Canada's economic engine out of gas

It's the same old song; the feckless masses, led by irresponsible union leaders, have been living it up far too long and now the time has come to pay the piper.

Same old prescription too; slash government spending. Slash pensions, slash spending on education, health care, day care, drug benefits to seniors, slash and slash some more. Let's slash our way back to prosperity.

The dismal scientist offering up this vision of the future isn't some German banker talking about what's good for Greece. It's a Canadian banker talking about what used to be Canada's richest province, Ontario.

Not long after TD Bank group's chief economist Don Drummond retired the Ontario government hired him to head up a commission to crystal-ball the province's economic future.

Drummond's report was released this week. With a whopping 362 recommendations about what to slash, Drummond and his fellow dismal scientists were churning out recommendations at the rate of almost one a day for the year it took them to write their report. That's a lot of catered working lunches at the best conference rooms at the finest hotels, all on the taxpayers tab, but I digress.

Our mewling media now propose that this report comes as a slap in the face to Premier Dalton McGuinty and his free-spending ways.

Bullshit!

Dalton McGuinty knew exactly who Drummond was and what he could expect in this report when he hired him.

Here's a quote from a 2009 article Drummond, then still top economic wizard at TD, wrote for the National Post:

...the script for better productivity growth is well known. We just need the will to...deal with issues such as employment insurance and welfare programs that incent people not to work.

Aha! Thats the secret! That's why the Ontario economy has been coasting downhill for a generation! It's not the hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs that have been off-shored - it's the lazy workers sitting on their sofas waiting for the next check from Sugar-daddy McGuinty's all-too-generous welfare programs!

Drummond's entire 2009 article remains posted on TD's website. It's worth a read if you're interested in the insights of a man who will ride his new-found retirement notoriety into a lucrative sideline as McGuinty's Special Advisor on Austerity at the rate of several thousand dollars a day.

On the other hand, if you're already aquainted with the rough outlines of neo-liberal orthodoxies, you won't find much of interest in it.