Real change, real choices : Investing in the services Ontario needs-- and paying for them

The Ontario Alternative Budget’s analysis of the Eves gov- Ontario’s elementary and secondary education ernment’s three-year funding commitment system is just emerging from a period of un- showed that, at the end of the three years, precedented turmoil, brought about by the funding would be as far behind the starting massive cuts imposed by the Harris and Eves point for the funding formula as it w [...] That fact was recognized in the The Rozanski report vindicated critics of platforms of the two opposition parties in the the Harris and Eves governments, who argued 2003 election campaign, both of which com- that the funding formula introduced in 1998 mitted to substantial amounts of additional imposed substantial cuts in funding for el- funding. [...] New investments recommended by Reinvesting savings from the phase-out of Rozanski the 5th year of high school Of the $689 million in new investments We would use any savings from the elimi- in public education recommended by nation of the 5th year of high school for fur- Rozanski, the Eves government in its 2003-4 ther enhancements to elementary and second- funding implemented $205 million. [...] Our program calls for 20,000 In Canada, the introduction of the Que- new regulated, non-profit spaces to begin to bec child care plan in the late 1990s captured address the needs of parents throughout the public imagination as a bold and visionary province. [...] Based to the endless maze of bureaucracy, the exces- on the claim that a less ‘generous’ system sive and demeaning policing that regulates the would force welfare recipients to get jobs, the day-to-day activities of their lives, and the government reformed the system with a stick: often ineffectual training and employment • harsh cuts of 21.6% to social assistance supports that do not take into ac