The Ontario government’s 2010 provincial budget sets out a cautious fiscal plan for the coming year. In our 2010 pre-budget submission, the Wellesley Institute encouraged Ontario to invest in equity and innovation to ensure a healthy future. Here is a first glimpse at the Ontario budget and the three core recommendations proposed by the Wellesley Institute:
1) WI recommendation: Maintain current affordable housing investments and increase housing funding by $289 million to meet the growing needs of precariously housed Ontarians. Ontario budget 2010: Province will spend $330 million this year to match federal housing investments, as they promised last year. However, budget 2010 calls for a cut in the operating / capital budget of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing to $646.4 million.
2) WI recommendation: Create a health equity innovation fund of $43 million. Ontario budget 2010: No funding for health equity investments. However, the province has promised to launch a review of the Public Hospitals Act “to create a hospital system that taps into the expertise of community partners and health care professionals”. And the budget also announces a “thorough review” of Local Health Integration Networks as part of the Local Health System Integration Act, 2006.
3) WI recommendation: Capitalize the social innovation fund proposed by the Ontario government two years ago. Ontario budget 2010: No investments in social innovation. However, the Ontario government will increase funding for its Youth Opportunities Strategy to $22 million. The province is flat-lining its annual investment in the Ontario Trillium Foundation, which supports innovation in the social sector, at $120 million.
Surely this provincial budget should cause all of us who put the slightest faith in the Liberals commitment to poverty reduction, 25 in 5 and so on to re-think what we are doing when we collaborate with the government’s public relations strategy on poverty. There is no reason to believe that their commitment is any more real than the fed’s promise to eliminate child poverty by 2000 was.