Commission on the Reform of Ontario's Public Services

Ontario’s role as a laggard in public spending was highlighted in a 2011 report 11 from the
Ontario Chamber of Commerce that included the following comparisons:
� Ontario had 633 nurses per 100,000 of population, the second lowest in Canada,
and well below the national average of 789;
� Ontario had 930 residential care beds for seniors per 100,000 of population, the third
lowest in Canada, though just above the national average of 916;
� Ontario undergraduate university students paid $5,643 in tuition, the second highest
in the country, and significantly above the national average of $4,634; and
� Only 19.6 per cent of Ontario children had access to regulated daycare spaces,
compared with 20.3 per cent nationally. Ontario ranked sixth in Canada.
These are narrow measures and, unlike the Financial Management System data, do not take
in the breadth of all spending on health, education and social services. But in each of these
cases, the provinces offering their citizens a better, or cheaper, service are among the
traditionally “have-not” provinces that receive substantial federal transfers.
Although Ontario is now receiving Equalization payments, the fact remains that the federal
government takes a larger share of its revenues from Ontario than Ontario’s population share
and devotes a smaller share of its spending to Ontario than Ontario’s population share.
(See Chapter 20, Intergovernmental Relations.) As a rule, whenever the federal government’s
budget is balanced or in surplus, it takes more from Ontario in taxes than it provides in the way
of federal services to the province and in transfers both to Ontarians and to their provincial
government. From 1997 through 2007 inclusive, the years in which the federal government ran
a surplus (on a national accounts basis), Ontario’s net contribution averaged 4.6 per cent of
GDP, a figure exceeded only by Alberta’s 5.6 per cent.
11 David MacKinnon, “Dollars and Sense, A Case for Modernizing Canada’s Transfer Agreements,” a report prepared for the Ontario
Chamber of Commerce, February 2011.
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