Has Preston has gone Stark Ravin

The most worrisome feature of Ontario's budget is its continuation of the drastic imbalance between health care and education spending. Out of $109-billion in proposed program spending, almost 40 per cent is committed to health care and only 13 per cent to education.

Why is this worrisome? Because, in a recession, the highest spending priority for provincial governments ought to be the retraining of the current work force and the education of the future work force, so Canada emerges from this recession with the most productive, competitive and highly skilled work force in the world.

This is especially important for Ontario - the province with the largest work force (more than seven million people) in the country - at a time when its work force is being most severely hit by the current economic downturn.

According to Statistics Canada, "employment in Ontario fell by 35,000 in February … pushing the unemployment rate up to 8.7 per cent ... (more than 600,000 people out of work). ... Since last October, just over half of the country's total employment losses have occurred in Ontario, well beyond the province's 39 per cent share of the total working-age population. Employment fell by 160,000 during this period, with the largest decreases in manufacturing; business, building and other support services; and construction."

As Ontario's economy contracts, should not the province be doing everything in its power to facilitate as much as 10 per cent of its work force moving from full-time and part-time employment to full-time and part-time education and training? As young people graduate from Ontario's educational and training institutions - and experience increasing difficulties in securing employment - should not the province be doing everything in its power to provide them with expanded opportunities for continued education and training leading to more productive full-time employment down the road?

Such an education-based workplace revolution will require the co-operation of businesses, unions, educational institutions and governments. In the case of management and labour, this means making worker retraining and education a much higher priority in collective bargaining agreements. But, most important, provincial governments to whom our Constitution grants primary jurisdiction over education must decide to make education and training spending an even higher priority during recessionary times than health-care spending.

Health care currently consumes about 40 per cent or more of the total budgets of Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan and British Columbia, with educational expenditures accounting for less than 15 per cent of the total budgets of Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Ontario (yes, Ontario), Saskatchewan and Alberta. Spiralling health-care spending is progressively eating up provincial budgets to the point where other vitally important social-service functions such as education and training are starved for funding. We simply cannot allow this trend to continue.

Of course, a shift in billions of dollars from health care to education and training raises an obvious question: How will we achieve and maintain high-quality health care?

The answer for Canada lies in finally biting the bullet and doing what most of the world's other industrialized countries (with the exception of the U.S.) have done, and that is establish a well-balanced two-track health-care system, providing for both public and private health-care insurance, delivery and financing.

Comparative studies by Canadian think tanks and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development have shown that health-care systems offering universal health care to all citizens regardless of ability to pay (just like Canada) but with two-track (public and private) insurance, financing and delivery capacity outperform the Canadian health-care system in virtually every category of health-care outcomes.

And while there is room for legitimate debate as to what the relationship should be between public and private health-care tracks and what must be done to maintain high standards of care in both, these are the questions we should be debating - not whether private health-care insurance, delivery and financing should be permitted and encouraged.

To offer hundreds of thousands of Canadians productive educational and training opportunities as an alternative to unproductive unemployment requires provincial governments to make education and training their spending priority. To do that requires major reforms in health-care financing and spending. Will Ontario take the lead in making this necessary transition?

Has Preston has gone Stark Raving Mad?

I have until now, been a great admirer of Preston Manning, I've met him on several occasions, and he is a man with incredible personal charm and charisma. I am shocked, saddened and disappointed to see Preston prostitute himself to the private medical lobby group. I find it extremely difficult to believe that he actually believes what he says.

Privatized, health care has been proven time and time again to Cost MORE than public health. The overheads of private health are found in insurance and other overheads such as advertizing that do not exist in public health.

Preston is pandering to the political donations of those medicine who see a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Preston knows that Ontario is now shaking with the tremors of a want a be private health, two tiered health system that already exists as much as the private health companies are game to do at present.

Go anywhere in the United states, meet the families who are bankrupt living in trailers because one member of the family required medical treatment.

What's next, privatize the Education system?

Now for more "Preston" moments of inspiration, Our schools could introduce courses in "how to remove your child's tonsils", or "do you own heart surgery".

Perhaps Preston should demonstrate some "Logical Reasoning", to cure any problem you must look at the cause, and to help our Ontario Economy, use some logical reasoning, what causes Economic Problems?

Let me tell you. Ontario has a Corrupt Court System, many of our judges are blatantly corrupt and make political decisions instead of legal decisions. While half the population, males, have no legal rights, our courts are clogged with the result of "Never Ending Injustice".

Take a look at the schools, filled with more students who don't have a biological father at home than not.

www.OttawaMensCentre.com

Ontario's Economy could improve IF - we ensure the Rule of Law. Right now, any feminist lawyer with the right contacts and 10 years of experience can get to be a judge, even if they have a severe personality disorder that predisposes them to the addictive abuse of absolute power which is exactly what happens.

There is no screening of potential judges for mental health and or personality disorders. The Judiciary attracts not just that very small percentage who are dedicated to law with genuine empathy and compassion.

The judiciary attracts the most corrupt vile examples of humanity to get to spend their lives leaving a trail of destroyed lives.

Our judiciary, with a few exceptions, generally started their lives, born with silver spoons protruding from their rear ends, brought up in upper class high income families with a father lawyer who was, an absent father. The only real parent they knew was their mother.

Our judiciary translate that into politically correct law, only mothers are allowed to raise children, men are the cash providers with an anger problem unsuited to parenting, in their minds, thats the natural order.

The reality is, many women are the income providers while men are home doing the parenting, they loose their career options and make long term irreparable career sacrifices to give their children a future.

That hits judges on a very raw nerve, they can't stand it, and its reflected in their judgments, its almost a Taboo in Ontario Superior Court for a man to ask for spousal support or equal parenting.

Our judges now issue draconian orders, banishing fathers from entire cities simply to keep them away from court or issue orders for support on incomes that did not exist or will exist as a jail sentence of indefinite repeated incarceration for simply asking for their child to have a relationship with their child.

Its an economic cancer of immense proportions.

www.OttawaMensCentre.com

Read anyone's writing, and, you gain an insight into their personality. Preston, writes very well, meet him in person and has that friendly guy smile that would charm rattlesnakes.

Its whats under that veneer that shows through, a lack of empathy, a lack of compassion, a "I don't give a dam attitude" about anyone who does not have M O N E Y.

He is a big money brown nose.

No, Preston Manning should not have been drowned at birth and the milk given to the pigs but, he sure knows how to feed the economic pigs of society.

www.OttawaMensCentre.com

Be bold, Ontario: Shift dollars from health care to education