this one too, I guess.  The budget hasn’t been balanced in more than 10 years.  In e-mails, government bureaucrats mocked the ‘balanced budgets’ that the Liberals said they passed and said ‘they weren’t real.’ So much for missed opportunities.

S. 5. (3) If the Executive Council plans for a deficit for a fiscal year, the Executive Council shall also develop a recovery plan for achieving a balanced budget in the future and the recovery plan must specify the manner in which and the period within which the balanced budget will be achieved.

Enter, Don Drummond.  Who?  Don Drummond. What did he do again? Oh yes – that report!  That plan to get us back on track! Whatever happened to that report? Collecting dust probably.

S. 9. (1) Within two years after each provincial election, the Minister shall release a long-range assessment of Ontario’s fiscal environment.

And, as you know, when I was at Queen’s Park, we complained that the mid and long range estimates were incomplete and not visible.  Bureaucrats advised the minister that not releasing the forecasts wouldn’t be acceptable in the post-Drummond era.  No matter.  The minister directed his budget writers to not follow that advice and a budget was tabled without the forecasts.  This wasn’t an oops.

S. 10. (1) In such circumstances as may be prescribed by regulation, the Ministry of Finance shall release a pre-election report about Ontario’s finances and shall do so before the deadline established by regulation.

Here comes the fun stuff.  The pre-election report is all subject to regulation.  The regulation for the next election doesn’t seem to be posted yet.  I checked. Yet, given all the stuff ignored in this bill already, who is to say we’ll actually have a decent regulation at all.

11. (1) If the Minister does not release information required by this Act on or before the specified deadline, the Minister shall release a statement on or before that deadline in which the Minister explains why the required information was not so released.

Again, I’m not sure we had a satisfactory answer as to why the mid-/long-range estimates were missing.  Not sure there was total compliance with this law.  Never mind that, section 11 starts by saying “If the Minister does not release…” which leaves open the possibility that the Minister may choose to ignore.  Open possibility here.

S. 14. No action or other proceeding may be brought in respect of a requirement of this Act. 

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh… I was waiting for this.  Immunity.  No punishment for non-compliance.

As you can see, enough wiggle room exists here.  The Tories are always mocked when they advocate for balanced budget legislation.  They said we repealed it when the budget couldn’t be balanced.  Well at least they had the gumption to go through the legislature.  This is worse.  Pass a bill, potentially ignore it, and if you do, nothing can be done.  Transparency… riiiiiiight!

Prediction stands. Prove me wrong!

The engineer of the 2014 Kathleen Wynne majority government, the same person tasked with figuring out how to do it again, is now facing bribery charges under the Ontario Election Act. Pat Sorbara, along with Sudbury Liberal operative, Gerry Lougheed, were at the epicentre of the earthquake that shook Queen’s Park last week.

The Ontario Provincial Police announced last Tuesday they had charged Sorbara with two counts of bribery, and Lougheed with one count, after “a complex and unprecedented investigation” into the candidate nomination contest for the February, 2015, Sudbury byelection.

It is alleged, according to information reportedly sworn by the Ontario Provincial Police, that Lougheed and Sorbara dangled a job in front of Andrew Olivier, who ran and lost for the Liberals in the 2014 Ontario election, to not run. Sorbara faces an additional accusation of bribing then-federal New Democrat MP Glenn Thibeault to become a candidate. The allegations have not been proved in court.

But Thibeault would ultimately be appointed the Liberal candidate and win the byelection for the Grits. He was promoted to energy minister in June’s cabinet shuffle.

After she was charged last week, Sorbara stepped down from her roles as the Ontario Liberal Party’s CEO and campaign director, where she had been preparing for the 2018 election. Both she and Lougheed deny any wrongdoing, while Thibeault denies he was offered anything to run for the Liberals at all.

The initial reaction to the Sudbury byelection scandal from the chattering classes was that this is politics as usual – all parties do it after all. Then, the Premier’s documentary came out in October, 2015, and it appeared like the Sudbury issue was clearly weighing on her. The official line was that the Liberals were trying to help the young Olivier stay involved in the political process, but the problem is what it looks like.

Wynne’s non-verbal cues showed, to me, a Premier that looked like she knew they could have potentially gone too far. It appears that, perhaps the intent wasn’t so much to keep Olivier involved as it was to prevent a vote-split if Olivier decided to run as an independent. This would make the situation different than other inner-party squabbles. Olivier came close enough in the general election to potentially be damaging to Liberal hopes in Sudbury.

But this is what a tired and out-of-touch government looks like. It looks like a government that appears to think it can get away with skirting rules.

And then there’s the gas plants scandal. As noted in documents and by the auditor general, political staffers were involved in talks about cancelling the Oakville plant. There were also assurances TransCanada would be kept “whole” after a politically-motivated decision was made to kibosh a government-issued contract. This, along with the Sudbury byelection brouhaha, are examples of a party that may have become too comfortable in its position of government.

One can’t help but equate what is happening to the Wynne Liberals with what happened in Ottawa before the last federal election. The whole Mike Duffy expense scandal came about because the rules that were written were so inadequate that Senators could exploit the perks afforded to them. And while the law technically wasn’t broken, the spirit of the regulations was, tarnishing the reputation of other senators in the Chamber. Nigel Wright, former prime minister Stephen Harper‘s chief of staff, thought he could fix it and tried to make the problem go away by cutting a personal $90,000 cheque to the treasury. Everything might have been OK had everyone kept quiet. But of course that didn’t happen, and so, right through a federal election, the issue played out in the court of law and in the court of public opinion.

Just like in Ottawa, the downfall of the government at Queen’s Park may indeed have its face. Lougheed and Sorbara could be the new Duffy and Wright. With the characters now cast, a steady stream of questions will continue to be put to the Premier and ignored, which will only further erode the public’s trust in this embattled premier. It is still just shy of two years from an election, but time may indeed be running out for Wynne’s Liberals.

This article appeared in Queen’s Park Briefing.  Visit QPBriefing.com to subscribe to this publication and stay on top of all things related to Ontario government and politics!

Although largely ignored by the majority of non-partisans, much has been made recently in the Conservative Party of Canada leadership race about what kind of influence Trump will have on our politics.  The post-Harper era is before us, and the number of potential directions it could take are still high.  Could the Conservative Party be met with the same powers that overtook and shook the Republican party?  I’m going to lay out some evidence as to why I think the answer is no.

Let’s look at some of the metrics.

Urban-Rural divide: On this, Canada and the US are roughly equal when it comes to levels of urbanization.  About 80% of us live in urban areas.  That number is increasing, and the urbanization favours liberal parties and policies.  Trump-esque policies, conversely, are predominantly supported in rural areas which, ironically, are less prone to immigration and crime.  So there will be an attentive Canadian audience for an anti-establishment run in rural parts sroughly equal to what Trump has experienced.

Education attainment: This is where it starts to fall apart. The Trump coalition is predominantly created on the basis of non-college educated voters.  Check out the OECD data (you may need to click on the box):

The data show that Canadians, in every age category (the square are those aged 55-64, the x represents those 45-54, the diamond represents 35-44, and the circle represents 25-34 year-olds), are more likely to have a college/university education than Americans.  And, the trend is even more accentuated among younger cohorts, meaning that the majority of Canadian voters in the next decade will continue to have an education vs. our American counterparts and that divide is growing.  You may start to understand why so many Canadians are not in love with Trump.  He’s not speaking to the vast majority of us.  We’re becoming more educated, not less.

Income Inequality:  The idea that society is rigged in favour of the elites over the masses is likely to resonate more in societies that have greater income disparity.

Exploring the above chart from the Conference Board of Canada, Canada gets a grade of C versus a D for the US.  This means that the size and growth of the middle class is more robust in Canada, but that the wealthy still are disproportionately taking a greater share.  So Canada isn’t great when it comes to wealth distribution, but isn’t as bad as the US.  Plus, what income inequality does not capture is the fact that social program spending helps to mitigate some of the pressures poorer families face (i.e. public health care and public education, for example, aren’t out-of-pocket household expenses).  As a result, while poverty remains a growing issue in Canada, it isn’t as bad as it is in the United States.

All of this is to suggest that importing Trump politics will appeal to a small segment of the Canadian population at present, but that that small segment is likely to narrow due to more urban and more educated people increasing their proportion of the overall vote.  Add to this the reality that population growth is adding to diversity, rather than the other way around, and the anti-immigration, anti-elite message, and anti-global messages that Trump supports will likely not resonate as highly here.

Thus, fellow conservatives, if you’re taking the short game in selecting your leadership support, realize that in 4 to 8 years from now, when we likely have a chance to form a government, the Canadian electorate is going to look differently than it did it 2006 and different than it looks today.  If you don’t understand this going into this leadership race, you’re about to make a big mistake.

As a 30-something, PhD-wielding, sub-urban, I’m an atypical conservative.  I’ll be called establishment, elitist, moderate, and so on. Most of that will be said pejoratively so.  However, you ‘others’ may wish to consider that my profile (exclude the PhD and replace with any degree) is that demographic you’re going to need to chase if you want to turn things around and potentially govern one day.

Ah, that Donald Trump! He sure knows how to get the media elites to talk about him every day.  He famously refused to accept the results of the pending US-election during the debate, and later clarified that by saying he’d respect the results if he wins.

Here in Canada, the previous election was fought under the guise that Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system needed change.  That ‘every vote needed to count.’  That everyone deserved an ‘equal’ vote.  That the system needed to be ‘fairer.’  That the system should not permit parties with less than half of voter support to have carte blanche to govern.  That Harper’s government was implicitly illegitimate and governed without concern to the voices of the general public.  In effect, the system, we were told in subtle but serious ways, was rigged and it needed to change.

Even the social movements supporting democratic change fueled that concern of a rigged system.  One of the leading groups advocating for change even called themselves “Fair Vote Canada.”  One must automatically assume that this means that they think that the current system is unfair – that all the governments that have been elected since Confederation had won without real mandates. The system is rigged, in other words.

As a political scientist, I can tell you that we even teach students that the system is rigged.  Saying so makes our material far more exciting!  It helps with the BIS, the acronym we use for ‘bums in seats.’  (Funny how politically incorrect that is! After all, bums usually belong to people, but it also is an ambiguous term since the word is often used to pejoratively brand certain kinds of people too.)  How many studies have shown the alignment of political/media/business elites controlling elections and skewing public policy to protect the interests of political and economic masters?  Ah, the system is rigged!  Knowing this is a prerequisite to graduating with a political science degree these days.  There are no shortage of political science graduates working on the Hill.

Once elected, the Trudeau government told us some pretty remarkable and shady constitutional things.  They told us they had a mandate to change the electoral system, yet their mandate only contained a duty to consult Canadians without mentioning what system the Liberals preferred.  They suggested that parliament alone could pass such sweeping changes, without concern to legitimate constitutional claims that there was some duty to seek consent from voters for that change either through a fresh mandate or a referendum.  In effect, the system is rigged and only Trudeau could fix it.

After a year of this saga, after a parliamentary committee took time to listen to the concerns of Canadians and experts, Prime Minister Trudeau took to a French-language newspaper to say, well, maybe Canadians are satisfied with their electoral system after all, especially that it can produce the sort of ‘real change’ they were looking for.  In other words, ‘the system is rigged, unless I win.’

In the United States, the media complain that the presidential nominee of the GOP would even fathom not respecting the results of a rigged election, when our fair Prime Minister used the same kind of rhetoric without a whimper.  Now that the system supported Trudeau and his vision, the system isn’t so rigged after all.  Imagine that!

In the US, many pundits are saying this sort of rhetoric disqualifies Trump from his presidential bid.  In Canada, it’s business as usual.  What an interesting comparison! Pretty remarkable stuff.

The Council of Ontario Universities has launched a campaign to better understand the positive public benefit that universities have to the economic well-being of the province.  They have launched a web site and survey, which can be found at www.ontariosuniversities.ca.

Once stories about the campaign hit social media, some professor-types I follow decried this as yet another exercise in diminishing the value of a social science and humanities education.  Their concern was that the evidence gathered in this survey would be used to increase support for STEM programs and professional degrees.

Amid the skepticism, I decided to take the survey.  If the impression was that this survey would lead to advancing only a subset of offerings from a university, there will be some disappointed people.

What stood out about the public universities’ survey was that the first set of questions aren’t about universities per se; the first questions are about how the respondent feels about their future, and the future of their children.

From my view, the survey points to a marked change in tactics from the pitch Ontario’s public universities are used to giving.  For some time, universities have found that growing enrollments were crucial to financial stability.  In addition, dollars were stretched within institutions even more.  Larger class sizes became normalized. The proportion of tenured faculty teaching courses began to get worse over time.  Tuition increases became the norm.  And, what really got university officials riled up, is that public investment in Ontario’s universities did not keep up proportionately when compared to the other provinces.

So, given the circumstance, university administrators have been pointing to their stellar records (e.g. nice graduate employment rates) with comparatively low public investment, as a reason for the government to give more.

The new direction that Ontario’s public universities appear to be charting seems to suggest that not only are university graduates getting jobs, but universities themselves are drivers of local economic development.  If we consider statistics that, for example, Trent contributes some $400 million to the local economy of Peterborough or that the tech cluster in Waterloo is driven by its universities, a strong case emerges to suggest that there are compelling reasons to invest in universities other than the fact that other provinces are giving their institutions comparatively more support.

When you consider that non-university communities across Ontario are making pitches to get one to come to town, one begins to see that there is merit to the claim.  Communities such as Barrie, Milton, Cornwall, and others around the province believe that full blown campuses, ones that encourage teaching as well as research, are key to local economic development.  Many point to communities like Brantford, where the Wilfrid Laurier University campus there rejuvenated a blighted and neglected downtown core.

The interesting thing to note is why Ontario’s public universities are engaging in such a campaign in the first place.  If one glances at the higher education policy space, the government has unfulfilled promises to create three new university campuses across Ontario (of which only one is opening in Markham) and to increase enrollments by 60,000 students.  Without the funding from the government, and the regulatory approvals required to grow, the government won’t fulfill its promises.  The universities may well be trying to make the case for the government not to abandon these promises.

These unfulfilled promises aside, the higher ed file has been a busy one for the government.  The policy focus in recent years, however, has been on the cost for students to attend post-secondary education.  The decision to enact and then expand the Ontario Tuition Grant has meant that public money has gone to help students and not the institutions that are charged with educating these students.  In its most recent budget, the province double-downed on helping families with the commitment for mostly free tuition for qualifying students.

Compounding the problem of institutions losing out on new higher ed money, annual tuition growth (a potential source of new revenue for universities) is capped and that cap has been further reduced.  All of this has created a scenario where universities are starved for cash, and concerns abound that this is eroding the quality of education being offered to students.

Thus, the aim of this seemingly innocuous campaign is to change the nature of the policy conversation.  Ontarians and our government appear to be focusing on the plight of families trying to afford post-secondary education when the universities want us to remember why giving them some more direct support helps the entire province.  This pitch will likely be amplified as we get closer to the next election.

This article appeared in Queen’s Park Briefing.  Visit QPBriefing.com to subscribe to this publication and stay on top of all things related to Ontario government and politics!