Sandford Borins

Without a doubt, the most successful deficit-reduction exercise in recent Canadian history was the Chretien Government’s Program Review of 1994-97. As discussed in David Good’s magisterial study of Canadian fiscal policy, The Politics of Public Money, the program review had several important features that contributed to its success. After the Mexican currency crisis of December…

Doug Ford campaigned on the claim that Ontario’s budget could easily be balanced by finding 4 percent “efficiencies” in every government department. It turns out, of course, that the voters were sold a pig in a poke, and the budget cuts have gone far beyond easily-found efficiencies and included deep and painful program cuts. One…

In my previous post, I said that Premier Ford would be a wild card in the relationship between the universities and his government, as he could readily attack professors as elitists. We actually saw a precursor to such a political attack the day after I posted this. Here’s how it happened. On May 14, Globe…

If you look at the Ford Government’s policies towards Ontario universities and connect the dots, the inescapable conclusion is that it has declared war. It wants to reshape the universities to conform to a radical vision, and it is trying to use funding cuts, incentives, and regulations to achieve it. That vision is a university…

The Ford Government’s standard justification for its actions is that they are “for the people.” The government’s policies are, apparently, what the people want, an expression of the will of the people. Three such new initiatives are making alcoholic beverages more widely available, increasing opportunities for gambling, and increasing the speed limit on major (400-series…

The Ford Government is showing in the Budget Implementation Act (Bill 100) how it intends to deal with post-secondary institution staff who receive both a salary and a pension. Its proposed legislation for “reduction, limitation, and alteration of compensation” is on pages 132 and 133 of the pdf (or 116 and 117 of the bill).…

I find it deeply ironic that the Ford Government, which intended to appoint a 72 year old  to a three year term as Commissioner of the OPP, is expressing concern about the increasing average retirement age of university faculty. This concern appears in the 2019 Ontario budget under the rubric of “ensuring a dynamic university…

In my previous post, I expected that, following Ron Taverner’s stepping down, the Ford Government would establish a fair and impartial selection process in which neither Premier Ford nor Deputy Minister of Community Safety Mario di Tommaso were involved. I certainly got that one wrong! According to iPolitics on March 11, Deputy Minister di Tommaso…

Ron Taverner’s decision to withdraw his nomination at Commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police is a wise one. Actually, we don’t know whether or not it was his decision, as he might have been pushed by the Premier’s Office. Maybe the Integrity Commissioner informally let the Government know that his findings would not be to…

In my public management class, I discuss how government’s priorities originate. In some rare instances, prime ministers chose priorities that matter to them personally. One example is Jean Chretien’s higher education agenda, described in Eddie Goldenberg’s 2007 book The Way it Works Inside Ottawa. Chretien presented himself as a populist, “un petit gars de Shawinagan.”…

I realize I haven’t been very active on my blog for the last month. I have been occupied working on the second draft of my book Public Representations and also starting the semester teaching two courses. The theme of today’s post arises from my public management course. The Government of Canada website provides the titles…