Just two months ago, economists and policy wonks were cheering the news that Statistics Canada, the much lauded government statistics office, had eliminated fees for its online databanks, making millions of figures available for free.

Now the quantity of that data is under threat from the biggest budget cuts in recent memory.

Experts fear the quality will fall as well, hurting StatsCan’s global reputation and compromising data that shapes government financial and social policy, as well as business investment.

Nearly half of the agency’s 5,700 staff have received the layoff notices that are being issued in many federal departments as the government seeks to eliminate the budget deficit by 2016.

The final job cuts will be far smaller than that, but there is bound to be pain.

“Government departments will see the volume and detail of information available sharply reduced,” Chief Statistician Wayne Smith said last month in a sombre private message that spoke of 2012 as “a year of sacrifice.”

In a video of his address obtained by Reuters, Smith said spending cuts at StatsCan would be much deeper than the $33.9 million — or about seven per cent — outlined in the federal budget due to an “unprecedented” loss of an additional $20 million in income from other government departments.

Three-quarters of the savings would come from cutting programs, meaning fewer surveys, less data and less analysis.

Right now, StatsCan employs an army of experts to conduct 350 surveys that range from the market-movers like employment to curiosities like dried egg stocks and bee-keeping.

StatsCan isn’t saying what it will cut. But the Conservative government says the impact will be minimal at StatsCan and across the entire federal bureaucracy.

“Seventy per cent of our staff reductions have been in back office and administrative positions. They do not affect front line at all,” said Tony Clement, the minister who oversaw the process for deciding where and how much to cut spending.

“We’ve made it clear in all of these cases that for the services that Canadians depend upon, they have been red-circled.”

That’s a promise that rings hollow with many of StatsCan’s present and former staff, among them Ivan Fellegi, who aspired to be a poet in his native Hungary before fleeing to Canada and joining StatsCan in 1957. He was the agency’s chief statistician from 1985 to 2008 and is now retired.

“Everything that is going to be cut is going to hurt a lot,” said Fellegi, who still has an office in StatsCan that he visits twice a week. “A lot of the bureau’s budget is basically not touchable.”

The latest cuts are seen as a huge setback for an institution viewed as a global benchmark for unbiased, accurate social and economic data and research since it was created almost a century ago.

Canada spends an average $530 million, or about $16 per capita on government statistics, a tiny fraction of its $276 billion annual budget. In Australia, where the main statistics office shares StatsCan’s top international billing, the cost is some $17 a head, but that excludes farm and commodities data which, unlike in Canada, is gathered by a separate agency.

Experts say it’s very difficult to compare countries’ spending on official statistics because many have decentralized their data-gathering activities.

StatsCan, which boasts the second lowest revision rate to GDP numbers of the G7 countries, is one of the most compliant with standards from the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), along with Australia and the United States.

But StatsCan faced howls of protest last year for eliminating — at government behest — the compulsory long-form census that supplemented the basic census form with questions on ethnicity, income and housing. It was replaced with a shorter, voluntary survey.

Critics say the new methodology breaks the historical statistics chain, making comparisons harder. They warn the less than complete numbers will have a ripple effect on other data, including employment, that may not be apparent for years.

Chief Statistician Munir Sheikh quit in protest, and chief economic analyst Philip Cross later followed suit.

StatsCan was already reeling from a 2010 budget freeze. And the decision to stop charging fees robbed it of at least $2 million in outside revenue. Unions estimate some 700 jobs will vanish, ending a 25-year no layoffs policy instituted by Fellegi.

Former staffers said the new cuts could not only affect the quality of data and damage its reputation, but risk financial market volatility. The sources asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to speak, or due to the sensitivity of the matter.

StatsCan likely won’t tinker with the three top-tier indicators — the labour force survey, consumer price index and the dozens of “national accounts” surveys that produce gross domestic product estimates. But beyond that little is clear.

“Fiscal and monetary programs will not be affected,” StatsCan said when asked if economic indicators would be cut.

Getting rid of the composite leading indicator is seen as a no-brainer as it needs an update to remain relevant. The agency will stop publishing seasonally-adjusted data for new motor vehicle sales.

Other items for the axe could include social surveys, data processing and analytical work, former staffers said.

StatsCan said its quality controls would remain in place. “We maintain analytical capacity to verify the accuracy and relevance of the statistics it produces, assist users in interpreting the data, and develop relevant concepts for the production of statistics,” the agency said.

It’s true that StatsCan’s plight appears mild compared to that of Britain’s Office for National Statistics, which will be cut by 17.4 per cent in real terms over four years.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics also faced cost pressures in 2008. It reduced the sample size of its employment survey after cuts, only to have its funding restored because of the negative impact on markets.

Kimberly Zieschang, head of the IMF statistics department’s real sector division, said belt-tightening governments should note that economic indicators offer a big bang for their buck, as they are essential for sound fiscal and monetary policy. And Paul Schreyer, deputy director of the OECD’s statistics directorate said statistics agencies need to analyse data as well as collect it in order to spot errors.

The thought of cuts to the relatively small team of analysts at StatsCan pains Fellegi, who built up a team of experts to popularize the numbers and shed light on key issues of the day. “I spent decades building up those areas because they were weaknesses before,” he said.

The reliability of data was on the minds of economists at National Bank recently after jobs data showed a precipitous drop in fourth-quarter employment in the province of Quebec. Taken at face value, the figures would have signalled a severe recession. The bank asked StatsCan to review its methodology.

StatsCan defended its methods and said all such surveys are subject to sampling variability, advising users to watch for trends rather than monthly changes.

Markets have put a premium on quality data since the global financial crisis. For now Canada is on one end of the credibility spectrum while countries like Greece and Argentina, who have fudged their data, are on the other extreme.

Some 200 academics who gathered in Ottawa last month to celebrate StatsCan’s newly free data want to make sure things stay that way. Their cheerleading was a polite way of telling the government to lay off statistics.

“This conference represents a broad-based effort on the part of the Canadian academic community and others who see high quality official statistics as an important pillar of a modern market economy and democracy,” said Joseph Doucet, dean of the Alberta School of Business and an adviser to the provincial government on energy and regulatory policies.

Reuters

< http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/StatsCan+StatsCan/6555599/story.html >

The McGuinty government believes that protecting social services is smart public policy.

We are continuing to take strong action to help children and their families achieve their full potential. The Harris-Hudak government cut social assistance rates by 22 per cent – we are holding the line on social assistance rates, not cutting them back. That government also left the minimum wage frozen for eight years and increased the hardships of those most in need of help. Our investments have removed 20,000 children from poverty. The income tax cuts we introduced in 2009 mean 90,000 low-income people pay no income taxes at all.

We are committed to increasing the Ontario Child Benefit to $1,310, although on a slower schedule than we would have liked.

The choices we are making are fair, balanced and reasonable. Our government has presented a strong plan to strengthen the economy and protect the gains we have all made in education and health care.

Dwight Duncan, Windsor Minister of Finance

< http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/letters/Smart+public+policy/6419800/story.html >

Is anyone else getting tired of being lectured about austerity by wealthy consultants in expensive suits who charge $1,500 a day for their advice and have comfortable government pensions, besides?

And do we really need another warning about saving for old age — instead of frittering away money on escalating tuition for our children; or scrambling to compensate for unexpected job loss, or medical expenses — from disapproving cabinet ministers with fat salaries and fatter pensions?

Notice how these apostles of austerity rarely want to impose sacrifices on their fellow HNW (high-net-worth) individuals in the drive to restore fiscal sanity. They talk about fairness, but there is always an excuse for not halting corporate tax cuts, for not eliminating costly, quirky tax credits for people who don’t need them. And their zeal for slashing redundant public service jobs and frivolous spending always seems to exclude their pet projects. (The Office for Religious Freedom, anyone? Those problematic F-35s?)

This week there was an all-party, subterranean revolt led by Conservative MPs against Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s plan to cut their office and travel budgets by 10 per cent. Fifty-two free flights a year, instead of 64? Ouch. No more business class? Unthinkable. Trim office budgets? Impossible.

Protests aside, there is talk of a continued freeze on MP salaries at $157,731 and renewed foreboding about those gold-plated pensions. We share their pain. Old Age Security is suddenly vulnerable, private pension plans are shrinking, RRSPs are earning nothing, and now this: MPs may be forced to pay more than $1 for every $23 taxpayer contribution to their plan as happens now. Heartless.

Yet all MPs will probably be shamed, or forced, into taking some kind of haircut in the upcoming federal budget. But before we organize a fundraiser, remember they tend to treat themselves gently — a little trim here, a slight adjustment there. Unlike low-net-worth individuals, also known as the poor, they’ll hardly feel a thing.

In any case, it isn’t politicians but school librarians who are dragging the country — well, Ontario — down the debt hole. That, apparently, is why Don Drummond, the former bank economist and federal finance department bigwig, proposed this week that the Liberal government start trimming the number of non-teaching staff at Ontario schools, including ever-disposable librarians.

It was one of 362 recommendations — the premier can’t say he didn’t get his money’s worth — aimed at saving the struggling province from ruin. Drummond also called for the elimination of all-day kindergarten, for ending a 30-per-cent tuition rebate and for cutting school supplies by 25 per cent.

To be fair, he had good (if not novel) ideas, too: more home-based care to keep the elderly out of hospital, more reliance on nurse practitioners, shutting down duelling casinos, freezing doctor salaries, and linking drug costs to income, rather than age. His laudable goal: to force efficiency on a recalcitrant health system.

But he dismissed eliminating a promised drop in Ontario business taxes, even though the province is, apparently, on the edge of the abyss. Such talk “misses the point,” Drummond said. It would reduce Ontario’s expected $30-billion deficit in 2017-’18 by “only” $800 million. Trifling.

Oddly, the federal government takes the opposite approach when it comes to Old Age Security: no saving is too small. It will soon propose moving the eligibility age from 65 to 67, phased in over time. Aside from hurting the most vulnerable seniors, experts say eventual savings, as a percentage of GDP, will be slight.

Maybe they should call their bill Restoring Senior Poverty.

Meanwhile, there is no talk of trimming other pension plans — especially the RRSP, but also the tax-free savings account — that benefit those with ample money to save. Fewer than one-third of Canadians contribute to RRSPs, and a tiny number make the maximum contribution of $22,000 a year. But, by some estimates, RRSP breaks for the richest Canadians cost the treasury $12 billion in 2010.

The issues differ for different levels of government and different parties hold power across the country. But the austerity refrain is the same: protect the rich, hit the middle class and leave the poor for later.

This is not an argument against frugality, or in defence of sacred cows. The sacred cows are able to defend themselves. But it is an illustration of what can happen when political leaders, and their advisers, live in a sheltered world where seniors golf in Florida all winter, families waste money on snowmobiles instead of saving for their golden years, and people are eager to work past 67 because they have absorbing, well-paid jobs.

They forget — or don’t care — that most Canadians don’t live there.

< http://www.ottawacitizen.com/story_print.html?id=6165450&sponsor= >

Sweet-smelling smoke from a smudging ceremony filled an Ottawa courtroom Monday as a controversial case began that could open the door for First Nations residents to argue they are being discriminated against en masse by the federal government.

With the ceremony aside, the legal wrangling began.

Facts that could prove the federal government is discriminating against aboriginal children by underfunding child-welfare services on reserves need to be heard in court, said lawyers for the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

The commission is one of several groups appealing a 2011 ruling by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal – which the commission oversees. In that ruling, the tribunal dismissed a discrimination case brought by the Assembly of First Nations and the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada.

The complaint argued the underfunding of child-welfare services on reserves leads to poverty, poor housing, substance abuse and a vast overrepresentation of aboriginal children in state care.

However, the federal government argues that because it sends funds to band managers – who administer the services – the government cannot be held responsible for the services delivered.

The government also says the question is invalid because it funds services on reserves, while provincial governments are responsible for services to the rest of Canadians, and that comparing two governments is both “unreasonable” and nonsensical.

The “comparator” argument was used in the Human Rights Tribunal’s initial decision to dismiss the case in 2011 before any of the main evidence had been heard.

But First Nations Child and Family Caring Society lawyer Nicholas McHaffie told the court that comparing services to another group is only one “evidentiary tool.”

Human Rights Commission lawyer Philippe Dufresne told the hearing Monday that “the court must look at the facts, examine the services and determine if there is suffering.”

Currently, five per cent of aboriginal children living on reserve reside in care, away from their families. That’s eight times more than other Canadian children, according to 2010 testimony by former auditor general Sheila Fraser.

In 1990, the federal government adopted a policy requiring child welfare services provided to First Nations children on reserves to meet provincial standards, be reasonably comparable with services for children off reserves and be culturally appropriate.

But Fraser’s audits consistently found the federal government “had not sufficiently taken into account provincial standards and other policy requirements when it established levels of funding for First Nations agencies to operate child welfare services on reserve.”

Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, has said if the government is allowed to use the comparator argument, it would “immunize the government from any discrimination or human rights claim relating to its funding policies and procedures on reserve.”

More than 9,000 people worldwide are participating in the “I am a Witness” campaign, pledging to watch the proceedings – in person if they can, or on the Aboriginal People’s Television Network, which will be televising the review.

The case continues Tuesday.

< http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Government+faces+Aboriginal+challenge/6147786/story.html >

It is hard to decide what is more astonishing: Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s inconsistencies and course corrections, or the fact they have done no serious damage to his standing in the polls.

His original appeal – even to those who don’t share his vision – rested on his image as a solid, personally incorruptible, straight shooter. Said what he meant, meant what he said. Limited in life experience, uncompromising in his free-market views; but principled and predictable.

An incomplete portrait, as it hap-pens.

He accused critics of wanting to “cut and run” in Afghanistan, but, after nearly a decade of futile struggle, conceded the war was unwinnable and began withdrawing Canadian forces. He was never going to downplay China’s human rights abuses in the name of the “almighty dollar” – until it became useful, recently, to ardently court China as a customer for tarsands oil.

There were other surprises: Mulroney-style Senate appointments, the unsavoury Chuck Cadman affair, the creative use of G8 funding to help Tony Clement secure re-election, the inexcusable defence of an EI watchdog agency that has done no work, has no immediate work to do, yet has already cost the treasury $3.3 million, with no end in sight.

As for Harper’s promise of ac-countable, open government – no one is available to comment. Ever.

It is said voters are willing to overlook egregious examples of Conservative pork-barrelling and selective frugality (defunding ideologically suspect aid agencies; expanding PMO staffing) because Harper is skilfully managing the economy.

To be sure, he is successfully surfing on earlier Liberal decisions to tighten bank regulation and pay down deficits; he repeated this refrain in Davos this week.

But overwhelming his promise of new jobs (and the reality of weak employment gains) is the threat of lost jobs – high-quality jobs in the federal public service, in the high-tech hub of Kitchener-Water-loo where RIM is struggling, and among young Canadians whose skills don’t match emerging needs. For them, Harper’s economy is un-welcoming.

Harper’s answer – his econom-ic-actionplan. 2 – is the Northern Gateway Pipeline. Selling Canadian energy to the highest bidder, ship-ping unrefined product and jobs to other places seems to be as complicated as it gets. Despite his talk of innovation, Harper’s Canada is a vast reservoir for a resource-thirsty world.

But, then, he has never believed in meddling in the market – until he does. Favourable tax treatment to the oil industry, weakening environmental reviews (coming soon) and trash-talking foreign environ-mentalists don’t count as interference, apparently.

At the same time, the prime minister is embarked on a new moral crusade: Iran.

True, that country’s leadership is hateful, deluded and possibly dangerous. But Harper’s apparent readiness to back multinational military action unless Iran abandons its nuclear program should worry Canadians.

Military intervention didn’t work in Afghanistan; it exacted a terrible price in Iraq; and Iran’s military is far superior to Libya’s.

< http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/canada-in-afghanistan/Harper+wins+when+voters+snooze/6058825/story.html >

Professor Mike Moffatt presented a thoughtful analysis of the decline in Canada’s manufacturing sector in his commentary in Monday’s Citizen (“Where the jobs went”). He argues the downturn reflects the neutral and inevitable advance of technology. Since automation allows workers to produce more, in less time, it is normal and even desirable for fewer Canadians to be employed in manufacturing. “The real culprit is technology,” he concludes, in reference to the locked-out workers at the Caterpillar factory in London.

Technology is certainly important to the long-run evolution of manufacturing. The sector has more capacity than others to mechanize production and boost productivity. Indeed, this is one reason it’s so important to defend a healthy manufacturing base (contrary to those who wish to abandon manufacturing in favour of a “post-industrial” economy). Countries with bigger manufacturing industries demonstrate higher average productivity growth.

So technology can explain some of the job loss, but not most of it. It certainly cannot explain the disproportionate carnage in Canadian manufacturing, nor the all-out industrial warfare which now characterizes much of the sector (like the management lockouts at Caterpillar and Rio Tinto). The loss of 500,000 manufacturing jobs in Canada over the last decade was far more dramatic than most jurisdictions. Many factors contributed to this miserable record, including lopsided trading relationships, the volatile trajectory of Canada’s currency, and the unprecedented aggression with which business executives now do anything that boosts profit margins, without regard to community welfare.

Technological change applies to all manufacturing jurisdictions, so there should be no secular trend in Canada’s share of total manufacturing production. However, contrary to Moffatt’s assertion, our relative share of global manufacturing has indeed declined dramatically. As recently as 2001, Canada was broadly self-sufficient in manufacturing. Huge volumes of two-way trade entered and left, but at the bottom line we exported as much as we imported (about $300 billion each way). By 2011, however, this balanced position disintegrated into a massive manufacturing deficit of almost $100 billion, which explains 300,000 of the jobs lost since 2001.

That overall deficit reflects the sum of many bilateral deficits. Our manufacturing trade is precariously unbalanced with China ($40 billion in the red last year), Europe ($25 billion), and Mexico ($15 billion). We used to pay for those deficits through a huge surplus with the U.S., but no longer: a diminished surplus with America now offsets just a fifth of our massive deficit with the rest of the world. A petro-fuelled 60-per-cent surge in the loonie only accelerated Canada’s loss of market share.

The industry’s crisis, like the conflict at Caterpillar, is not really about technology. The Caterpillar workers in London possess unique, specialized skills (such as customized welding techniques). If it was simply a matter of negotiating how technology is introduced and managed, and adjusting head counts or work practices accordingly, those are attainable goals. The CAW and other unions have done precisely that, many times over. That’s why Canada’s auto industry, for example, enjoys a verified productivity advantage over its U.S. counterpart.

But Caterpillar’s demand to cut Canadian wages in half has nothing to do with technology. It reflects power: a global company’s ability to isolate and threaten workers, one factory at a time. And it reflects policy: an active decision by governments (like Canada’s) to let them do it.

In short, Moffatt’s faith that technological growth makes everyone better off is unjustified by recent history. Lopsided globalization, and the aggressive actions of business leaders, have severed the traditional link between productivity and mass prosperity. That’s why real wages in Canada are no higher today than a quarter-century ago, despite a 35-per-cent increase in labour productivity in the same time. And that’s why Caterpillar executives (who receive salaries worth tens of millions of dollars) feel entitled to demand enormous rollbacks from highly skilled Canadian workers, on pain of total disinvestment.

Governments must use proactive policy tools to defend Canada’s share of manufacturing, and to make sure Canadians get a fair share of the manufacturing wealth we produce. Others do that, and their manufacturing sectors are thriving — technology and all. Can you imagine the governments of Germany, Japan, or Korea tolerating what is happening at Caterpillar today: where a global giant buys an important and profitable industrial asset, no conditions attached, and then attacks so aggressively the well-being of domestic workers and the future of the factory itself? So long as our governments renege on their responsibility to support domestic manufacturing, the sector’s misery can only get worse.

Jim Stanford is economist at the Canadian Auto Workers, which represents the locked-out workers at Caterpillar in London.

< http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/Policy+technology+killing+Canadian+manufacturing/6038414/story.html >

Take a 20-minute ride in a military helicopter and it’s front-page news for a week. But release a government report on more than $100 billion in tax expenditures, as Finance Canada did this month, and few of us pay attention. But even if Canadians gloss over what might look like complicated tax jargon, this is an area of public policy that our parliamentarians should put under a microscope to ensure we are getting the best bang for our bucks.

Tax expenditures are the provisions in the tax code, typically in the form of credits and special deductions, which reduce the tax that individuals and business pay. Make a charitable donation, contribute to your pension, buy a transit pass or enrol your child in a fitness activity and you pay less at tax time.

Tax expenditures serve a public policy purpose without the need of an army of bureaucrats in administration. They can be implemented virtually overnight, and can be easily tweaked. As easy as they are to implement, they are very difficult to take away.

Canada is a leader in the use of tax expenditures in the sense that our uptake is more than 50 per cent above the OECD average. While conventional thinking is that the Conservative government has cluttered the system with new credits and has made the system more expensive, the reality is otherwise. While it’s true that the number of boutique credits has increased, the level of tax expenditures has grown only modestly since Prime Minister Stephen Harper came to power. In the past five years the value of tax expenditures has risen 2.3 per cent, far less than the increase in the size of government.

This does not mean that the government should be let off the hook. Tax expenditures represent a major claim on the federal treasury and their economic and social benefits need to be put to the test.

The problem is that parliamentarians give tax expenditures only passing notice. While Parliament has a process to review regular spending, no system exists to review tax expenditures. Although Finance Canada conducts the occasional review, they admit there is “no formal mechanism for tax expenditure review by cabinet after provisions have been approved in the budget.” In contrast to government programs, which are reviewed every five years to ensure relevance and effectiveness, tax expenditures are left to dangle, hardly the high-water mark for excellence in public policy.

Since reducing tax expenditures is more akin to raising taxes than cutting government spending, we should not look at tax expenditures as a place to reduce the deficit (unless you believe that raising taxes is a good idea). But if we eliminated or reduced the poorly designed tax expenditures we could increase the tax credits that have a bigger impact. For example, by re-profiling just 1.5 per cent of tax expenditures we could double the Child Tax Credit. This way more people win, rather than a select few.

While many tax expenditures that don’t warrant in-depth study, such as the basic personal tax exemption, there are others that can be questioned on the grounds of basic fairness and equity.

I suggest the finance committee of the House of Commons takes up the challenge and put tax expenditures under its microscope. To encourage them along, here is the first $10 billion in tax expenditures that I believe are worthy of investigation:

■ Non-taxation of business-paid health and dental benefits: $3.155 billion. It’s hardly fair that those who work in the public sector and for major employers get this benefit while many who work for small business and in the not-for-profit sector are shut out. Dentists will fight this change tooth and nail.

■ Scientific Research and Development Investment Tax Credit: $3.655 billion. Recent studies have shown that this system is complex and does not produce the benefits intended. Accountants, who count on the system for big bucks, won’t be impressed.

■ Deduction of union dues: $795 million. It’s difficult to justify the political activity of a union as qualifying for an income tax deduction. The loss of the deduction might cause unions to become more focused, but it might also cause the unions to go to war.

■ Employee stock option deduction: $ 725 million. It’s a good thing when employees have a stake in the companies they work for, but why should the taxpayers be part of the equation?

■ Non-taxation of workers’ compensation benefits: $645 million. Why discriminate between different sources of income. A buck is a buck is a buck.

■ Flow through share deductions: $280 million. Investments should be justified on economic rather than income tax considerations. Special deductions distort investment choices.

■ Northern Residents deduction: $165 million. Unless you live in the North you have probably never heard of this deduction. I doubt it’s a reason why people live where they do. And where the line is drawn is arbitrary.

■ Moving expense deduction: $135 million. People move for all kinds of reasons. Just because you want to live closer to a family member should not give you a tax deduction.

■ Labour-Sponsored Venture Capital Corporations Credit: $130 million. There is no shortage of people who invested in these schemes for tax reasons, but who have lost their shirts in the process. Could this credit be doing more harm than good?

■ Deduction for clergy residence: $85 million. To any other Canadian, the provision of free housing from an employer is a taxable benefit. Why should the clergy get this break?

Reducing certain tax expenditures is a difficult and painful exercise that would cause heat for politicians. But isn’t this the sort of work we expect from our parliamentarians?

Bob Plamondon is the author of Blue Thunder: The Truth about Conservatives from Macdonald to Harper.

< http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/op-ed/billion+expenditures+that+notices/6037960/story.html >

A strong majority of Canadians believe the federal government has an “important” role to play in the healthcare system and to ensure provinces are accountable for the money spent on medicare, according to a new poll.

The national survey by Ipsos Reid was commissioned by the Canadian Medical Association, which represents the nation’s doctors. It was released as the premiers gather in Victoria for a two-day meeting to discuss the healthcare system.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is not at the meeting, but his Conservative government has announced billions of dollars in long-term medicare payments that fall short of what the provinces had wanted, but which carry no conditions on how the funds are spent.

Among the poll’s findings:

- 97 per cent of Canadians think the federal government’s responsibility for the Canada Health Act is important. In return for receiving federal money, provinces must adhere to the principles of medicare as outlined in the Act. Those principles include accessibility to services, universal availability, and portability from province to province.

- 70 per cent say they are “wor-ried that without accountability to the federal government, provinces will have no incentive to achieve health care efficiencies.”

- 88 per cent are worried that “without national standards, Canadians will have different levels of health care depending on where they live.”

- 74 per cent believe that health care is a shared responsibility between the provincial and federal governments. Few believe it is solely a provincial (13 per cent) or federal (11 per cent) responsibility.

The telephone poll of 1,000 Canadian adults was conducted Jan. 4-9. With a sample of this size, it has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

As the premiers begin their summit, they are divided over a simple but critical question: Should Harper be at the table?

They have differing views about the federal government’s hands-off approach to the social program – a departure from previous Liberal governments that actively used their financial clout to set national standards.

Western premiers aren’t complaining about the shift, but others worry Harper’s stance will ultimately lead to the balkanization of medicare into a patchwork-quilt system with varying standards. Postmedia News interviewed several premiers in advance of the summit. The two leaders articulating the divide most succinctly are British Columbia’s Christy Clark and Dalton McGuinty, of Ontario.

Clark said “what they are essentially doing is they are vacating the policy field for premiers. And so the challenge ahead of us is going to be how much courage are we going to show in taking up that challenge.”

She said provinces have long said they want to design health care because it’s their constitutional role. “Now the federal government is giving us a chance,” said Clark. “To me, this is really a huge opportunity for premiers to step up and to take the reins on health care in a way that we haven’t been really welcomed to do, I think, for decades.”

Last month, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty unilaterally unveiled a nonnegotiable funding plan that runs to 2024. Federal healthcare transfers will continue to increase by six per cent until 2016-17. After that, increases will only be tied to economic growth including inflation and never fall below three per cent.

The move effectively scuttled the prospect of healthcare negotiations: Flaherty is placing no demands on how the money is spent, and Harper has no plans to attend a first ministers meeting.

McGuinty said this is a “missed opportunity. “I believe it would have been better for us to come together to so that we could better grapple with the challenge and lay out a plan forward.”

He said the federal government has become “a passive presider” in health care and there will be no one with a national voice to ensure equity.

< http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Canadians+want+federal+health+care+role/6000782/story.html >

Ontario is in the anachronistic position of being the only province that publicly funds one type of religious school (Catholic) to the exclusion of all others. Massive, wasteful duplication and the religious segregation of students are some of the results of this system. Recent events have also shown Catholic doctrine is incompatible with the equality rights in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms while other religious groups, now seeking access to public schools and public funding, have pointed out the blatant hypocrisy of Ontario’s education policy.

Thus Ontarians face a choice:

1) Continue to fund two school systems and be subject to convincing accusations of religious bigotry from credible sources such as the UN;

2) Segregate all public schoolchildren according to religious denomination and fund every religion — a choice overwhelmingly rejected by Ontario voters in 2007; or

3) Eliminate Catholic school funding and introduce one secular school system for all Ontarians regardless of faith.

Many Ontarians are under the mistaken impression that Catholic schools cannot be defunded because of the Constitution. In reality, all that is required is an act of the Ontario provincial legislature and the consent of the federal government — consent they would almost surely grant following a vote among MPPs. Quebec and Newfoundland have both taken this step in recent years with no recorded negative effects. Therefore, as the constitutional argument made by many Catholic school supporters is a hollow one, Ontarians can debate the subject on its merits.

It’s not uncommon in Ontario to see two half-empty schools (one Catholic, one secular) around the corner from one another or children being bused past a Catholic school to a public school miles away (and vice versa). While there is no firm figure on how much money is wasted, segregating children or maintaining half-empty buildings, estimates run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The Ontario government implicitly admitted duplicating school boards was wasteful when, in the case of Waldman v. Canada brought to the UN Human Rights Committee in 1999 by a Jewish parent alleging religious discrimination, the government argued against creating other religious school boards on the grounds that the cost would be prohibitive. Ontario lost the case and as a result of its policy of religious favouritism in education, Canada was found to be in breach of its treaty obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and therefore, in violation of international law.

As the recent controversy over gay-straight alliances has shown, Catholic doctrine cannot be reconciled with the promotion of gay rights. It is impossible to honour gays and lesbians while simultaneously teaching a faith that believes any sexual or romantic expression of their love is sinful. Gay and lesbian Catholic students are taught they have a choice: repress or deny a fundamental part of their identity or go to hell. While some Catholic bureaucrats have argued they can prevent bullying and isolation of gay students while prohibiting rainbows or use of the word “gay” in student groups, their arguments are unconvincing. Imagine if Jewish student groups were prohibited from displaying the Star of David, or black students were told they were loved, as long as they didn’t encourage “blackness.” As a rash of suicides of bullied, gay children across North America has shown, these students’ lives are in danger. For a publicly funded school board to offer them anything less than the same vigorous, full-throated support it offers other students is a contemptible betrayal of some of our most vulnerable children and the values we hold dear as Canadians.

It is also worth mentioning that according to Catholic teaching and the current Pope, gays and lesbians will not be alone in hell; the same fate awaits all divorced or lapsed Catholics as well as every non-Catholic on Earth. This is not to single out Catholics; most religions believe they alone have the key to salvation. The question is whether these exclusionary articles of faith should be taught in public schools.

A further problem arises when other religions begin to demand religious accommodation in public schools (as with Muslims at Toronto’s Valley Park Middle School). While many Ontarians may oppose this, it’s hypocritical to do so unless one supports defunding Catholic schools.

The choice is between an unfair, internationally illegal, discriminatory status quo; a system with dozens of separate religious boards and schools; and one secular school system which respects all faiths, while favouring none.

Joe Killoran is a law and politics teacher at Malvern Collegiate Institute in the Toronto District School Board. He formerly taught religion, law, English and history at Neil McNeil Catholic School in the Toronto Catholic District School Board. He is vice-president of the Ontario Pro-Con Debating Forum.

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