A GOVERNMENT WE CAN AFFORD
In this part of the plan they propose to get rid of the province's yearly deficit by increasing economic growth and cut spending.
InAction -- reduce government spending
They propose to review every government program, keep those that work, fix those that do not work and cancel the remaining. This is all nice but the reality is that all government programs are useless. The only solution to the problem is to cancel all of them at the same time. Furthermore there is no chance that unions will allow the government any meaningful steps in this direction. Furthermore if by any sort of miracle this does happen, the next government will revert all decisions because it is in their own best interest to do so in order to maximize votes.
InAction -- stop the runaway growth of government wages
Essentially this means freezing wages for two years because more than half of all the money collected in taxes goes to pay wages!!! This is of course utterly ridiculous and it won't happen. The unions would prevent it. Furthermore take a look at this figure; over half of all taxpayer's dollars are spent in wages supporting people that produce exactly nothing, zero, no product or service whatsoever. The solution of course is to cancel all taxes, cancel the government, and let people keep their own wealth. This is the only fair solution. Everything else is just smoke and mirrors or communism.
InAction -- reduce the size of government payroll
Reduce government employees by 10%. This will reduce the number of government employees from one million to 900,000. This means that currently in Ontario one out of six employees works for the government! Does this seem to make any sense to you? Do you believe that a 10% cut will make any difference even if it is achieved? Furthermore, that future politicians won't revert this decision because again they will be seeking to maximize votes?
InAction -- encourage better service to competition
They want to contract out services that currently the government provides. The theory behind it is that competition will provide the lowest cost and therefore the maximum tax benefit. However, the point that is being missed is that all so-called government services are not services at all. They are simply a gigantic waste of time, money and resources. The fact that they will optimize this cost would do very little to improve your standards of living. The only solution is to remove all this cost altogether.
A BETTER APPROACH TO HEALTHCARE
The gist of this proposal is that there is too much bureaucracy. Health-care costs have been going on at the rate of 6 to 8% per year. According to this plan this problem has nothing to do with aging population but with bureaucracy. They propose to put people in charge who are directly related with healthcare instead of bureaucrats. In order to do so they propose the creation of Health Hubs. In other words, remove one layer of bureaucracy and create another one. Yes, this makes sense… in a parallel universe.
In addition let's never forget that since the government went into the healthcare business in a big time in the 60s, health-care costs have been going up. It is not a coincidence. The very source of cost increases in this area is governed action. It is ridiculous to even believe that anything can be achieved by simply removing bureaucracy. Costs will continue to rise because the root causes have not been addressed.
InAction -- put a new focus on chronic care
They propose to force health-care workers to develop new long-term plans for the care of chronic diseases. This is again, ridiculous. This is medicine directed by bureaucrats. At the beginning of this section they talked about removing bureaucracy, however in this section they are proposing to force health-care providers to abide by bureaucratic wishes. The best approach of course is to let the free market optimized health-care by itself. Every time a new program, a procedure is forced upon people it creates inefficiencies and problems. Government plans are not exactly flexible nor tolerant. They cannot adapt and they do not have any reason or urgency to improve because they are not competing against other plans.
InAction -- encourage choice and competition
They propose to outsource more services in hospitals as well as home health care. They propose to provide people with more choice of suppliers. The problem with this thinking is that however little they will allow people to choose it is negligible in comparison with all the health services that people are not allowed to choose which the government decides for them. Again, this is smoke and mirrors. It is to be noted that in Ontario most health-care providers are already for-profit organizations with the government paying them directly. In a sense this plan would change nothing because it is designed to look good and change nothing. The only solution is to let the people keep their money and let them make all the decisions by themselves. Of course, this will never happen.
InAction -- use evidence to improve results and value
They are proposing to increase dramatically the amount of information that is being collected on patients. According to them this information will help doctors to better manage and dramatically improve the patient's outcome. In principle this is correct as information-based medicine is the only way to make scientific decisions. However, it is a really bad idea to have all this information in government hands. Furthermore, this is going to be contracted by the government and we all know what happens with government contracts. Monstrous systems will be built which will be very expensive, inefficient and will require constant amounts of taxpayer's money to be kept running. Again governments have no incentives to do better, cheaper, faster. Remember, it's not their money they are wasting it's yours (see for example Health Insurance In Free And Managed Markets).
InAction -- keep our children active
They propose to ensure that every child in the school system would have a minimum of 45 minutes of physical activity every day. In order to achieve this, they proposed work with school boards. This is again ridiculous. School boards are independent organizations in effect answering to nobody. Although there are token representations of the public in them, this public has no power whatsoever. They are utterly bureaucratic entities that control education in Ontario. Again, dealing with such organizations is a contradiction in terms. The solution is of course, to release all education from government hands and make private. Let the people keep their money and let the people choose the education of their children as they see fit. Anything else it's just a dictatorship.
PREPARING OUR CHILDREN FOR THE FUTURE
InAction -- raise the bar for our students
They propose to make the curriculum more demanding. However, the problem with this approach is that it is one solution fits all. They keep treating children like statistical units, each one identical to the next one. This is again, utterly ridiculous. Each child it's different and requires a different education. By raising the bar they are only making it more difficult for children to achieve their full potential. The solution is again to return the money to the parents and let them decide what is the best for their own children. Anything else is communism.
InAction -- protect core education
They propose to cut the educational budget in order to force educational institutions to focus on core programs because they have been spending too much on nonessential courses. This is again ridiculous. Who gets to decide what is a core course? You? Ontarians? no. The government. Again all decisions are taken by bureaucrats in the government. What is essential and what is not essential changes from person to person (see for example Education The Absolute Austro Libertarian Way).
Only a free market can provide a variety that is required and it can adapt itself to provide the volumes that are required. Again we see the classic one size fits all solution that governments always impose. Again, the only solution is to let the people decide what is best for their own children and let the free market provide it.
ENDING COMMENTS
The master plan ends by stating that this politician wants to achieve greater prosperity. They propose to achieve this by reducing bureaucracy a little bit but leaving all the other systems in place. This will of course never work. Whoever, it does sound impressive. What is interesting in this ending is that they don't mention where the million new jobs would come from. Neither do they that in the core of the document. This document is again a public relations exercise designed to maximize votes and get somebody elected. It has no substance, no proper planning, and no coherence. Of course, this cannot be otherwise because it's the brainchild of committees (if this politician is to be believed). It is ridiculous to believe that committees can ever replace the free market.
CONCLUSION
We have commented on a few items belonging to the master plan that promises a lot and will deliver nothing. We did so to point out that such plans are common in the political environment. They are not the exception but the rule. They are all the same and they all deliver more of the same regardless of who wins or loses. The only actual loser is the citizen that has to live with political decisions. It is for this reason that we reject all governments at any level for any reason. You can make a choice now, if you live in Ontario you can choose not to vote, or, if you like to complain vote blank. But then again, it is your decision. At the end of the day there's nothing important at stake other than your future.
Note: please see the Glossary if you are unfamiliar with certain words.
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