The
Ottawa Citizen
March 21, 2006
City Editorial
Page
D4
Posted
with permission from the Ottawa Citizen.
Pity
the city councillor. Come budget time, he or she is inundated
by requests from between 200 to 400 interested parties and individuals.
Each speaker gets five minutes to tell councillors why he or she
needs money from the City of Ottawa budget.
The speakers will tell councillors that their organizations are
run on a shoestring (probably true) and that without city funding
the group probably cannot continue (also probably true).
They represent wonderful organizations -- the arts, women's groups,
health operations, tourism and help for the homeless. The list
goes on and on.
Almost all are worthy of funding.
Unfortunately for the councillors, there is no way to prioritize
the requests' value to the community. Usually what happens is
that most groups get whatever raise everyone else is getting.
That might be ending soon. Next year the Community Foundation
of Ottawa will produce a report called Vital Signs, which will
delineate needs in the community in fields including health and
safety, youth opportunities, housing, transportation, education,
the environment and the arts.
Toronto's community foundation has been producing such an annual
checkup since 2001. It has revealed, for example, that Toronto
is experiencing a period of youth unrest. Joblessness among the
young is at a 10-year high, 6,000 elementary students await special
education and youth recreation enrolment has declined. The City
of Toronto uses the document in part to help channel its funding
into the most useful areas.
The community foundation report is an example of an initiative
that points us in a fruitful direction. An example of one that
does not is the open letter sent by a group of 69 doctors to Premier
Dalton McGuinty.
That letter calls on Mr. McGuinty to "stop the privatization"
of Ontario's hospitals. "Hospital construction and services
must be publicly funded and hospitals must remain fully publicly
managed and serviced," says the group calling itself the
Ontario Health Coalition.
These doctors say that government health care is less expensive
than private or private-assisted care. That's true if you compare
total per capita health costs in the U.S. with Canada's. But what
about the delays that are endemic in the public system? How can
we be sure that money is being used to the best end in the command
hospital system?
In health care, as in so many other fields, pragmatism is usually
more useful than ideology.
© Ottawa Citizen 2006
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