Defend Public Healthcare

The Ontario Financial Accountability Office (FAO)   says  that, with inflation, real wages in the public sector will decline 11.3% over the three year period  2021/2 - 2023/4 .  This would radically deepen the trend towards lower wages during the last ten years.   The FAO reports that since 2011, the average annual salary for the Ontario public sector employees (defined here as employees of schools, colleges, provincial government, provincial agencies, and hospitals) has increased by $10,385   -- or 1.6 per cent on average annually.  This is the lowest increase of all the sectors and lower than inflation, which averaged 1.8 per cent per year. Over the ten years that would be about a 2% pay cut.   The FAO reports that wage settlements were the lowest in the provincial public sector over the last decade:   Hospital Wages Especially Challenged: The FAO predicts hospital wages will increase even less than in the public sector  -- just 1.2% annually over the five year period 2021-22 t

There has been a general trend downwards in public sector employment in Ontario according to Statistics Canada. In the last two years, Ontario has lost 19,000 public sector workers, with most of the loss occurring in the last year. The downwards trend in Ontario contrasts with the upward trend across the rest of Canada.  While Ontario lost over the last two years, the rest of Canada gained 73,400. Over the last year the rest of Canada gained 65,300 public sector jobs, while Ontario lost 12,700 public sector jobs. This may understate the cuts in the Ontario broader provincial public sector (i.e. public sector workers, like health care workers, that are primarily funded by the province, excluding federal and municipal employees). Austerity has been much harsher for the Ontario government than the federal and Ontario municipal governments. So the Ontario broader provincial cuts may be softened by modest growth in the federal and municipal sectors. The level of public

The suggestion that Ontario has a deficit because its public sector is too large does not bear scrutiny. Consider the following.  Public sector employment has fallen in the last three quarters in Ontario.  Since 2011, public sector employment has been pretty flat, with employment up less than 4 tenths of one percent in the first half of 2015 compared with the first half of 2011. This contrasts with public sector employment outside of Ontario which has gone up pretty consistently and is now 4.7% higher than it was in the first half of 2011. Private sector employment has also gone up consistently over that period. In Ontario, it has increased 4.3% since the first half of 2011, while in Canada as a whole it has increased 4.9%. As a result, public sector employment in Ontario is now shrinking as a percentage of the private sector workforce.  In contrast, in the rest of Canada, it is increasing. Moreover, public sector employment is much higher in the rest of Canada

Tim Hudak's Progressive Conservatives like to say that there is "a bloated public sector" in Ontario. "We will need to make do with fewer government employees" they proclaim. In fact, we already are. The Ontario broader public sector has shrunk by 47,000 workers over the last year, a 3.5% decline. Comparing the first half of last year with the first four months of this year, we are down just under 48,000. Update: Public Sector Employment July 2015 - Click Here. The public sector has, it is true, grown a total of 1.7% (22,100 workers), over the last six years.  That however falls well short of both population growth and the growth of the working age population.   1976 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Canadian population 18-64 14,017,709 21,757,146 22,020,729 22,264,899 22,451,338 22,655,895 22,851,645 23,070,545 Ontario population 18-64 5,

Opponents of public services often try to portray the public sector as having grown disproportionately.  In fact, since 1976, the number of public sector employees has not quite kept pace with the population. In 1976, the number of public sector employees in Ontario  as reported by Statistics Canada averaged 830,800.  By 2012, the number had increased to 1,330,700 -- a 60.2% increase.  That sounds like significant growth -- true. But the population has increased  from 8,413,779 in 1976 to 13,505,900 in 2012, a 60.5% increase.   In other words, population growth has run slightly ahead of the growth in public sector employment.     In 1976, close to 10% of the population worked in the public sector.  It stayed pretty much this way until the Mike Harris government came to power when it dipped below 9%.  It returned close to the historical range in the last six years or so, declining in 2012 to below the 1976 average. This likely understates the decline in public se