Friday, January 6, 2012

Drummond Report Aftermath

Adam Radwanski at the Globe and Mail has an article about the Drummond report and I'd like to quote the second paragraph:

"The message from the economist he had hand-picked to help steer Ontario’s budget back toward balance was brutal. Previewing his coming report, Don Drummond publicly pronounced that economic growth had permanently stagnated under Mr. McGuinty’s watch, meaning the province’s entire model of program spending was no longer sustainable. And by the way, some of the Premier’s proudest investments – smaller class sizes, for instance – were poor value and should be reversed."

One of the themes of this blog is how poor GDP growth in Ontario has been over McGuinty's reign. Growth in Ontario has never been 3% or higher since 2000 yet Ontario government spending kept rising. Few people seem to be aware of this, and often think things were great before Lehman Brothers collapsing a couple of years ago, when in fact growth was mediocre.

The fact that smaller class sizes doesn't provide much in the way in results for classroom achievement has also been know. Of course that wouldn't provide more teacher jobs in the face of already declining enrolment.

To me it seems the report is saying don't do what McGuinty has been doing for eight plus years. It should be fun watching McGuinty vascillate over the next year.

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