Benito McGuinty is gonna make damned sure the trains run on time!
Nobody in Canada's richest province had noticed the trains were running late until neo-liberal think-tanker and career bank economist Don Drummond brought it to our attention with the release of The Drummond Report last February.
Suddenly the sky was falling! Oh my God it's time to get tough with the civil servants!
Especially those power-crazed teachers unions!
The gloves came off. Benito picked up where his Conservative predecessor Mean Mike Harris left off more than a decade before. Sideline the collective bargaining process and impose contracts that strip benefits from the teachers.
After all, the fate of the nation, or at least the province, hung in the balance.
But before the gloves came off the kid gloves were quietly pulled on to reward the members of Ontario's two biggest police forces, the OPP and the Toronto Police Service. They both signed long term contracts providing double digit wage increases just before the Drummond Report hit the fan.
How convenient!
The average income of a police constable in Ontario is now substantially ahead of the average income for a classroom teacher.
Last year almost a quarter of the Toronto force showed up on the provinces' "sunshine list" of public servants earning over $100,000.
Number of classroom teachers on that list? None.
It takes about three years for a new cop to hit the top of his pay range.
It takes a new teacher ten years.
Average education for an aspiring police officer? Somewhat less than two years post secondary.
Average education for an aspiring teacher? Two university degrees.
The think tank here at Falling Downs has no horse in this race. It is not for us to determine who makes a more valuable contribution to society.
However, we do recommend that a high school student contemplating a career choice acquaint themselves with the relative advantages of these two options.
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