Reform Of Public Services: Public Services

Health Care Dept: Economist Don Drummond, who heads the province s Commission on the Reform of Public Services , has been signalling for some time that he intends to recommend that only health and education expenditures be allowed to increase. All other public services will have to be cut to accommodate this growth, according to The Star. The country s finance ministers are all reading from the same script and it has become the mantra for an era of tumbling expectations. We will protect health care and education, Premier Dalton McGuinty assured anxious Ontarians last month as his government unveiled its updated austerity plan. Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivered the federal version in last spring s federal election. A re-elected Conservative government, he promised, would guarantee a 6 per cent annual increase in health spending until 2016. His finance minister had already pledged to spare the provincial transfer payment that supports education from budget cuts. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.