Health care, education and not much else in Ontario's frugal budget

Dalton McGuinty's hope for this year's Ontario election campaign is to spend most of his time talking about health care and education.

Good thing, that, since health care and education will soon be just about all that the province is spending on.

For years, we've been hearing predictions that governments will have to significantly narrow their scope if current spending and revenue patterns continue. The provincial budget delivered Tuesday by Finance Minister Dwight Duncan not only confirms those forecasts; it all but embraces them.

By Mr. Duncan's projections, spending on health care and education will go up by 11 per cent and 9.5 per cent, respectively, over the next three years. Meanwhile, spending on everything else is forecast to decrease by 8.1 per cent.

To some extent, that's the result of stimulus spending come to an end. But it is also a matter of prioritization.

The Liberals have no intention of proposing fundamental reforms to health care - by far the biggest program expenditure. While still pledging to flatten the annual increase in health costs to 3 per cent, they're also making clear that they want to tighten spending across the board so they can preserve the existing health system.

That appears to be the mandate of a new commission chaired by economist Don Drummond, which is tasked with examining "long-term, fundamental changes to the way government works," but has been instructed to stay away from suggesting any private health delivery.

Meanwhile, education expenses are going up in large part because the government is implementing full-day kindergarten province-wide. And the budget's biggest new investment is on creating new postsecondary spaces - not an expenditure that falls under the Education Ministry, but one that meets the same policy objectives.

But with a $16.7-billion provincial deficit, and a debt-to-GDP ratio of 35.4 per cent, something has to give. The Liberals have decided that taxes are as high as Ontarians (and their businesses) will tolerate. So they mostly have to scrape around smaller ministries.

In some cases, such as cutting 1,500 more bureaucrats, few Ontarians will notice. In others, notably scrapping plans for a new Toronto courthouse at a time when the justice system is badly backlogged, the effect on public services will be felt more strongly.

Whether it's possible to return to balanced budgets without taking a harder look at health and education remains to be seen. But in an election year, none of the parties - including, for all of the Liberals' bluster, Tim Hudak's Progressive Conservatives - have any intention of doing so. For now, they'll do what they can around the government's shrinking margins.