Commission on the Reform of Ontario's Public Services

Appendix: <strong>Commission</strong> Recommendations
Recommendation 3-13: Seek common themes across the reforms to achieve economies of
scale in action and simplify communications. Common themes would include a shift towards
evidence-based policy development and service delivery; more efficient service delivery
models for all areas interacting with the public; the efficient use of and appropriate rates of
return on Crown assets; and consolidation of such backroom operations as information
technology and human resources.
Recommendation 3-14: Reform must be pervasive and speedy. There is an understandable
tendency to approach any set of reforms piecemeal and over an extended period. This
tendency must be resisted, in part because the record is not kind to such an approach and
more importantly, because it runs contrary to our fiscal mandate to balance the budget by
2017–18. First, the government will need to implement all the reforms we recommend — or at
least some reasonable facsimile in fiscal terms — to restrain the growth of program spending
enough to achieve balance by 2017–18. This is not a smorgasbord from which the government
can choose only the tastiest morsels and ignore the less palatable. Second, the restraint
process will succeed only if the public believes the reforms are fair. Broader action favours
such a perception as opposed to a view that a handful of programs were unfairly targeted.
Third, we can all agree that change is disruptive, but the medicine does not go down more
easily if it is dragged out over a long period. Indeed, such delay merely discourages people —
public servants and those receiving government services — and postpones the day when a
new system is operating efficiently. Although there may be limits to the capacity of the public
service to instigate, execute and monitor change, once the financial parameters are set, first
for ministries and then for programs, many of the reforms will be handled by people further
down the chain.
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