Here’s a disquieting thought. A new Fraser Institute study says that public sector compensation has increased 47% in Ontario in the last decade, faster than other components of program spending and far faster than inflation or public sector employment. But that’s not the disquieting thought.
The disquieting thought is that those in power in Ontario, both the ministry and senior public servants, may not have known it was happening, may deny that it is happening, and almost certainly will not accept the implication that the public sector is too generous to its inhabitants to be sustainable in the long run.
There is a crisis of governance in Canada, as throughout the Western world, over this question of sustainability, both of benefits to citizens and more acutely of benefits to public sector employees. But the core of it is the inability of those in government to realize it’s happening. Because you never solve a problem you don’t address.